Last week, I wrote about how mobility—the ability to move and be moved freely and easily—is not a separate facet of fitness. Rather, mobility is an expression of your fitness, and informs your moment-to-moment reality.

Just as the martial arts masters insist we must be able to kick cold, and Kelly Starrett’s famous analogy describes how a leopard must always be ready to sprint for its livelihood, how can you move in every moment of your life?

Fresh out of bed in the morning is perhaps the ultimate test of your true mobility. If a group is only as strong as its weakest member, you are only as mobile as your stiffest moment.

To add some practical testing and actionable advice to this theoretical musing, I offer this morning mobility check-in. In this video, I describe and demonstrate three quick movement sequences that you can do in a few short minutes any time of day and/or fresh out of bed.

We are most used to paying attention to our movement patterns while in the gym. Similarly, we gauge our physical abilities by PRs and other measures that come after we have dutifully prepared and warmed up.

As you follow along with these quick mobility sequences, pay attention to what you feel in your body. This can tell you much more than what you might feel in training and provide invaluable guidelines to direct your movement practice.

Check out this list of fun workouts and simple exercises to do when stuck at home.

The post Morning Mobility Check-In appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

This is the ninth and final part of a comprehensive handstand video series designed to bring you toward a strong and stable freestanding handstand. While this video will bring benefit to your training regardless of your current fitness or goals, it is intended as part of larger handstand series. I encourage you to check out all of the preceding parts:

• Get Ready for Handstands: Wrist Prep
• Get Ready for Handstands: Shoulder Prep
• Get Ready for Handstands: Thoracic Mobility
• Get Ready for Handstands: Positional Core Strength
• Get Ready for Handstands: Strength and Stability
• Get Ready for Handstands: Intro to Inversion
• Get Ready for Handstands: Hand Position and Balance
• Get Ready for Handstands: Find Freestanding Balance

Find Freestanding Balance

In this video, we combine all the previous mobility, stability, position, and balance work to achieve a freestanding handstand.

We begin with a technique for coming out of a handstand safely when you kick up too hard or lose balance while standing. Once you can step out of your free-standing handstand safely, you are ready to begin kicking up and honing your balance.

The techniques in this video will show you how to use your legs and position to find your handstand balance. While these are quite effective tools, finding balance takes time to develop. Humans do not naturally balance upside down, but we can learn to find stability while inverted. Be patient and persistent, and soon you will find comfort and control upside down.

The post Get Ready for Handstands: The Kick Up appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

This is part three of a comprehensive handstand video series that will help you achieve a strong and stable free-standing handstand. While this video will bring benefit to your training regardless of your current fitness or goals, it is intended as part of larger handstand series. I encourage you to check out Get Ready for Handstands: Wrist Prep, where I discuss preparing your wrists, and Get Ready for Handstands: Shoulder Prep, where I discuss how to get your shoulders ready.

• Get Ready for Handstands: Wrist Prep
• Get Ready for Handstands: Shoulder Prep
• Get Ready for Handstands: Positional Core Strength
• Get Ready for Handstands: Strength and Stability
• Get Ready for Handstands: Intro to Inversion
• Get Ready for Handstands: Hand Position and Balance
• Get Ready for Handstands: Find Freestanding Balance
• Get Ready for Handstands: The Kick Up

Thoracic mobility, particularly thoracic extension, is a forgotten aspect for many prospective handstanders. Your thoracic spine is your middle and upper back; essentially all the vertebrae that have a rib attached. Thoracic extension eludes many people, as their spine stiffens in the unfortunate position in which they spend hours driving, typing, and sitting.

An open and strong overhead position is essential for a handstand, but even perfect shoulder mobility will never get you there if your thoracic spine cannot extend all the way. If you feel your ribcage lift as you reach into an overhead position, your lower back (lumbar spine) is making up for the lack of movement in your t-spine. This leads to the common complaint of lower back pain from handstand training.

Check out the video below for tools to increase your thoracic mobility, and ways to strengthen this position that will directly improve your handstand.

The post Get Ready for Handstands: Thoracic Mobility appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

There are 6 tutorial videos in the Kettelbell Basics Tutorial Series here. They will cover all the fundamentals of movement that you need to begin, reshape, or refresh your kettlebell practice. The videos are free but do require you to register to use. We suggest you follow them in the order below, but as you develop your proficiency, you will be able to return to any of these videos when you need to renew your work on a particular movement.

So, each tutorial can stand alone or as part of a progression. However, I do suggest that working with a coach in-person will always provide the best and safest results. Nevertheless, you can accomplish a lot if you dig into the detailed instruction and demonstrations in these videos.

Just remember that you are different and your movement patterns will not be identical to mine. Pay attention to the verbal cues and the sensations of each movement. Be honest with yourself. You’re not competing with anyone but learning and adapting the knowledge you gain in the best way possible for your own training.

