Fitness Wisom? : F**K It!

"A wise person has the capacity to choose the best means to attain a goal. Being wise implies broad knowledge, learning and experience and the ability to apply such faculties to practical ends."

Now this isn't my definition, but I found it on a website about West African Wisdom and thought it was pretty cool, so I stole it.

The bit that stuck out for me was "the ability to apply such faculties to practical ends". I'm a social creature by nature and my role as a Coach means that ultimately the conversation eventually steers towards fitness. A conversation that I often encounter is "I must get back to the gym" or the one about "I'm just not seeing results" or "I'm still paying but I will go back eventually".

To these people (not the perennial gym rats) I would say, take a long hard look, apply your broad knowledge, learning, experience and say F**K it! Gyms are not the only answer. Do sport, do something physical that you enjoy. Save some money, put it into something that will get you the results and that you love doing. Get out there, just get active. Commercial Gyms are in a stagnant industry that boomed and have yet adapted to the changing modern physical culture. They are possibly on their way out. Now I'm not talking about small or local gyms. Gyms have their place and are useful when they serve their members. I'm talking about the glitzy gyms the pop up ten fold in a space of as many feet like they are fast food restaurants.

Their is a real cost to your health if you are not physically active, and a financial one (as your medical bills will pile up from conditions related to poor health). But there is also a financial cost to working out. On Straight to the Bar, Kat wrote an interesting piece about this,

"I'm posting this to generate some respect for the issue most people have today of fitting fitness into their budgets, and to give some idea of what my investment has been as an example.

It's free to sweat. Ideally, people pay you to work. So this is an exception to the natural structure of life. Don't let anyone bully you into thinking otherwise, or that this is money you must spend. Don't watch people who have achieved some degree of glamor in your eyes in their fitness lives and feel that you should be doing what they're doing, because the activity may not be available to you. That realization gives you freedom, freedom from guilt, failure, and freedom to control the direction of your fitness life. You can stumble into your fitness pursuit, as most people do, arrive at your niche organically and then cater to it economically, or, if you're at a decision-making juncture, you can lay out the costs of various pursuits and assess their availability to you. Whether you're a realist, cynic or dreamer, your personality will drive you to a path from there. Do something. Just don't feel like you should be doing something else...."read more

So what ignited this rant? working in the Health and Fitness industry for the past nine years plus, its something that has taken root and I have finally managed to articulate inspired by a wonderfully simple, but powerful book. Check out pages 101 - 105 You'll understand what I mean.