What is Fitness & Why Be Fit?

Among the most sought after goals we hear lies one in which people struggle to define:

“I want to be more fit.”

I LOVE the idea of someone taking ownership of their body and working to improve themself in some way. In this case, they might want to eat right and train. But what are they actually referring to when they say they want to be “more fit?”

A Couple of Definitions

CrossFit defines fitness as “increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains.” If we take a step further we can turn fitness into health: “increased work capacity across broad time, modal, and AGE domains.”

In this way we’ve moved from being sick, to being well, to being fit.  In that order.  You CANNOT work from being sick to being fit WITHOUT moving through well [also known as healthy].

Suffice it to say, I don’t like to think that hard when it comes to things of this nature and I hope I’m not the only one.

To me, what fitness breaks down to is being able to do what you want to do, when you want to do it, and in such a way where it doesn’t wreck you to do so. On that same wavelength, if you can do that throughout your life (all ages) you have then turned fitness into health.

So, What Now?

We now know fitness, by our terms, is defined as being able to do what you want, when you want to, and at a level you want to.  Your next step is to see how this fits into your life:

• If you’re talking about competing on some level then this is a pretty straight forward means of measurement.  There are also some definite objective points here.
  • Do you have the baseline work capacity, strength, durability, flexibility, and so on to perform at the level you want to perform at?
• If you’re talking about how your family loves to ski Vail but you don’t want to feel like you’ve been obliterated by day two?
  • You need to be able to handle the workload and the duration.  This is probably a little less objective
• Maybe, and this is probably most important, you want to be able to stay active with your family and your kids.  You don’t want to be sidelined because you’re physically tired, you can’t get on the floor, your back or shoulders hurt, or all of them!
  • While it’s harder to measure this I would argue you’ll know.  You will.

The Bottom Line

While you may look at fitness as something you really don’t want consider how it affects every aspect of your life.  On the spectrum of sickness to wellness to fitness:

Sickness makes everything harder…

Fitness makes everything easier…