1. The Swing

Kettlebell training hinges on a strong kettlebell swing. Dozens of other complex movements and variations stack on a solid kettlebell swing foundation.

The video, shown at the top of this page, gives a comprehensive tutorial on mastering the swing. It begins with drills to learn the hip hinge, moves into progressions to learn the kettlebell swing, then outlines common errors and specific drills to remedy them.

For all six videos, go to Kettlebell Basics Tutorial here.

2. The One Arm Swing

Other than the fundamental, two-handed swing, all other kettlebell movements use only a single hand. This tutorial discusses how to properly transition to swinging with one arm. This opens up a world of training possibilities as nearly every movement to follow is built upon the single-arm swing.

Your primary goal when swinging single-handed should be to resist twisting. Your hinge and body positions should look as close to two-handed swings as possible. This video builds on the two-handed swing tutorial. Be sure to watch and perform those movements before beginning here.

Go to The Kettlebell One Arm Swing Tutorial here.

3. The Clean

The kettlebell clean is not only an expression of a strong mastery of both the swing and one arm swing but acts as a bridge to open up all forms of upper body and overhead kettlebell training.

The kettlebell community has a euphemism that “your press is only as strong as your clean.” Cleaning the kettlebell smoothly into the proper rack position allows you to fully express your pressing strength. Cleans are just as important as the overhead movements to follow.

The clean is also so much more than a transitional or set-up movement. Cleans alone require heavy shoulder and lat activation to return to a proper hinge position.

This video tutorial demonstrates the proper clean technique with drills to develop it, as well as ways to avoid the common pitfalls. Be sure to watch and perform the drills in both the swing and one arm swing tutorials, as they will provide a solid foundation from which to learn the clean.

Go to The Kettlebell Clean Tutorial here.

4. The Press

While appearing simple, the kettlebell press requires attention to several fine points to perform optimally. This tutorial (and this article I wrote about strength and the kettlebell press) will help you develop an efficient press so that you’ll press your strongest and glean maximal benefit from your press training.

We’ll begin by honing your press form, from with the front rack starting position through the whole range of motion. Then we’ll develop tools to create maximal tension so that you can press to your limit.

Be sure to watch and perform the drills in both the tutorials for the swing as they will provide a solid foundation from which to learn the press.

Go to The Kettlebell Press Tutorial here.

5. The Snatch

The kettlebell snatch remains a favorite for many kettlebell enthusiasts. It is not only a fun and dynamic movement but also demonstrates strength and proficiency with a kettlebell.

Simply put, you cannot hide when snatching. Any inefficiencies or weaknesses become immediately apparent as you’ll exhaust yourself quickly. However, with a focus on several simple yet paramount form cues, your previous kettlebell practice leads directly into snatching well.

This video tutorial focuses on connecting this prior experience into an awesome snatch while helping you avoid common errors along the way.

Go to The Snatch Video Tutorial here.

6. The Turkish Get Up

While the Turkish Get Up (TGU) does not closely link to other kettlebell movements it is perhaps the most important movement to know and perform well. Read this article on making the Turkish Get Up Your Best Movement for more background. It serves your regimen as everything from a perfect warm-up to invigorate your entire system to high-end core and stability work.

Despite its amazing benefit to simplicity ratio, many athletes fail to glean maximal results from their get-ups. A few simple tweaks can keep you moving on the most efficient path.

A proper get-up is built in layers. Each phase depends on positioning from the previous step. This tutorial demonstrates proper positions and methods for avoiding common missteps.

Go to The Turkish Get Up Tutorial here.

The post The Kettlebell 6 – Teach Yourself the Fundamentals appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

I write this in the after-glow of today’s workout, my creative energy peaking as I slowly come down from my exercise high. I imagine that putting slightly sweaty fingers to keyboard is a common occurrence for many of the other coach/writers here at Breaking Muscle as well. Exercise provides an optimal clarity of mind to write. Focus on the minutiae of either coaching or training often brings the insights that become articles.

From today’s insight, I question my methods rather than celebrate them. I just ran my regular five to six-mile loop a whole minute faster. Rather than basking in this PR, my response falls somewhere between questioning and outright alarm.

This improvement, I suspect, is not a random leap forward from consistent training. Today was the first run in a new pair of shoes. I could simply declare that I found a better shoe for me and pat myself on the back for a job well down. I must be awesome and my training is really paying off.

My coach’s sense feels suspicious and the humble half of my ego knows that while progress often comes in random leaps, all evidence points to the shoes. Most telling of the shoes’ acclaim, they offer more padding and support than the “barefoot” style shoes that I have exclusively trained in for 3-4 years.

