On a long drive back from a trip to upstate New York, I listened to a podcast called Chasing Excellence
The hosts discussed an article by Derek Thompson entitled The Great American Fitness Boom and the changes over the last 5 years of which types of ‘exercise’ are growing or fading in popularity.
What I found most interesting was the way they put various types of ‘exercise’ into a continuum that overlaps really nicely with the Sickness-Wellness-Fitness continuum first introduced by Greg Glassman in the CrossFit Journal in 2002:
and built upon by the folks at Level Method (a program we use at JCFit to measure ‘fitness’ across the broad strength and conditioning spectrum that we train at the gym) as seen above.
The podcast hosts broke down various degrees of exercise (random movement for movement’s sake) and training (purposeful development with measurement and progression) into the following categories:
Sedentary – doing nothing, sitting at a desk all day, driving everywhere
Movement – walking desk, 10,000 steps, gardening, dancing
Exercise – jogging, spin, yoga, playing sports
Training – physical activity for a desired outcome (quite specific e.g. a single event in the Olympics)
Well rounded training – being able to do a number of things well (broader capacity e.g. Olympic decathlon/heptathlon) across strength, conditioning and mobility.
If we were to plot those definitions onto either of the continuums above, we’d see sedentary at the sickness end (white) and well rounded training at the fitness end (black/red)
Movement would likely be in the yellow/orange range, exercise would take you into the blue/purple and training would move you along purple and into brown.
Now, wellness is OK but if just a couple of things slip, it’s a short way back to sickness. We are far better off building a larger buffer by being in the fitness zone. Then, if a couple of things slip, we are still OK in the wellness zone and we’ve bought ourselves some time to make adjustments to stop the slip towards sickness and head back to fitness.
Take a few minutes to assess where you think you might be.
Are you happy with the amount (and type) of exercise you’re getting each week?
Do you like the way you look in the mirror?
Have you had any bloodwork done recently and got the all clear?
If the answer to any of these questions is ‘No!’, we can help at JCFit.
Book a free ‘No Sweat Intro’ here (it’s just a chat, no workout, no pressure) and let’s plan a route from sickness to wellness to fitness!