The Balance of “Healthy” Fitness

Hello Friends,

Like anything, if you don’t know where you’re going the unknown can hurt you. In fitness, if you listen to many so-called experts, they won’t tell you what you need to learn, they’ll tell you what they want you to believe.

The fact is if it is not “health-first” fitness, it is unbalanced fitness by definition. If it’s strength first, if it’s power first, if it’s stamina first, if it’s physique first, if it’s even mobility first, it’s not health first. If it’s not health first, it ain’t sustainable folks… and if you don’t eventually get ill or injured, you hit the genetic jackpot. Unfortunately it’s the genetic jackpot winners who put together these silly non health-first approaches, because they just don’t know any better.

To balance our fitness life we must first realize that we are unbalanced at any one point in time. Therefore balancing is the act that we do over the course of our lives. Because we are creatures who have the capacity to adapt to any stimulus that we encounter, we need to have as our starting point the following crucial question:

“At this point in time, what have I adapted to that is keeping me unbalanced in my fitness?”

It could be sitting at a desk 8 hours a day. Think of it as “Sitting Chair Asana” – a specific yoga pose that you hold for eight hours straight with little to no break. Now imagine that you did a handstand for 8 hours a day, every day, all of your life. You think you’d be pretty strong right? You’d also be very unbalanced, with loads of aches, pains and over-use injuries.

That’s what sitting behind a desk is like. We get so good at it that we create special over-compensations to hold that position in place. Those over-specialized adaptations make it hard for us to do different things, and they eventually lead to loads of aches, pains and over-use injuries. Most people don’t realize that it’s their unbalanced fitness which is the problem. They think that they just have bad knees or weak wrists or a bad back or a painful neck. All of these things are typically compensations from over-specialized adaptations.

Now, instead of a desk, substitute your favorite exercise: bench press, stair climbers, or cycling. Each of these exercises creates a highly specific adaptation which, if you don’t compensate for it, leads to problems. In other words, even if you are fit, you are not necessary balanced. And if you don’t have balanced fitness, you’re not healthy. If you’re not healthy, then whatever “fitness” exercise you’re doing is only going to eventually lead to injury and illness. That’s an undeniable fact, folks!

Healthy fitness, by incorporating a systematic approach through TACFIT, is as much art as science. Just enjoy the process of learning to balance. Don’t view yourself as trying to learn new skills, but rather as improving your talent at being you. Those who really come to reclaim healthy fitness aren’t doing XYZ, they’re just being healthy fit.

Very Respectfully,

Scott B. Sonnon