Barefoot running and the footwear that claim to mimic it are not without controversy. My running background and transition into minimal running shoes allow the insight about my not-so-mysterious PR.

I have been running for 15 years, from a high school freshman through my recent 30th birthday. The first 10 years were competitive: varsity cross-country and track and field leading to collegiate triathlon. The last five years were more of a moving meditation to supplement my other fields of training. I began transitioning into “barefoot” style running shoes about five years ago, slowly scaling back the padding, support, and heel elevation, while gently ratcheting up the mileage. While my running form can always improve, I have never sustained a running injury and I can now smoothly carry my 185-pound frame through a 45 to 60 minute run on essentially bare feet.

The most important factor to this transition was awareness and humility. Safe barefoot running demands constant attention on your stride and foot strike, and the humility to slow down or walk when you feel the softness of your forefoot strike degrade. Injuries do not come from shoes or any other equipment. Injuries come to humans who, by lack of knowledge or awareness, continually repeat an imperfect pattern.

Less Assistance Brings More Awareness

My favorite feature of barefoot running shoes is their complete lack of features. They offer no support or padding aside from thin layer rubber as protection against sharp objects. They allow full sensation, enhancing your relationship to the ground. They demand that you place each step carefully to utilize the natural coil springs of your ankles and calves rather than relying on padding to absorb the ground impact force.

Barefoot shoes greatest benefit comes from demanding (and thus reinforcing) proper running form. his often means slowing down rather than setting new personal bests. Speed returns after building the strength to maintain a forefoot strike for many miles.

After growing accustomed to this intimate level of ground feel, I see conventional running shoes for what they are: insulation between foot and ground. Akin to performing surgery in ski gloves, highly padded soles numb your sensory feedback to movement. This would matter little if we could maintain perfect form without sensation. But, sensory feedback is the mechanism by which we gauge, correct, and maintain our running form.

In conventional running shoes, you will have no idea that you are doing anything harmful until it presents as an injury.

I felt this phenomenon today firsthand. My regular training loop has a particularly miserable straight-away just after midway. The unchanging, flat ground typically bring fatigued calves and a significant decline in my form. I survive this section by purposefully focusing on each foot fall while slowing enough to maintain form. Today I felt myself gliding easier through this section than ever before.

Support, But at What Cost?

Several minutes into the straight section I caught myself allowing heavier and flatter foot strikes, a form that brings immediate attention in my less-padded shoes. While still safe, my form had withered. Worse, I did not realize the decline for several minutes.

My old shoes would require that I slow my pace. This new layer of padding, while still minimal, allowed me to maintain a faster pace. But, at what cost?

The padding numbed my awareness to the increasing violence of each step. While I still realized my error quickly, the added “assistance” from my shoes blunted my senses allowing me to deviate further than I otherwise would. For the second half of my run I had to purposefully maintain attention on my form, now knowing that my equipment would not demand it.

It is possible that a breakthrough performance coincided with new shoes. It is also possible that the slight padding under-foot, even while maintaining perfect form, absorbed some impact to ward off fatigue, allowing me to run faster without sacrificing safety.

These are questions for me to explore as I continue to train in my new shoes. However, the insights from my run transcend barefoot running.

When Assistance Grows Into Insulation

Equipment can overstep its role of subtle assistance or support, insulating us from the very feedback required to improve. Thin layers of foam padding stand out as the obvious example today, but the fitness industry is full of gear that claims to aid and improve your performance.

I will always maintain that the two most potent qualities to cultivate in your training are a focused awareness of your body and learning to move based on sensation rather than visual cues.

Your closet, gym bag, and gym are full of opportunities to insulate your body from how it feels to move well. Tight fitting clothes and compression-wear can look stylish but also alter the tactile and sensory aspects of movement. Knees sleeves and wrist wraps provide support to move heavy weight, but also cover any weaknesses in their associated joints and limit efforts to strengthen them. Squatting in Olympic lifting shoes improves the depth and stability of your squat position while blocking the opportunity to achieve these qualities naturally. And of course, padded running shoes allow you to pound out the miles and push the pace, but enable you to continue with habits that lead to eventual injury.

Nearly every piece of training gear I have encountered performs its stated task, at least in part. However, each piece of “assistance” also comes with a hidden cost. A hidden cost in the form of allowing suboptimal movement patterns while simultaneously preventing and disincentivizing you to correct them.

Gear Is Simply a Tool

Rather than assuming that the best path comes from training as close to naked as possible (guilty), understand that gear is simply a tool. A little assistance can bring benefits that far outweigh the trade-offs. Lifting straps might prevent you from improving your grip strength, but they allow you to deadlift far beyond the limits of your grip. They absolutely deserve a place in an effective strength program. Understanding both the benefits and the trade-offs (and yes, there are always trade-offs) helps you better craft your training. Resist the allure and promises of fancy new gear to consider how it will add to and detract from your training. Every piece of gear and apparel are tools. The best we can do is make informed decisions about their use.

