What are you training for?
This is one of the most fundamental questions of the training path and it’s difficult to lead a fulfilling life when we don’t think through this for ourselves. It’s easy to get sucked down the path of training our bodies for some generic notion of fitness or strength only to realize after a while that it doesn’t really motivate us.
We are in terrible physical condition as a country, but if we don’t learn to think effectively about our fitness it appears that this will only get worse. The most important fitness upgrade that most of us can make is upgrading our thinking to develop a more meaningful intent and a more functional perspective. To break free of distressingly poor levels of mental health, physical health, and athletic development in the United States, we can reexamine things like “fitness” and “strength” and “athleticism” and reframe and redefine them in ways that stay personally motivating.
To be an effective part of our lives fitness and strength are best thought of as personal and evolving concepts. What does fitness actually mean? The word originally refers to suitability which only begs the question “for what?” When we look at one thousand peoples’ definitions of fitness, we’ll probably find one thousand different concepts. Some of these concepts will functionally serve us and some of them won’t. In a culture that in many ways seems unhealthy, immature, and stuck, it seems that for most of us our concepts aren’t working very well.
There are many common traps when we look outside of ourselves to shape the intent that guides our training efforts. Generic McFitness ideas lead to generic suffering, and sadly there’s plenty of that all around us. Concepts of fitness rooted in inadequacy and yearning may drive us down a path of never ending toil to fill bottomless voids. I visualize Sisyphus from Greek mythology, forever pushing a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down. Concepts of fitness that don’t grow and evolve lead to stuckness and attachment and the suffering that comes with that. However, when we continue to define our intent well for ourselves and tune our training dials appropriately, we can avoid the traps and follow our own strongest lives.
Effectively setting intent is a bit different from setting goals. Setting intent is a much deeper process of tuning in our effort and action with what really matters to us or what really inspires us. We are often encouraged to define our intent in terms of SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) but SMART goals are more of a later stage tool in our intentional toolset that may or may not be useful. Some personalities in particular can benefit from the discipline and accountability that SMART goals impose. Sometimes this type of accountability and reward system can be particularly useful for the things we don’t want to do in life. Occasionally a SMART goal can also really help us focus energy more effectively for the things that do inspire us. Ultimately, a SMART goal that is not rooted in a truly meaningful personal intent can actually be a dumb goal (and can even pull us away from what matters and slow us down in life, even if we do accomplish it). Over the long haul, it seems that healthy intent and attuned training practices defeat goals every time. In my own athletic life, the true rewards and the highest performance has come from following inspiration and intuition and adjusting my training practices accordingly. I’ve barely focused on any goals and when I have they have probably harmed me (by causing me to fixate on things) as much as they have served me.
As we work towards creating a meaningful training intent here are some questions we can consider:
What matters most to us in life?
What does an inspiring vision of life look like for us?
What physical and mental strengths will support this?
What weaknesses stand in the way of pursuing and living our most inspiring and meaningful lives?
What athletic challenges in nature are calling us?
What capabilities do we need to tackle these challenges?
What weaknesses limit us the most for these challenges?
What fears stand in our way?
Based on our answers to these questions how can we define things like fitness and strength for ourselves in order to train effectively?
Stay tuned - next week we’ll discuss allowing these definitions and our training intent to evolve over time, which I view as one of the keys to aging well, building our inspiration and general well-being, and living with purpose over the long term.
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