Defined in practical terms, physical fitness is the body’s ability to do anything you want and do it well: lifting a weight, running a 10K race, throwing a stone, climbing a rock, or jumping a fence. Handling life’s circumstances without blinking an eye is what we call real-world fitness.
How Does Real-World Fitness Benefit You?
Once you achieve real-world fitness, you gain the energy, strength, stamina, and functional capacity to live life to its fullest. Possessing these physical characteristics enable you to participate in sports, family activities, complete your own handyman projects around the house such as building a deck or building your kid a tree house. Necessary tasks become easier. Real-world fitness gives you a body that is capable of almost physical task you need or want to accomplish in life.
Fitness and Human Evolution
Think of our ancestors who did not have the “body image” issues that we have today. Although their bodies were lean and defined, their society did not pressure them to artificially burning body fat, building lean muscles, or “sculpting their abs.” They had physical activities of all kinds instead of cars, escalators, office chairs, and televisions. Our ancestors hunted and gathered food, using their bodies in ways long forgotten by modern culture. If they were not functionally strong (lifting and climbing trees, jumping crevasses, building shelters), they did not eat or survive the winters. Their bodies were strong, lean, and free of modern illnesses such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
Fitness and Body Image
We know that most people want to feel their best. Some people also want to look their best and that to do this, they must improve their fitness. However, in my experience as a personal trainer and CEO of HyperStrike I have found that most people have only a vague idea of what fitness really is. Fitness is not just low body fat and muscular definition. It is deeply related to your physical capacity to do many activities, to be a “jack of all trades” or an all-around “athlete.” When you’re fit, any physical task can be done well and nothing is compromised! This is true fitness, and with a good exercise program, anyone can attain it.
When you are truly fit, your body reflects your condition, not the other way around. Make yourself fit, and you will be amazed at how your body looks!
Real-world fitness produces superior physical changes that lead to a lean, well-defined body, and it does so more effectively than the boring exercise routines found in many gyms and magazines.
Having more functional capacity does not mean that you neglect aesthetics. In real life, form always follows function. When you improve the function of your body, the form of your body naturally follows.
At HyperStrike, we are aware that you probably want to have a nice, lean body for the beach, for the evening dinner parties in a sleeveless dress, or for mowing the lawn without a shirt. These are probably the reasons for 95 percent of you who want to work out. When you become fit—truly fit for the real world—you will look the part. “Looking good” is the side effect of becoming functionally fit.
Analyzing Fitness
Fitness is defined in many different ways by many people. For example, if a person can run a marathon, he is considered fit. If a person can climb a mountain, she is considered fit. If a person lifts a barbell that weighs a ton, he is also considered fit. What if the marathoner cannot jump onto a three-foot platform, the mountain climber cannot carry a bag of cement, and the weight lifter cannot run a mile? Are they still be considered fit?
The athletes in these examples possess specific fitness or the ability to perform one activity very well at the expense of doing well at other activities. This is great if your passion is doing that one thing, as most elite athletes would agree. For the rest of us who simply want to be fit, look great, and enjoy life to its fullest, specializing is not always the best choice. When we can do well at many activities and possess well-rounded fitness, we have real-world fitness.
Understanding Fitness
Fitness means having the physical capacity to do many things, and to do them well. When you are fit, you should can run a good distance and jump high; climb a ladder and pick up a large basket of firewood; and lift a heavy weight and run on the beach with your dog. You are capable of accomplishing many different tasks, and this requires you to possess different motor qualities.
Individual motor qualities are expressed by various actions. For example, for a basketball player who jumps up for a slam dunk, the motor quality seen in the jump is expressed as power. Throwing a shot put is also an expression of power, as is swinging an ax to split a log. Strength is the motor quality of lifting or moving against a large resistance such as lifting a stone or pushing a couch. Endurance is the motor quality seen in continuous work such as running a 10K race or kayaking down a long river. Agility is another motor quality that demonstrates how quickly a person can change directions—as a football running back avoiding being tackled or someone moving her feet fast to avoid a fall after tripping on a rock. The motor quality of flexibility it allows you to move easily, gracefully, and without injury.
Form Always Follows Function
Too many people put form before function, and exercise programs that emphasize only body image often sacrifice the benefits of increased real-world fitness. We cannot stress enough how important it is to increase functional capacity or real-world fitness in your workout program!
When you increase functional capacity, you tend to move better and more often in your workouts and daily life. You also increase your caloric expenditure.
Increasing your functional capacity allows you to do more things while preventing injury. You are more capable of reacting and responding to your physical environment, and you are more able to withstand surprise assaults to the body (injury). Injury can slow or halt your fitness progress, and who wants that?
When you have a great level of functional capacity, you can work out nearly anywhere you choose. Any backyard, side street, strip of beach, hotel room, playground structure, tree branch, odd object, or small space on an open floor can become your gym for super creative and extremely effective exercises. Other people cannot perform the exercises because they either do not know how or are limited to expensive gym equipment, doing traditional mindless exercises with the same old protocols that yield less-than-optimal results.
Simply put, if you get fit for the real world, your body will show it with decreased body fat, lean muscles, and a well-defined shape.