The post Does Your Equipment Hurt More Than Help? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

You probably come to Breaking Muscle for information, guidance, and motivation. This article would seem a complete deviation from our typical fare. However, you will come away disappointed if you clicked on this piece expecting to find this coach giving you license to quit. No, this isn’t permission to throw in the towel when things get a little tough.

Giving up is counter-productive. Let’s examine when quitting is actually the most productive option, and how to determine the difference between productive quitting and simply hanging it up.

I walk a thin line to even suggest that “quitting” might actually be a viable, dare I say, positive option. Lack of motivation, commitment, and follow-through is the primary reason that most people fail to achieve their fitness goals. But the reciprocal problems of bullheaded commitment, tunnel-vision, and overreaching bring up a very close second place.

These latter issues manifest in myriad ways. Hyperfocus on strength or performance goals can easily overshadow the holistic needs for rest and recovery and obscure the otherwise clearly visible signs of a pending injury. Imitating the routines of your favorite Instagram fitness guru is often an exercise in frustration. Continuing a program or style of training that is ineffective or contrary to your goals simply from a perceived sense of commitment is the fastest way to come to resent your training.

Photo by Bev Childress

To be fair, high-end athletic goals often require tunnel-visioned focus for success. New styles of training might not feel like a great fit until you’ve had a change to acclimate to the new demands. Many programs require drudging through the middle phases to arrive at the conclusion before you finally see a pay-off.

Far too many suffer diminished motivation, lack of progress, and struggle with happiness simply from being stuck in a rut. Worse, it’s a rut of their own creation, dug unintentionally because they do not understand when or why to “quit.”

When Quitting Is Good Option

A telling personal example of sticking to an ill-conceived sense of commitment came during a sunset walk. I used to live near a nature preserve on a cliff overlooking the ocean. It was the perfect setting to take a stroll, slow down, and shake off the effects of a stressful day. One evening, while taking advantage of just such a use, I began to feel too tired to walk my usual course. The sun had already set, I already felt better, yet I was compelled to reach the end of the path before turning around to walk home.

My entire reason for taking a walk was to break the cycle of hard-charging, purposed-driven, focus that we all bring to our work and fitness. Even while actively trying to switch modes and actively trying to relax, I found myself attempting to override my desire for relaxation. The way to de-stress was to walk with no objective, yet I was unconsciously transforming my stress-relief activity into an exercise that was precisely the contrary.

I imposed the arbitrary purpose of reaching the end. While this might seem reasonable through the lens of productivity and a goal-driven mentality, it actually continued a stressful trend rather break it.

Ask yourself, what parts of your fitness routine are arbitrary, self-imposed demands that do not actually serve your stated goals. Worse, which aspects actually detract from your aim?

The key to sustainable fitness and happiness along the way is to understand the difference between the commitments that are requisite for success on your path and those that are entirely self-contrived. If you are in the middle of a barbell strength cycle and do not feel motivated to continue, take a deep look into why. If your knees are beginning to hurt from squatting too often or the percentages are increasing quicker than you can handle, stop, re-assess, then either modify things to fit your body and your goals or stop altogether. Do not simply continue for sake of reaching the end. However, if you are sore and fatigued from the volume of heavy loading, welcome to getting stronger. Suck it up, eat larger meals, and go to bed earlier.

Knowing When to Quit

Every athlete in the history of training, regardless of the goals or their level, has faced this dance between necessary and self-imposed, arbitrary commitments. Knowing the difference is a critical key to success. There is no definitive answer except to continually check-in with yourself with enough humility to get an honest sense of your emotions and enough courage to alter course when necessary.

One factor that I find to be extremely telling is how often, if ever, your goals fill your attention. If you regularly think about losing x-amount of pounds, hitting that 5k PR, achieving a full split or doing a bodyweight strict press, you are on the right track. Simply put, if you cannot stop thinking about your goals you are pursuing the right things for the right reasons. If you continue down a road or toward some objective because you think you should, it’s time for a serious, introspective chat with yourself.

The post When to Quit appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

“Do you think I can actually get there?”

I receive this line of questioning all the time when talking about goals. More specifically when discussing goals relating to posture, mobility, and overall strength.

“Do you think I can actually get there?”

I receive this line of questioning all the time when talking about goals. More specifically when discussing goals relating to posture, mobility, and overall strength.

The simple answer is that I don’t know. Your success rate or whether you succeed at all depends heavily on many variables both in your control and out of your hands. What your goals are, your age and genetics, any injuries or pre-existing conditions, your time commitment and methodology employed, not to mention your community and environment, all contribute to your success.

