The Evolution of Fitness- Part 2

by on July 25, 2017


How’s it going Mountain Dog Readers! Today we are finishing up our two-part series on the Evolution of Fitness! In part one, we discussed the first two principle in the evolution of fitness. Remember there are six principles, but for time’s sake, we wanted to go in depth on four out of the six principles since the other two are regarding flexible exercise and nutrition.

The two principles we discussed in part one was:

  1. Developing a strong mind and one of the major practical take home points within it was creating a morning routine to have a productive day and wind down routine to end the day. See details in part one.
  2. Using personal development to enhance your fitness journey and one of the major take home points within it was to seek mentors and hire coaches to accelerate the learning curve so that you can learn from the very best. For more details, see part one.

Now for the last two principles….(drum roll please 😊)…here we go!

 

Principle 3- How to be a Kid Again and Have Fun

Picture this…

You are a kid again…

You’re playing basketball, the guitar, soccer, hide and seek, fishing, riding bikes, hula hooping, dancing, the list could go on.

You felt free, no stress, no worrying, no anxiety, safe, and most of all having fun.

Why is it that when we get older this inner child we once had must vanish?

Just because we get busier, have careers, families, traveling, more responsibility doesn’t mean we should give this all up.

We are huge advocates of going back to when you were a kid and having fun and implementing it into your life now.

Not in a week.

Not in a month.

Not in a year… now!

Look, we don’t have any valid scientific data that we are aware of that shows this works, but just trust us and keep an open mind with the anecdotal evidence we have conducted.

We’ve experimented with doing this with ourselves and our clients and to be frank, it’s a lifestyle game changer and a way to gain more inner peace.

Not only does it enhance your productivity, but it enhances your entire life and even your fitness journey.

How you ask?

To be able to have that feeling again of not worrying so much, having fun, feeling safe, and having fun.

This needs to and should be implemented into your lifestyle and fitness journey.

For example, we used to play basketball as kids in front of our house. We had a basketball court that our dad set up and we’d play for hours, sometimes even through the night.

We used to take karate and self-defense classes too.

We loved doing these activities, but then they all stopped when we lost our father, became busier, went to college, started our business, and life started to snow ball.

All we did was focus on weight training and that was to alleviate the anger we carried.

We were missing that key ingredient that you need to make a good bowl of chicken soup, in this case, that one ingredient was fulfilling our lifestyles and our fitness journey and that was doing what we used to do as kids for fun.

Now, we are weight training 4 days per week, boxing 2 times per week and playing basketball 2 times per week and ever since we’ve implemented this we are happier, more productive, living a fun and fulfilled lifestyle, and it has even motivated us to train harder in the weight room.

There’s something magical about implementing the things you used to find fun as a kid back into your life so that it enhances your lifestyle and fitness journey.

Practical Applications on Incorporating Fun Activities into your Fitness Journey:

  • Make a list of 10 things you used to love doing as a kid. Narrow it down to 2-3 activities\
  • See how you can implement them around your schedule, workout routine, and life. But make sure to write them down on a calendar or set them as a reminder in your phone so you actually do them
  • Start slow by doing it once per week for a short duration and then build upon that
  • From there, experiment with how you can do these fun activities along with your normal exercise program

 

Principle 4- Creating a Dynamic Lifestyle

And now for the final principle in the evolution of fitness.

We know it says principle 4, but if we talked about all six, this would be the last and final one…here’s why:

Now that you understand the first five principles:

  1. Flexible Nutrition
  2. Flexible Exercise
  3. Mindset
  4. Personal Development
  5. Be a Kid Again and Have Fun

The million-dollar question is “how do you create this all into a lifestyle?”

You see, it’s easy to try and implement each of these principles one by one, but the real goal is to implement them all over time and make it a lifestyle.

Is it easy? Not by any means.

Is it doable? Absolutely!

When creating a dynamic lifestyle using the five principles, we challenge you to chase what one of our mentor’s calls “the good life.”

And that’s the 4 Pillars of Life (see pic):

Notice that “Health” is the first pillar. It is the key to everything!

If you don’t have your health up to par through your exercise and nutrition, then what good does it do to chase the other three pillars?

You can be filthy rich.

Or madly in love.

Perhaps surrounded by happiness with family and friends.

But, if you’re lying on your death bed due to not taking care of your health, what good do the other pillars do?

Wealth can have many different meanings, it really depends on what you want to define it as. For us, wealth means traveling more and financial freedom. Think about what that word “wealth” really means to you and how it can make your life better, then go out and acquire more of it.

Love and Happiness are the pillars we are all seeking, but usually are the toughest ones to acquire and maintain. Some of you may not be looking for a significant other just yet, but eventually you will so in the mean-time focus on gaining more self-love, love from family, friends, and most importantly show more people love.

So, we challenge you to chase all 4 pillars of the good life to create a dynamic lifestyle aka BAD ASS LIFESTYLE.

Now that you are on your way to the good life, another essential principle in your fitness journey is to use training and nutrition periodization.

It’s basically a fancy way of saying you need to know when to “turn it on” and “turn it off” within your fitness journey.

Let us explain:

See the volume dial (see pic).

Over the course of 365 days, that volume dial won’t always be “turned on” with dieting and the flexibility temperature low (hence the white dots).

Reason being, you can’t diet all year around and you can’t be rigid and non-flexible either.

There’s time and places for this, which we call phases within your fitness journey.

For example:

It’s okay to have the flexibility temperature low and the volume dial on hot while you’re dieting, meaning maybe you need to follow a 90/10 approach within nutrition…90% whole and minimally refined foods and 10% semi junk food. Maybe you need to come within 3-5g of your macros each day. Maybe you need to use nutrient timing for that extra 2-3% of results. Maybe you need to be on a structured periodized training program.

And this is all great and necessary for this phase in your life to reap the maximum results and end goal.

Now on the flip side, let’s say you are in a lean gaining phase, stress is high at work, and you have a lot going on in your personal life. Now we can crank the flexibility temperature to high (hence the green dots) since we don’t need to be so rigid and non-flexible…there’s more wiggle room. Maybe we can follow an 80/20 approach with nutrition. Maybe use larger macro ranges for more flexibility. Maybe eat out a bit more or have a couple of alcoholic beverages more often. Maybe not even worry about nutrient timing so much. Maybe have more flexibility within our training program and even a couple days a week we can be a kid again, have fun, and add in an activity or two.

You see where we are going with all this?

This takes time to build this skill. It takes self-awareness. And most importantly it creates longevity, sustainability, makes the entire journey fun, and leads to living a dynamic lifestyle.

Practical Applications on How to Live a Dynamic Lifestyle:

  • Chase the 4 pillars of life and always remember that your health is at the forefront
  • Look at your fitness journey as a long game and understand it’s okay to have different phases within it and remember the volume dial image
  • Work on building a set of skills that will last you a life time within your training and nutrition journey

We hope this article shed some light on the evolution of fitness.

Remember what Wayne Gretzky said, “a good player plays where the puck is at…a great player plays where the puck is going to be.”

In this case, the puck is your fitness journey and in this new era, we are in, with all the technology advancement, social media, and what we like to call “noise,” you should be “great” and play where the puck is going to be.

The puck is heading towards six principles within the evolution of fitness:

  1. Flexible Nutrition
  2. Flexible Exercise
  3. Mindset
  4. Personal Development
  5. Be a Kid Again and Have Fun
  6. Create a dynamic lifestyle

Stop selling yourself short and playing small by putting fitness on a pedestal. It’s time to create an entire bad ass version of yourself and a dynamic lifestyle.

Our last question to you is…

Are you with us?




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