The Internal Strength Approach to your Fitness: PART 1

How you can create a sustainable training program that yields long term dividends.

I spend a lot of time talking about what’s wrong with my industry, whether it be on the front of social issues or the application and thought process behind training.

The thought process behind most training is rooted in a few ideas stemming from a few different spaces. And when you dig deep enough, you’ll find that the roots dive deep into perceptions driven by race, socioeconomics and capitalism. That rabbit hole is a deep one and I’ll save that longer, deeper discussion for a podcast episode.

For now we’ll just get our toes wet at the edge of the ocean we’re swimming in.

On the surface we can understand that mathematic equations like BMI, which was created by Adolphe Quetelet in the 1830’s and it’s basis is on height and weight of White men. It does not take into account women or any differences in race. So it sets a standard based on Whiteness. See how White Supremacy works? But I digress.

This small example is important to note because it, and things like it have influenced the Traditional Model by which training is implemented.

My son asked me one morning, “What is worse, that a person have bad intentions but a positive outcome or that a person have good intentions, but a negative outcome"?

This question is sort of a paradox in a way as there is no 100% right answer. I like to believe that intent is everything, but did enslavers not think their intentions were grand? I am here today and I personally think that’s a positive outcome for me, but I guarantee my ancestors given the choice, would not have deliberately wanted to make the sacrifice it took in order for me to exist.

On the one hand we can look back in history and judge the intentions based on our current contextualization. We can say they had bad intentions that led to both positive and negative outcomes. Their beliefs and intentions were still VERY problematic.

When we look at the reverse of my son’s question and think about actual “good intentions”. Let’s take for example scientific discovery of nuclear energy. Someone had every intention of positively helping change the world, but it has led to so many wars and negative outcomes, including great destruction in Japan.

How does this relate to your training?

Now I believe that most people in the fields of Health & Wellness have the best of intentions and that not everyone is a snake oil salesman, or looking for the next gimmick to pitch to clients. But that doesn’t mean that those people are out there, that these people are highly successful or highly revered even.

The Traditional Model of Training is rooted in;

• an understanding of Power Lifting and strength outcomes from Russians

• Bodybuilding for superficial aesthetic muscle outcomes

• standards of beauty set by the power structure

These things have been fed into our lives from movies and films, to sports and athletics.

And our understanding of what Health & Wellness is has heavily been influenced by a “EXTERNAL” look as opposed to what is happening “INTERNALLY”.

This has driven our culture to seek the faster, less sustainable concepts because they provide the quickest fix.

For example:

• Diets offer quick results using often extreme methods with unsustainable methods

• Short High Intensity Workouts for the last 2 decades has been touted as the cure all and sold as a replacement for Aerobic work

• People are told to lift weights because it’s “good for you” but not actually taught how the body adapts to the training they’re doing.

The truth of the matter is no one wants to hear that the conversation about health is more nuanced than the simple ideas that the latest fitness magazine pumps or your favorite Fitfluencer on Instagram pushes.

No one wants to hear that training is more complicated than 3 sets of 12 reps, adding a little more weight next week, or a WOD (acronym for “workout of the day” made popular by CrossFit).

What we all want to hear is that I can get there in a few weeks before su

mmer or my beach vacation, then go back to doing nothing for half a year and cycle back around next year.

I’m here to tell you that this gets harder to sustain as you get older and your metabolism begins to change and your body is designed to desire homeostasis, meaning it likes to keep things roughly the same.

So the best investment you can make in your body is to hedge your resources heavily into longer term steps that you can maintain over the long haul.

The hardest part for most of us is not being able to see the immediate. That’s the most difficult part about changing to an Internal Approach. But think of the internal approach as nurturing the soil that the tree grows from as opposed to simply tending to the leaves. The better the soil, the stronger the tree and the more fruit it will bear.

In Part 2 we’ll discuss how you can begin to nurture your soil and cultivate a better internal environment for a more sustainable training future.