Like so many aspects of fitness and life, the issue is not to find an answer to “can I actually get there?” or even “how do I get there?” The real solution is found in asking a more meaningful question.

I’ll counter with another question: Does it matter?

If I told you that you that you would never be able to do a middle split, would you throw up your hands and cease to ever work on your hip mobility? Possibly, but that is up to you.

All joking aside, worrying about whether you’ll do a perfect handstand or develop perfect posture is saying nothing of the vast improvements that you are capable of. To be fair, in some skills the concepts of “closer” or “better” are difficult to determine until your cross the achievement threshold. However, the progress (increased shoulder stability, core strength, and body awareness) have broader benefit than the actual handstand.

Better to Be Better Than Perfect

Trigger Warning: you (like me) are on a slow path toward frailty and eventual death.

The best you can do is be better than you were yesterday, last week, and last year. Better has nothing to do with the past. Better is forward-looking, yet not aimed at a specific end point. Better is objective yet personal and individually-determined.

You are constantly changing, whether you consciously make efforts to affect it or not. You are the way you are from how you’ve lived each day. Your current strength, mobility, skills, and posture are not inherent aspects of you but are resultant from your life.

The trends that brought you to your current state (whether you are content with it or not) will continue unless purposely altered. This is training; examining where you came from, seeing the direction you are headed, and consciously altering course.

The meaning of training is to affect change toward the state to you want. The shift in course is the meaning. The shift is the destination. Training is about taking the reins and working to be better, not about being a certain way.

• Can you achieve a handstand?
• Will you ever do a full split?
• Can you develop perfect posture?
• Can you actually get there?

I don’t know, but can you be better?

Absolutely.

The post Better to Be Better Than Perfect appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

It’s 1-rep max testing day, the day of the big race, or any other day when the time comes to test and measure your progress. But yet, you don’t hit that coveted PR, beat your best time, or cross a threshold that you’ve been focused on the last phase of your training. Worse yet, perhaps you did push your best forward but not as far forward as you anticipated. In either scenario, you leave disappointed and disheartened. You question what you did wrong, whether all that work was worth it, or if you’ll ever improve.

This all seems a bit over-dramatic, but as an athlete, I’ve fallen victim to this deep discontent and as a coach I’ve watched it happen more times than I can count.

In reality, your work has paid off, you are stronger/better/faster. The true blame for your disappointment lays in your expectations.

The age-old adage tells us that discontent comes only from expectations and attachment to those expected results. In other words, what happened has happened, you have performed how you performed, perhaps it marked improvement or not, but your discontent comes from the gap between your desired outcome and the actual outcome.

Forget the Ancient Wisdom and Keep Your Expectations

While rigid attachment to any worldly factor never serves you, this is not a lesson to release your expectations.

Expectations are in fact what drives fitness. No one enters into any training (or other) journey expecting to remain where they are. Fitness is about moving forward. Expectations provide the allure to pull you hence from your present reality.

Own your expectations. Meditate on your expectations. But, you must release your vice-like grip on them alter your understanding of how progress comes.

Let’s examine the ever-elusive personal record—the proxy for progress. We use the PR as a measuring tool that gives concrete feedback about how we are improving. As anyone who has committed to any style of training can attest, PR’s rarely arrive when we expect them to, and even less so when we want them to.

PR’s feel ethereal, a seemingly random blessing from the deity or cosmic force of your choosing.

Does this mean that we should release our expectations of their arrival? No, it certainly does not—you should absolutely expect to improve. You should expect to achieve new levels of ability. These are the aims of training.

Expect the “What,” Not the “When”

Expectations only turn sour when attaching a “when” to a particular date. You can expect a new PR, you’re just never privy to when it will arrive.

Every rep of every session makes you better. Progress comes in a continuous upward line. PR’s are benchmarks, a stair-stepping line imposed over your continual progress arc. You are a mountain climber who cannot see the summit until she pulls over the edge. You are not strong enough for the next PR until the moment that you are. Each step the mountain climber takes brings her closer to the summit.

Back to our disappointment scenario from the beginning. If our discontented lifter approached their session with the expectation that eventually (and probably soon) their progress would show itself in exciting ways, a perfectly productive session would be just that, no disappointment to follow. This process applies far more broadly than with fitness and can seem even more mystical without the invaluable concrete measures of success.

After authoring hundreds of articles (here and elsewhere), I can attest that I have no idea which words will strike me or the reader the deepest. As a rock climber, the days when I finally climb a more difficult route grade feel entirely random. As a creative, passionate, competent, yet highly amateur chef, I have no idea which new dishes will knock my socks off, or further yet the socks of my loved ones.

Don’t Forego Your Expectations

The lesson in all of this is not to forego expectations. I know that I am becoming a better writer, stronger climber, and a more competent chef with each effort. I just never know when the outward measures of success will show themselves.

