A Fitness Education
If we can assume everyone wants to be healthy, why are we, as a whole, so unhealthy, obese, and naïve to nutrition and exercise? Health and wellness lies in a systematic process of creating success through education, awareness, and context.
I firmly believe that nobody wants to be unhealthy. Nobody wants to be out of shape and overweight. The annoying person on the plane that takes up two seats is just as embarrassed and annoyed with their own life as the person that is now sitting in half of a seat. If you were to survey 1,000 random people and ask them if they wanted a six pack, to eat healthier, and exercise more, 100% of those people would say yes. Maybe it is not 100% but it is a very overwhelming majority. So, if we can assume everyone wants to be healthy, why are we, as a whole, so unhealthy, obese, and naïve to nutrition and exercise? Health and wellness lies in a systematic process of creating success through education, awareness, and context.
On any given week I have around five consultations with athletes. These consults analyze a day in their life, their fitness goals, nutrition goals, and the meeting ends with an action plan to set the wheels in motion. Every athlete has different goals, motives, and lifestyles and I try to decipher the madness and add context so we can make changes that last. The overwhelming majority of these people come in with their own ideas of fitness and health. Unfortunately, most of these ideas stem from massive marketing campaigns, companies, and magazines designed to promote products that typically do not work. In nearly every case, athletes lack the education, awareness and context to reaching their goals. In my experience, three key concepts, education, awareness, and context are the critical components to creating long term, successful plans for health and longevity.
Education
Every Tuesday, in our introduction class, I am lucky enough to watch a group of people learn the basics of Olympic lifting for the very first time. It is interesting because I still remember the very first time I had a coach teach me how to do a clean. It did not make sense to me how you were picking something up by jumping but I rolled with it. Now, nearly eight years later, I get it. But it takes time. It takes a lot of learning. It takes a lot of coaching. And it takes a lot of commitment to the learning process.
I find that if you ask people how to be healthy, they do not actually know. There are few classes in school, even fewer programs in the workplace, and the majority of information is pumped through media outlets whose motives do not actually involve health and longevity. At CrossFit PB, education is our first step to success. How can you implement a plan if you do not have the information you need to carry it out? At CrossFit PB, we offer an introduction class to learn movements and to develop fundamentals. It is impossible to begin a fitness regimen, and expect results, without understanding how to do the movements. If I tell you power cleans are a good exercise, the information is completely worthless without a structured approach to learning the movement. You have to learn before you can implement.
Awareness
Over July fourth weekend I flew back to New Hampshire to visit my fiancé’s family. We landed in Chicago Midway after a three and a half hour flight from San Diego. The whole plane was restless and ready to get into the terminal to move freely. As I entered the terminal, I noticed that a large majority of the people from my plane were rushing to go stand in line at one of the two closest eating options, McDonalds or Pizza Hut. It hit me that these people are so unaware of their actions that they are unable to make quality decisions. Instead of taking the extra five minutes to, look around for higher quality food, they cave to the bright yellow arches. And this is not just because they are traveling. It is because they have such an extensive history of making poor nutrition choices that they lack the awareness to make a good decision and instinctively rush to McDonalds.
Awareness is a mentality one must develop to create success. Awareness is an outcome of individuals that live in their conscious brain. Everything we do during a day happens either consciously or subconsciously. The degree to which we consciously act can make drastic differences in the choices we make. Awareness is the ability to make conscious decisions on how you are going to implement the information you have learned. Unfortunately, for most people, nutrition and wellness have been in their subconscious for far too long. With education, all food is not created equal. With awareness, you can consciously make decisions that create positive outcomes. But how do you consistently apply this to your life?
Context
Earlier this year, I had a conversation with Kenny Kane from CrossFit LA and “The Positivity Project,” a podcast that focuses on athletes and coaches in the fitness world. I was struggling with the idea that a gym needed to be more than a place people come to lift weights. I wanted people to understand that CrossFit PB is a place they can come and get an education in fitness, nutrition, and a healthy lifestyle. His answer made so much sense I was somewhat embarrassed I had not thought of it. His answer was “context.” Context is the integral part that ties together the education process and the awareness. Context allows the athlete to understand how they are going to get from point A to point B. Context allows for the cause and effect relationship between our choices and their outcomes. Most importantly, context provides a guideline for where you should spend your time learning so you can apply the knowledge into the framework of your own life.
Growing up, one consistent theme my dad always preached to me was, “never stop learning.” I always assumed this meant I needed to go to school, which was a bad idea because school was boring and I liked playing sports. The older I get, the more I understand the message. It is important to continue learning new things, taking the information and consciously applying it to your life, and adding context to the changes so you are able to observe the cause and effect of your actions.
