Why do I fit?
Michael Sands.
There are many factors that lead to a person making the choice to exercise. For some people it may be upon advisement from someone who we trust knows better, like our doctor. For a lot of people fitness means training, enhancing preparation and readiness for life ahead. For other people fitness is simply a means to an end. Fitness goals are the ends to those means. The reason for the goal can be improving self-confidence, self-worth, improving health, appearance-or a combination of all those things. While the reasons for starting a fitness journey are as diverse as the people who undertake them, one thing is essential to achieve any goal, fitness or otherwise is the internal drive, the desire to first imagine and then put in the work to reach your goals. Without desire goals are meaningless accomplishments rarely noticed by the one who most needs confirmation of success- yourself.
For my young self, fitness became introduced through sports and competition. With age and advancement came the need to train and practice. Fitness in that way for me was not something I wanted, but more of a chore. Whether my lack of enthusiasm came from immaturity or a lack of clear understanding and desire to achieve a fitness goal is irrelevant. I competed in sports and to continue to be competitive I had to realize my limitations, recognize training would be necessary to continue to find success and commit. But without desire and a clear will for achievement I would never be able to find fulfillment from training or fitness. Yes, I enjoyed competing because my friends did it, I had fun practicing and in games and even found a little enjoyment from workouts. Then though exercise was hard. It’s still hard, but what made it hard then and what makes it hard now are two completely different attitudes. Then, workouts, fitness, commitment and moderation were forced, like learning algebra and knowing you’ll never be without a calculator in the real world, fitness in my youth was a burden. Now fitness has become an inspiration for living by showing myself that I will put in more effort than is necessary just because.
Even though I now lack a specific fitness goal- I am not training for anything, but I enjoy the challenge that I put upon myself. I enjoy holding myself accountable. Not to achieve an arbitrary 1 rep max although in the past that has certainly been one reason driving me. Instead, fitness is in and of itself the goal. Through fitness you exercise your body, but you condition your mind and spirit to be at its best when facing self-imposed challenges. Mental conditioning and physical fitness at times feels as if it is almost unnatural. They seem to be counter intuitive. In life we recognize pain and learn to avoid it- as in burning our hand on a stove and remembering to not do that. In fitness we work our bodies and train our minds to endure beyond the sensibility to quit. We push our bodies and marinate our internal systems in lactic acid. While we avoid burns externally, we welcome them internally. And over time you find that you genuinely enjoy the burn...
Perhaps not at first, at first fitness is work. Hard work.
When I began my true fitness journey it was to quiet the demon of low self-esteem. I looked in the mirror and did not like what I saw looking back at me. Asking anyone else they would probably tell you I didn’t look that bad, As I look back on it now, I would likely tell you the same thing. But then I felt undesirable, out of shape, and that lack of confidence would deny me a lot of opportunities that having strong self-confidence would have afforded. I began to get fit because everything about how I felt and how I saw myself made me feel as if I was being victimized by my own perception, and manifested in physical form in my weight, apprehensive tendencies and lack of confidence. So, in 2010 I made a commitment to do whatever I could to silence those feelings.
Throughout my life I have competed in a variety of sports. Swimming, football, baseball, soccer, ultimate frisbee. I have trained at boxing centers, and with designated strength and conditioning coaches at school. In a strange bout of irony one of the only classes I ever failed in high school was Strength and Conditioning. Call it immaturity or laziness or both, the fact is true that the biggest part of my life for the last 15 years happens to be something I markedly failed at when I was younger.
In 2010 fitness became my choice for many reasons. Some of those reasons are still with me and continue to drive me through workouts today. Other reasons I had to let go because they were from the ego and needed to be put down. One thing I have learned about trusting too much in my own ego is that it inevitably ends up getting me hurt. It was my ego that was driving me when I got strong enough to lift a weight that would permanently injure my spine, herniating my L4-L5 and L5-S1. Although I suffered that injury, I continued to lift, and it was fear that kept me from seeking medical treatment or diagnosis for over a year after the injury.
Today, I still struggle with my ego, but I no longer fight with it as much as possible. Through fitness and recovery from a significant injury I have learned to respect my body more. I learned to give it more time than what it needs, more nutrition than what is needed. When possible, I warm up a little more, ease into my work outs, use technique over just “lunking” it out. That is not to say I don’t lift heavy, I still do. I just recognize from experience that whether I can squat 315 or 495, it still feels heavy when I pick up a 50-pound box at work, but it is my ego that tells me I need to hide that struggle, because it is my ego that tells me I should never struggle.
Today I am as strong as I have ever been. Not because of the numbers I lift but because of the quality of the numbers I put down. Today I fit because I want to, because often when we find out we need to, it may be too late.
Another huge driver of my dedication to fitness is having watched my mother become disabled from a stroke when I was 11 years old. The stroke happened when she was relatively young and was likely caused by a defect in her heart. At that point in her life our mother had started her own fitness journey, beginning to exercise regularly, until the morning she found she could not get out of bed and had to be taken to the emergency room. At that time both of my parents had been considered overweight for most of our life. My sister and I would not seem to agree on much in our life, but one thing we both would likely agree is that fitness was not something of a family practice. Which is no slight against our mother and father, they worked extremely hard and survived into their mid-70’s. However, our father suffered heart failure and almost died in 2014 from heart failure requiring bypass surgery. It is not that what drives my dedication and desire to be fit is that I don’t want to be like my parents. Rather I would say I want to be exactly like my parents for as long as I possibly can because only can I honor their achievements and sacrifices for my sister and I by surviving as long as I possibly can while demonstrating the values they instilled in us both. That of generosity, integrity and hard work, dedication to family and to simply do the right thing always. Most importantly though, our parents taught us to practice understanding and forgiveness whenever possible.
So, it is not in spite of my parent's lack of fitness growing up that drives me but to honor their memory by becoming the living example of all they did bestow upon us that inspires me to be fit. By my dedication to fitness, I value their efforts by being the best version of myself I can be. While understanding that I am not perfect by any means, but it is worth the effort to try to do better every single time I fall short.
You will hear people say that fitness is a lifestyle, it’s not. It’s just living. At the end of the day, it is purpose, desire and willful living that dictates our interactions and worldviews. Fitness then is not a lifestyle but a foundation with which any person, regardless of age, mobility or disability can choose to build a new way of living at any point. If you can breathe, you can train your breath. If you can think, then you can train your thoughts, and if you can think about breathing then you are practicing the foundations for fitness.
So why do I fit?
Because I am obsessed? Not really. But I am resolute, committed and driven to be fit. For so many reasons. But the truth is, when I look in the mirror I am not fit enough, so I don’t ask myself that question. I realized that the only true goal for fitness is achievement for achievements sake. If you want to bench press 315 lbs., do the work and achieve it. What you will find is that 315, 405, 495 pounds will never be enough to satisfy achievement. It is the commitment and dedication to the hours of work on the journey of fitness that makes it an accomplishment, not the actual act of achieving the goal. Sure, it feels good. Trust me, the ego loves walking up to a rack with 315lbs and repping it for 15 on bench press. But it will never be enough. So today I fit because I am on the journey, I don’t need a destination because at the end of the day all roads lead to the same place.