Show up and work hard every day. Know, truly know, that you are improving all the time. Releasing expectations for when each stair-step of measured progress will arrive makes them all that much sweeter when they finally do.

The post Learn to Expect What, Not When appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Think about your fitness routine. How do you structure the schedule, goals, and logistics? Next, consider how closely your routine matches the following scenario: You go to your training facility of choice (HIIT, CrossFit, yoga, studio fitness, etc.) three days per week, spaced at an even interval and always at the same time of day. Let’s say Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 6:00 PM, right after work. You do the same style of class, with approximately the same individuals and the same coach/trainer/instructor. You have a special set of clothes and shoes for this endeavor.

None of this is negative. In fact, those who manage this level regularity and consistency can typically boast ample results for their efforts. However, a regimen like the one above can soon transform from an exciting endeavor that draws you back each time to simply another thing that you do at a certain time.

Being at a specific place at a specific time wearing a specific set of clothing sounds an awful lot like a job. Granted no one spends 40+ hours per week at the gym, your training time is (read: hopefully is) significantly more fun than your office hours, and those workout clothes are soft, stretchy, and of your choosing. The takeaway is that despite the fact that you choose to train, choose how to train, and choose when to train, you can easily take on the monotony of a vocation.

The Compartmentalized Fitness Routine

We compartmentalize our fitness into a little box, a side-project to our “real” life, only to be considered and valued during the prescribed time and place that we have assigned to it. This puts it on the same level of chores and taxes. “I mow the lawn on Saturday, take the trash out on Wednesday, do my taxes in April, and workout Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings.” Relegating your movement and exercise into the realm of “things that simply need to get done” is the quickest way to flame out or come to resent your training.

Fitness is not accomplished in a set place or a set time. Fitness is not a side-project. In fact, fitness is not even a project at all, but a thread woven into your whole life. A lens through which you view your world and a filter through which you pass you decisions.

Different gyms and different styles of training always entice with how they are more fun, different, and exciting than the next. The great secret of our industry is that they are all right, yet all wrong. If you are stuck in a monotonous routine, any change is both welcome and exciting. But in a matter of time (weeks and even up to years) anything can become routine. It’s not about finding your perfect match, it’s about understanding that your perfect match as an evolving, almost living being that grows and changes as you do. More than any style of training, you are wired for novelty.

Redefining Priority

I understanding how many people develop such a rigid relationship with their fitness regimen. More than understanding, I admire the type of commitment that such a regimen demonstrates. If you prioritize your personal health and fitness, you must commit to it above the daily whims that arise. This is, in fact, what it means for something to be a priority. For some, such rigidity is an asset and a prominent feature of their success. I attest that these individuals are the exception rather than the rule.

For most, it is the rigid structure, the very same that keeps them committed in the early stages, that ultimately leads to burnout.

The key is to redefine what it means to prioritize your fitness. Let your fitness be a support system for life rather than life itself. Do things that utilize and test your fitness to bring meaning to your training. Let’s face it, passion for training itself only lasts so long. Let passion for the many aspects of your life inform your training and provide the necessary commitment.

Prioritize your fitness but do not separate it to a rigid confine. Instead, weave it through your life. This will bring novelty for a continual refill on excitement and allow both your time commitment and styles of training flow with your natural changes in life.

Fitness for Real Life

The first step toward bringing freshness into your fitness routine is to ask yourself why you are training in the first place. Goals give meaning and direction to your training and goals that come from your passions are the most potent. Running a 40-minute 10K or doing a strict pull up are wonderful goals to work toward, but becoming stronger in your favorite pastime (say, a better rock-climber), playing basketball with your kids, or being fit enough to try an activity you have always dreamed about will motivate you on a much deeper level.

Building a training plan around a life goal not only adds deeper meaning and direction, but incorporates your life passions into your fitness. Being fit enough to play basketball with your kids not only tells you what factors you should train and drives you to do so, but also allows for as much time as possible actually playing basketball. A win/win/win.

In addition to weaving your fitness into your normal life, here a few ways to keep your regular training a bit more novel:

Change It Up

Simply bring your normal routine and partners to a novel location and incorporate your new surroundings into the workout. A public park, beach, lake, walking path, high school track can add some well-needed freshness to an otherwise normal workout. Some of my favorite park workouts are structured just like my normal gym sessions with fun things like skipping and bear crawls between stations.

Test Out Your Fitness

Try something new that will challenge you both physically and mentally. You don’t need to make these into a weekly routine, but occasionally forego a gym session for a new activity. Try something that as always fascinated you; or better yet, something that has always intimidated you. Indoor rock climbing, kayaking, paddle boarding, surfing, parkour, and trampoline parks are all safe yet thrilling ways to challenge your fitness.

