Can you look at another person and say whether or not he or she is "fit"? I'm curious if there's anyone out there who can...because I can't.
Recently, at one of my group sessions, I had 3 people who were meeting each other for the first time. At the beginning of the workout, more than one of them said to me, "Wow, Linds. You've got a lot of fit people who come to your workouts!"
Being "fit" or being a person with a high level of fitness has entered our vernacular as a way to describe someone who is lean, thin, built, or shapely, but ignores the question, fit for what?
Why is this a problem? Fitness cannot be measured by how someone looks. Summing up the culturally prevailing ideal body with a word that also implies one's physical ability is misleading. Of the 3 people to whom I referred earlier, all of whom looked "fit" by each other's initial judgments and all of whom do happen to have lean body compositions, one is a fantastic runner but not very flexible, one is quite strong but struggles with cardiovascular endurance, and the other is as bendy as any client I've trained but still new to and building muscular strength and endurance. If we label everyone we see who is trim or muscular as fit, individual differences in fitness categories - cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, power, etc - become obsolete.
I urge you to separate someone's fitness from his/her physical presentation. Categorizing or judging people as fit (or not fit) based on appearances leads us away from respecting individual differences, understanding that everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and everyone is a work in process. No one, no matter how lean or thin or muscular, is exempt here.
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3 comments:
I do understand what you're saying but I think it's human nature to lump people into categories and ignore the nuances. I know you can't look at someone and truly know if they are fit but if you actually measured fitness by all the criteria you name would anyone but athletes and fitness professionals make the cut?
Unfortunately we live in a superficial world bombarded by messages about our health, our appearance, our diet, our level of exercise, all delivered in sound bytes in a vacuum. How many of us understand beyond how someone looks on the outside what it really means to be fit? How many of us care? Isn't a size two something most women drool over? And a six-pack what men aspire to?
So you can run a marathon or bench press your weight or twist your body into a pretzel or simply perform well physically on a day-to-day basis but how do you look to the naked eye. You have a lot of educating to do in order to dispel the mindset that this says nothing about how fit you are.
I am surely as guilty as the next person of judging a fit person by their body type. But I hope I also take into account their work ethic, their degree of not whining, their commitment to a program especially when confronted with the outdoor elements. Maybe with that addition regarding your group my remark is more palatable.
I hope I didn't entirely miss the point...it's been known to happen.
I think it's hard to tell if you are playing devil's advocate or if what you want to say is, "I am in favor of the cultural meaning of fitness to imply a lean body." I don't think you missed the point...I just think we may not agree.
A yogi, a runner, and a weight-lifter may all appear attractive to the naked eye, and similarly built, but my point is, they didn't achieve that body through the same types of exercise, and they have varying levels of proficiency in different fitness categories.
To observe these 3 people on the street, I might be able to judge them all as being fit...at something. I believe that "Fit for What?" is an important question and why I chose it as the title for the post.
Most women do want the little waist and most men do want the abs...I am trying to get people to see that there are different paths to get there. And I think that in summing up "fitness" in a desired aesthetic, we ignore the paths. We forget about them.
If we can focus on being fit at tasks, we stay engaged in our exercise - in the process - and the healthy looking body follows.
One last thought - your post invokes a lot of collective thinking..."human nature to lump people into categories"..."we live in a superficial world"..."How many of us care?"...etc. I feel that, given all the hoopla promoted by the fitness industry, the least I can do is educate people and help them see through the superficial mist.
Thank you for answering my post and making some sense out of my meanderings. Devil's advocate that's me.
I hope your goal is always to share what you know. There is so much information and we all need a personal guru to sift through it.
To wrap this up, there are two statements you made that I completely agree with, that we are works in progress and it's important to stay engaged in the process. Because that's what it is. When it becomes integrated in your life that's when you make strides and maybe even start to have fun.
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