Throughout my life I have had many aims and goals within sport and fitness. While most of them fluctuate in importance, one remains the same. I have always wanted to be fit enough to do pretty much anything I fancied. What do I actually mean by this? To put it simply, I want to be fit enough that someone could come up to me and say “hey, fancy doing X,Y or Z? And I would be able to simply say, yeah sure. I want to be able to wake up and go open water swimming at 8am. I want to be able to sign up for a triathlon with my friends at two weeks notice. Fit enough to leave the house and go play a sport I played once, years ago in school. I don’t want to train specifically for them, but I still want to be decent when I do them. So, how fit is is fit enough?
Fitness from an Academic Perspective
I remember when I was in school and doing GCSE PE, the definition for fitness was as follows. “The ability to meet the demands of the surrounding environment”. For example, for a triathlon, fitness may be the ability to run, swim and cycle the required distances. For a footballer there may be a much larger technical and tactical aspect of fitness here. However, It is still a pretty good definition.
A CrossFit Approach to Fitness
CrossFit defines fitness as “increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains”. So now we’re getting a broader sense of fitness. Now we are talking about increasing whatever you do across a variety of activities. However, this doesn’t give any help when trying to ask how fit is fit enough?!
My Own Personal Approach to “How Fit Should I Be?”
This approach and believe probably fluctuates as much as my goals but it while its shape changes, it keeps its course pretty straight. For me it is a combination of both the statements I have put above. I want to be able to meet the demands of my environment. However, I want to be able to meet the demands across a vast array of time and modal domains. While I may focus more of my energy on one of those environments at any given time, the broader picture is still in my mind.
My Approach When Coaching
As a Leading Personal Trainer in Berkshire, It is my job to help you meet your goals as a client. Whilst this is true, I also feel it is important to sit down with people and ask the question of how fit is fit enough? Or what is the bigger picture here. From here we can focus on certain things in more detail but all the while chip away at the bigger, more long term goals.
So, you have to ask yourself. How fit is fit enough?