Pursue Multiple Avenues

Mix up your styles of training throughout the week. This is a not only a great way to keep things interesting but also allows you to move and train more often. Perhaps you train with weights a few days a week, so try running, hiking, or yoga on the off days.

Try to find something that excites you (perhaps some of those new activities that you’ve now tried). These should feel like a respite from your more structured days and should prioritize fun. These days are also the best place to mix in those “real-world” passions such as hiking, biking, or surfing. I find personally that the two factors that really make these days shine are to both: practice one of my passions and spend time outdoors.

Break the Structure

If you are feeling burnt out on your current training or unmotivated to keep your commitment level as high as it once was, do not fret. You are not getting lazy or losing your drive, you have probably let your commitment confine your fitness into a second job. Mix things up and weave your fitness goals into the aspects of your life that you love.

Movement and training should be physically demanding, but also a rejoicing exercise in freedom. Do not allow the structure and monotony that often must define your professional life seep into your training. Your fitness journey should feel like a break from that mentality, not an extension of it.

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The word mobility has flooded the fitness culture these last few years. With the rise of gymnastics and martial arts inspired “movement” training from numerous different “gurus,” mobility has finally earned a seat at the head table with the likes of strength, power, and aesthetics.

We’ve become a fitness culture obsessed more with beautiful movements, positions, and flows rather than with inflated biceps. Gone are the days when our heroes oiled up to pose for audiences and magazine covers. We now idolize those who post short videos of parkour, gymnastics skills, and ground flows.

I love that as a fitness culture our collective values are shifting toward moving in a smooth and holistic way, but I fear that how we think of mobility still fails to capture its true essence.

We’ve compartmentalized mobility into another aspect of fitness when it actually is an expression of your total fitness into the rest of your life.

Breaking Down Mobility

Mobility is defined as the ability to move or be moved freely and easily. The definition actually tells us all we need to know.

The “to be moved” aspect applies to passive flexibility, when we stretch to our limits with help from gravity, equipment, or partners. The other aspect is “to move” and means far more for your fitness and life.

This is your active flexibility and strength but also your agility, coordination, balance, and power. It means to not only possess beautiful freedom of movement through many extended ranges of motion, but full strength and control throughout.

The latter half of the definition, moving both “free and easily” is where so many people commonly miss the mark. We work to achieve deep positions or coordinated flows “easily.”

Our mobility though, is not the positions we can achieve after a warm up or many repetitions. If you can easily touch your toes only after warming your body into it, that particular movement is anything but “free.”

Freely and easily describes not only how well you can move and be moved but also when and how you have access to that quality of movement.

Many coaches and teachers have said this before me. Martial arts masters teach that we must be able to kick cold, as conflicts arise quickly and assailants will never allow you a warm up.

Kelly Starrett’s famous Becoming a Supple Leopard analogy has us seek to be ready to chase tonight’s meal at full speed at a moment’s notice. Leopards do not warm up; they must sprint at full anytime or go hungry.

Understand Your Movement Patterns

Movement and mobility are not pieces of your fitness regimen to only be worked on in reps and sets.

Yes, including ample “mobility” and “movement” flows into your training will make you a more able and embodied mover. However, far more important than any of this training is how you understand your movement patterns, mobility, and every other aspect of health and fitness outside of your gym time.

The point of all of this mobility training is to move better all of the time and in every aspect of your life. Only thinking about how you move in the gym misses the very essence of what it means to be mobile.

The best way to improve your mobility then is not in the focused flexibility work that you do, but in paying attention to how you move your body every second of the day.

Yes, the gym work is when you can incite big changes. But, your time outside the gym is when these changes become integrated into your life and when your awareness informs the actions that you will take in your next training session.

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These “what’s” are your “why.”

Most of us have answers that range from:

Think back to “why” you joined a gym, began training, or committed to your fitness journey. What did you want from it? What changes did you want to see in yourself? What did you want to learn and accomplish?

These “what’s” are your “why.”

Most of us have answers that range from:

• The desire to feel stronger
• I want to look leaner, more toned, ripped
• Have more energy for my kids
• Protect my longevity for myself and my family
• Feel more strong and capable for my sport, hobbies, activities of choice

Very few athletes come in with quantifiable or measurable, big-picture goals. This is normal. While measurements can help track progress, and provide precious feedback of how things are moving, we do not think, dream, or plan in numbers.

No one says, “I’d like to make exactly $XX,000 per year.” We say things like, “I’d like to make enough to be comfortable, stable, financially free, etc.”

No one says, “I need to have a 3,000-square foot house with a chimney of at least 25 feet.” We dream of houses for how they will make us feel and if there is enough room for the whole family.

What Is Enough?

