Marmot here, I've decided to take some time to write about my workout ideals as a chance to more clearly articulate them to myself and to put them down as something to work toward or against as Pancho and I continue lifting. I've already discussed specific weight lifting goals, but with some time to reflect and new information I thought I would elaborate on my goals a bit more.
I have three major goals for working out: functional fitness; general physical strength; and bodily transformation. These goals are obviously not mutually exclusive. Rather, the work involved in attaining them, and the presence of any one of them, implies the others. To be functionally fit necessitates being strong and vice versa. To accomplish my intended bodily transformation must include working on general physical strength and provides functional fitness. Lacking any one element makes the others harder to accomplish if not impossible. Today I’m going to write about just one of these goals and in subsequent days I’ll post on the other two.
I owe my initial interest in lifting and difficult gym work to Ms. Fox, a gym teacher I had for summer school the summer before my sophomore year of high school. Prior to her, I had liked walking but had internalized the “jock vs. everyone” model of high school life and had thought it would be best to avoid anything associated with them. Her methods were very simple but effective for getting people who didn’t like to work out to at least get used to it. She would have us run for 30 minutes at the beginning of class—no specific distance or pace was set, you just had to keep running. I had always hated running because I would run too fast and didn’t control my breathing which lead to stitches in my side. Ms. Fox’s method left me to set my own pace, and slow down and control my breathing if I was going too fast. Before I knew it I had run two miles and then some, they were slow miles, but I finished them. The feeling of just being able to get up and run a mile if I needed to was a great one. Knowing that I could just do it if I set the pace right and that I would get better over time really encouraged me. Equally important was the awesome feeling that came from the eventual harmonization among my breathing, pace, and thoughts. I knew I could stand up, run a mile, and feel totally in sync with myself and I loved it. My body stopped being a prison for my mind and became co-constitutive with it. The feeling of being physically able to do what I want and to not feel limited or out of tune with my body drives me towards the first goal I’m going to talk about, functional fitness.
The phrase functional fitness is bandied about by a lot of people, many of whom are on stability balls, standing on one leg, while tossing a 10lb medicine ball to similarly positioned and unstable persons. This is not my vision of functional fitness as I don’t intend to do activities that involve these movements any time soon. If I were a surfer, playing football on sand dunes, or in the circus, this kind of training would be functional. My life consists of lifting heavy grocery bags, occasionally running relatively short distances, walking long distances, picking myself up if I’m on the ground, lifting myself if I need to climb up on something (you would be surprised how often this comes up), and occasionally, with much enthusiasm, throwing a niece and nephew around. There are also extraordinary circumstances that might arise that require very physically demanding action.
To do these things well without panting, falling over, dropping children, or complaining endlessly I need to be strong and have a fair amount of endurance. Luckily the lifts that are able to provide these things are relatively simple (compared to standing on a stability ball) and rather satisfying. Squats, deadlift, pull-ups and chin-ups, standing rows, farmer caries, over-head press, and free weight bench press/pushups do pretty much everything when you throw in a few core workouts like plank and bicycle crunches and maybe some short slow jogs. And even better, with the exception of the free-weight press all you need is a good squat cage, an olympic bar, flat shoes, and weights.
Of course there are additional workouts you can and eventually should include which appear less functional but are useful for correcting muscle imbalances. However, these workouts do not form the core nor major content of most work outs.
As far as I understand and as far as I’ve experienced, doing these workouts enables me to walk with a ton of groceries for a while, set them down, pick them up and walk again. I can play with my niece and nephew for a good long time (they sometimes call me jungle gym), and if I need to climb on top of something or over a wall, I can just do it. There are also the extraordinary circumstances where I’m able to push myself if I need to. One time Pancho and I had to run roughly half a mile with a very heavy duffel bag (filled with awesome secret prizes for Pancho’s birthday) to catch a movie on time. We did it. It was hard, but we got to the movie on time—albeit sweaty. I attribute that success to our lifting (and our desire for popcorn). To me, that is functional fitness.
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