Fit Enough for What?

This past week, I witnessed two very different conversations about fitness. One was in real life, one was online. I’ll let you guess which one was which.

The first one involved a middle-aged professional looking for advice because she struggled to go beyond 25 minutes of daily aerobic work on her exercise bike. The second one involved a young man who described his particular combination of bench press and running numbers as rare air… Something only a tiny percentage of men could match.

To me, these are great examples of the mistakes we make in thinking about our own exercise experience. The first one is the implicit assumption that we’re doing it wrong. That we’re not working hard enough… That we are fundamentally flawed and that our exercise practice, by extension, is the same. The second one is that the standards we apply to ourselves should somehow be applied to everyone else. Silly rabbits.

In the case of our busy professional, The 125 to 175 weekly minutes that she spends cycling is enough to have a profound effect on her long-term health and general aerobic fitness. I don’t know if it has to go much deeper than that. She didn’t express any goals about athletic competition, other types of exercise, or even any health measures; just that she wasn’t doing enough. It is entirely possible that she’s doing fine and can move on to invest her focus into activities that involve neither biking nor self-flagellation.

As for our young man… You’re never going to believe this but his benchmark for all of humanity – or at least all masculinity – just happens to be the exact same things that he practises regularly. Here’s the thing: in health and fitness, specificity is a guiding principle. We get good at the things we practice. Fitness only exists in the context of specific activities. Ask this guy to rock-climb at high altitude or free dive in the Pacific and his A fitness grade may slip substantially.

I don’t want to imply that it’s a totally even playing field. Everyone has things that they naturally pick up faster or slower. We most often gravitate toward the former and that’s fine.

Let’s imagine, for example, that the next viral fitness trend will combine kettlebell juggling with judo (spoiler alert: it won’t). There is no magic portal into performing well — other than developing the specific skills and physical competencies involved. You can’t do a bunch of random stuff and then just expect to know how to juggle kettlebells like Valentin Dikul or ippon people like Jessica Klimkait To get good, you have to practice in a specific way. However…

There are some underlying physical qualities that would it make it easier to do these things. To just show up and get started without any constraints beyond skill. So, an interesting question to ask is: what would being in a good position to start practicing look like?

Here, we imagine showing up at the juggle/judo complex a month or two away from being a very good beginner. To walk in with enough raw material to focus on specific skill development.

The more universal qualities of fitness are structural in nature. Muscle and connective tissue strength. Bone density. Aerobic fitness. Flexibility. Then there is slightly softer stuff. The ability to move powerfully and fluidly, as well as to relax quickly. If you have injuries, they may dictate detouring or rebuilding. A few people have all of the stuff — but the aspiration is to have most of it. To just walk around generally ready.

Not all of these qualities evolve at the same time. The more structural things take months and years. The softer things are more pliable but — for that reason — exert a day-to-day effect on how everything else is evolving. This is why sleep and stress management are considered to be so essential. There’s a yin and yang to it. Extreme effort with zero recovery doesn’t work as well as moderate effort with moderate recovery. The faster you want your fitness bicycle to go, the stronger your brakes need to be. And if the brakes don’t work, then cruise more gently. Dismount and walk the thing around if necessary.

Specificity is at the tip of the performance pyramid. However, you can build your base year-round so that you are always in a good position to begin something new. Not out of a sense of insufficiency. Not to tell other people you’re the alpha. But just because you enjoy it. No further justification required.