We dream in abstracts, ideas, and feelings, not absolutes. We thus need to measure our successes and satisfaction with “what is enough” and by comparing where we stand to our original aims. Nowhere is this more true than with fitness, and especially important in a community that I both love and love to critique: CrossFit.

Everyone starts with a fitness “why” and goals that stem from it. These can be as broad as “I want to feel better and look better” to as specific as “I want to do my first pull up.” However, I see so many people lose commitment to their why for sake of adopting the aims of their gym culture and community.

In fitness, we use specific results (weights, times, reps) to measure progress. As the old adage says, “you cannot change what you fail to measure.”

True, but the measurement isn’t the goal, it simply helps you determine if you are moving in the right direction.

So many athletes come in with a beautiful “why” and personal goals but easily lose sight of these and begin to emphasize the inherent values of the gym, coaches, and fellow athletes that they are surrounded by. While I love to see athletes in their 50s and 60s hyper-focused on their lifting, celebrating each incremental PR, yet I cannot help but question if this tunnel-visioned focus on Olympic lifting and CrossFit benchmarks fits their original reasoning.

Playing the Devil’s Advocate

Aims, dreams, and goals change. As athletes enter a gym setting, it is only natural to adopt new values as new influences enter their life.

Not all pursuits, fitness or otherwise, need to fit a big-picture goal. We should always feel free to explore, move, train, and play in any area we like, regardless of what our specific goals are.

We should continually re-examine our “why” to ensure that it is in-line with our values.

Staying Committed to Your “Why”

All of the above are both true and healthy. As we progress as humans and athletes we will constantly re-evaluate what aspects of life and fitness are most important. “Why’s” change, expect and celebrate this, but ensure that these changes remain internally determined.

I’ve seen far too many athletes come to begin a fitness journey with reasons and goals all their own, only to look back after years of training to realize that they have not accomplished (or even committed to accomplishing) what they originally set out to do.

Your “why” is beautiful. It walked you through the door on your first day. It remains at your side, something to fall back on when inevitable struggles arise. It is a lens through which you make your decisions and evaluate your progress.

Today, instead of fussing over percentages, beating your buddy next to you at all costs, or pushing for a new PR, ask yourself why you are about to train. What are your goals? What do you want to accomplish? Do you hold similar values to when you began? And most importantly, are your actions driven by your “why?”

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“Are you sure you don’t just need to poop?”

An interesting question, and on an issue on which questioned should feel quite clear, without the questioner’s investigatory assistance. However, I’ve received this question on more accounts than I can remember.

“Are you sure you don’t just need to poop?”

An interesting question, and on an issue on which questioned should feel quite clear, without the questioner’s investigatory assistance. However, I’ve received this question on more accounts than I can remember.

It was the standard first question in my household for tummy aches, nausea, etc. My younger brothers and I have a longstanding joke that our mom would ask for nearly every type of illness, digestion-related or not, and for far longer than warranted to help her now-adult sons diagnose their ailments.

While the subject of my mom’s inquiry is comical, we can learn from the spirit of her question. She aimed to discern whether our sick feelings were from something simple and easily solved, before attributing them to a more serious illness.

Mom Really Did Know Best

In the fitness world, we love to nitpick our schedules, diets, and programs. When we feel tired, a bit lethargic, or that we are not progressing exactly as we feel we should, we scrutinize our regimen for the flaw. We deem that there must be some imperfection. When we have an off day in our training, we can easily jump the conclusion that we are getting weak, getting old, not training properly, not booking enough massages, or not doing enough mobility work.

I agree that we should always examine our training and our life for ways to improve. But we also need to remember that off days happen. There are so many aspects that effect your mood and physical condition, and we so easily forget to check in first with the simplest solutions.

Next time you’re not quite feeling yourself, inside the gym or out, ask yourself how you’re doing with the most basic of human needs. I find that when an off day or a bad mood strike, it’s usually not a sign of deeper issue in my life; I probably just missed some sleep or haven’t eaten in a while.

Maybe your poor training day isn’t a sign that you’re a terrible athlete who might as well hang it right now. Maybe you needed to drink more water the last few days.

Maybe your bad mood isn’t a sign that you are deeply discontented in your life. Maybe you just need a snack.

You can probably optimize your fitness regimen in many areas. However, none of those tweaks while bring maximal benefit if you’re not taking care of those most basic of factors for human thriving: nutritious food, plenty of water, great sleep (in both quality and quantity), sunshine, and maybe some hugs, smiles, laughter along the way.

Every problem does not have a simple answer, but most do. Next time your training isn’t going quite as planned, or it’s just been an off day, ask yourself:

Are you sure you don’t just need to poop?

Related:

• Everybody Poops, Part 1: When The Going Gets Tough
• Everybody Poops, Part 2: Every Which Way But Loose

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