Fitness.
What is it?
Back at personal trainer school they tell you that it is “the ability to carry out the daily tasks with enough energy to spare for recreation” or something equally wishy washy. For me and most of the Wild Geese regulars, fitness is so much more than that. Fitness is about the ability to do and keep doing, it’s living without the fear that your body will fail, it’s about having a mind that can override the bodies pain signals, ignore it’s pleas for mercy and just keep on going.
I’d have some cool catch phrase if I was the wordy type, but for now I’m going to steal someone elses. It’s a cool definition of fitness:
“Fit for whatever comes” – Steve Maxwell (maxwellsc.com)
Lets give a couple of recent examples:
Three of my lads completed their first ever marathons recently, one of which didn’t do much running at all, another has been battling obesity and the third couldn’t run a year ago because of knee injury. All three completed the course with respectable times (anyone who completes a marathon deserves respect)
One of my Girls is a care worker, recently she was on a day trip with her charges a visited a castle. Castles do not have disabled access, so she spent half the day lumping People and Zimmer frames up and down narrow stairwells.
These are not made up, they are real stories from the last two weeks. This is why we train, so that we can just step out the front door and run 26miles if the mood takes us, but more importantly for the days when we have to push ourselves in an unexpected situation, such as being sent to a medieval castle and having to lift, carry push and pull all day.
This is fitness.
This is why Wild Geese cover a broad range of training, only specialising the training for those that need it.
A balanced, broad spectrum of general physical preparedness training (GPP) should cover:
Mobility Strength Power Cardio Coordination Flexibility
For most of the above we use the kettlebell, a wide range of bodyweight drills and heavy barbell work. For flexibility we use aspects of Yoga and martial arts stretching techniques.
We have however secured a full time Yoga / Pilates coach to come in every Saturday morning and teach a class. Starting from November 26th at 9.15am. The teachers name is Anne Dempsey, if you drop me an email I can send you her contact details if you want more info on her classes.
Flexibility is possibly the most overlooked aspect of most people’s training so I highly recommend Anne’s classes on that basis. Even a single class will give you tools and techniques to improve your range and freedom of movement.
After all, if you can’t move freely, how could you respond in an emergency?
One last thing, I’m running one last kettlebell workshop this year, it’ll cover Levels 1,2 and 3 of my syllabus and will be on the 4th December, check the side bar for details —–>
Regards
Dave wg-fit.com
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