Fitness: How much can you tell from appearance?

A warm greetings to all my readers,

As people are caught up in the London Olympics, the Spirit of the games and of competition, I’ve been in a constant state of reflection. Isn’t it amazing to watch the sheer determination and dedication these athletes are showing during the games?  They must have spent a lot of time, energies, efforts, dedication, hard work, and money to get to the level they are at. They must have sacrificed a lot of fun, nights out, certain types of food, relationships, social entertainments … to fully focus on obtaining their desired goal. But was it worth it? I’ll let you answer that based on the results you are seeing or previously have seen from the Olympics…

I have always been a big fan of fitness, and really love sports. Just seeing how other people get into shape, their determination, their full dedication and results have always motivated me to reproduce the same characteristics to achieve my life’s successes as through hard work, commitment and dedication that I accomplished any life goals. Based on this, I have always believed that your level of fitness was shown by the appearance of your body structure as a result of your hard training. You know what I am talking about, don’t you? Those dream guys with the 6 or even 8 pack, well sculptured biceps and triceps, calves, quads, hamstrings, chest…the list of muscles can go on and on. They look fit, don’t they? Will you exercise in a class next to them or run a competition with some of these guys? I usually wouldn’t but a few weeks ago I ended up training next to some in my favourite class. Can you imagine how I felt? Believe me they were really looking fit, I could see the structure of their muscles through their T-shirt…I thought that it would have been a very tiring class to keep up with them! The following words were screaming in my head: ‘ Push yourself again and again. Don’t give an inch until the final bell sounds’ As I strongly believe in these quotes ‘If you aren’t going all the way, why go at all?’ & ‘Winners train until they can win. Champions train until they cannot fail – Jay Choi’. I was well armed with a lot of determination, competitive spirit and the fact that I did not want to show that I was intimidated. I just went for it and gave it all the energy I had. Here we go, the session started!

Can you guess what happened during the class?

The two guys could not keep up with me during the warm up and the class had not even started! We just ran 5 minutes and immediately after we were skipping for another 5 minutes and they couldn’t keep up! I was in shock! Looking at them you would be a fool not to believe they had very high fitness levels, however they could not keep up with me!!! (What is amusing is that I’m actually quite a chubby girl). I was in shock to see how I was easily able to keep going through out the hour session while they ended up tired and out of breath. All of this was to their disbelief too! They kept saying that my fitness level was shocking and they felt ashamed. This reinforced my belief that your fitness level is not always an actual or accurate representation of your appearance!

Since that event, I really took a pause for reflection to understand why the consensus belief is that the way you look is a representation of your level of fitness. Most people might have been proud of themselves after that training session – WOW beating two young sculptured guys – and I should have congratulated myself and my hard work for the past few months of hard training – every day exercising and going to bed every night with muscles aching finally paid off! However what stopped me from celebrating my fitness success was this quote I took to heart: ‘Somewhere, someone is practicing. When you meet that person on the fields, face to face, one on one, he will beat you. Unless that person practicing is you. So run the stairs, crank the corners, hit the wall, and when you feel like giving up, think: Is that  person giving up?’

Following on from my experience in that fitness session I spoke to the class trainer about it. In kind words he expressed that there are different types of fitness, such as muscular endurance, flexibility and so forth. These guys are most probably used to weigh training, however not cardio or circuit workouts that we did during the class … in fact, it was their first class and I have not seen them since…I knew I scared guys away but surely not because of my fitness levels!? 

You see, I have just realised that I have always trained with fitness coaches and obviously they don’t only look but demonstrate their fitness levels during classes. In a few occasions I accidentally happened to be training in the same room with my dear bro. He also not only looks fit, but has quite high fitness levels. As a result, I have been blessed on this life’s aspect too as I have always been exposed and coached to a high level of fitness. I can say based on my performance both with my fitness coaches and my dear bro that I am approaching their level even if I don’t look anyway near as close! In fact, my dear bro wrote a beautiful article on his blog on this subject ‘Are you ready to sacrifice?’ where he mentioned his own personal fitness achievements and what decisions he had to take to accomplish them. Have a look yourself and you will be impressed and inspired as I was and as a result of reading his blog, I started to train hard so you might too! You know it’s always competition between bro and sis! Here is the link to my bro’s blog: http://springboardyourself.wordpress.com/2011/07/24/are-you-prepared-to-sacrifice/.

Ironically if I compared my bros fitness appearance with the way the two guys looked, they would win hands down in appearance. However in terms of fitness they definitely fall behind. Deceiving, isn’t it? So, guys & girls, as they say, ‘Don’t judge a book from its cover!’ it’s really true! – don’t be deceived by an individual’s appearance, you must test their fitness levels first. Just a little advice! 

What really shocked me is that I am not the kind of person that judges people from their appearance. It really doesn’t mean anything to me! I am always willing to look at inner personality such as values, motives, skills, talents…to understand what drives them to act and behave in the way they do…my experience just shows how it is easy to get influenced and deceived by what the media and the culture values of aesthetics. Just look at what is advertised on a daily basis, and it ends up getting accepted as absolute reality. Instead it is a generalised opinion and far from the truth. In my case I have allowed the concept of ‘appearance’ and ‘aesthetics’ to deceive me from being the best I could be and I paid the price dearly, please don’t let the same happen to you!

So are you fit in appearance, in action or both?

I’ll let you decide after you test your fitness levels…you will be surprised as I was!

Since then, I started to search about fitness and came across the following paragraph from a fitness website:

‘Physical fitness is defined as a set of characteristics enhancing performance of physical activity and decreasing your risk of premature health concerns, according to the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. Your fitness level is the product of a combination of healthy behaviors, such as exercising and eating a balanced diet. Good qualities of physical fitness include a lean body composition, flexibility, cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength and muscular endurance.’

It is confirmed here that your level of fitness is determined by your prowess in specific areas such as flexibility and muscular strength. Clearly this doesn’t mean you have to be excelling in all areas, in fact that can be quite impossible. If you think about distance runners, they will not have much muscular strength however will have unbelievable levels of cardiovascular endurance. Strongman competitors will have great muscular strength and endurance but lower flexibility. As a result our fitness objectives ultimately determine what fitness level we end up achieving.

After my light bulb experience, I started searching for what the right percentage of exercise is necessary to keep fit. I have come across a lot of different opinions and have still not found my answer yet…so if you have any ideas please leave a comment or contact me as I am currently very intrigued.

Something that always appeared in every article was that regular exercise is a critical part of staying healthy, living longer and feeling better. It helps us to have and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Are you making sure you fit in an exercise routine to your busy schedule?

From personal experience, since I have regularly started exercising my life took a turn for the better…I can’t even find the words to describe my feelings after an intense workout…and definitely it’s not exhaustion if you are thinking about it…but the opposite…

I have to admit that my biggest struggle in fitness was getting the motivation to start and keep going. After speaking with different people, it is actually what most struggle with…so my article next week will cover how to get motivated to having a routine workout…watch this space 

During my life, I never imagined I would have written an article about fitness as I really don’t look fit. However according to my fitness coaches I do indeed have high levels of fitness…another incredible discovery for me. In fact, for the reason of my appearance I never felt free to speak on the subject of fitness. The recent events and a push to write an article about it from a certain fitness coach (you know who you are! Thank you!) I am so happy to share my experience with you.

I’ll leave you with one quote that really made me move forward in my conquest to fitness:  

‘I hate every minute of training, but I said: Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.‘ – Muhammad Ali

To your fitness level discovery,

Viv