Nine years into fitness and I have come to the realization that It’s not about how in shape you are, it’s about how capable you are. When you are a child playing outside in nature or a jungle gym, you move around just fine. You explore, monkey around, have fun, and if you did that often enough were a pretty ripped looking child. Yet, as we get older and out of shape, we join a gym to get in shape. We are generally stronger and more physically imposing than when we were in our childhood. But we are infinitely less capable. Most adults right now can’t lift enough, climb enough, jump or just have fun. Even those of us who are in shape might struggle with pull ups, and pull ups are just a small step to becoming capable. Now what do I mean when I say capable? Well, by capable I mean being physically competent and possessing the ability and capacity to do something physically necessary. If you need to climb on top of a tree branch to save yourself from something on the ground, could you? Could you pick up that heavy object off of the ground and move it so you can put that thing you wanted in its place? Could you swim? Could you defend yourself in physical confrontation enough to escape or subdue your attacker?
It’s okay if you can’t, most people can’t do that. Why is that? Why is it that most of us who go to the gym are in shape but are not that capable? Well, that’s because we are looking at health as being a fitness related issue and a gym issue. It’s not a gym issue. Most things you do in a gym do not make you move better or make you more physically competent. Allow me to provide you my own physical fitness journey as a health and wellness professional.
High School 2002 – 2006
Allow me to start with a short anecdote. Freshman year of high school I go to play basketball in my Physical Education class. I remember being pretty decent at basketball in middle school. Not the tallest kid, but pretty quick and could dribble. Boy, when you get to high school it was a different story, I got dominated. Kids were just moving better and playing better than I remember just a summer break ago. Hindsight 2020, I remember when completing my Master’s degree 2012-2014 taking a growth and maturation for sport. I learned of Peak Height velocity, sensitive phases for development and I think back on what I did that summer from middle school to high school. I did nothing. I played Nintendo 64 all day, a WWE game to be exact. No sunlight for the majority of the summer, and my motor skills suffered for it. I had some issues with my Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) which affected my ability to eat, put on weight and hit puberty. Still played sports my junior through senior year of high school and was pretty athletic. I started high school at 4 foot 11 inches and about 95 pounds and graduated high school about 5 foot 115 pounds.
College 2006 – 2014
Then, Freshman year of college comes and I decide to be a jazz guitar player and live an incredibly sedentary life. I then go from 115 pounds to 130+ pounds in 6 – 7 months with a complete change in my body composition. I went from being this tiny ripped kid to someone with not much muscle tone or definition. I also went from 5 feet to 5 foot 4 inches tall. This period in my life is important because I notice my health deteriorate. I am about 19-20 years of age. After my annual physical my Doctor calls me and tells me:
“Hey we have to do your blood work again we must have had an error. Your triglycerides and cholesterol are too high. Your triglycerides are 690 and your cholesterol is over 200. Should not be possible, let’s re-do your blood work”.
I remember the call because I was at KFC eating a famous bowl while I was on break from teaching guitar. So, I go back in a couple days later fasting and re-do my blood work. Turns out it’s even worse, it’s something absurd. Triglycerides are 1060 and he medicates me immediately. I am on the medication for about 1 month before I decide I have had enough of the glitter experience. The taste of food is not the same and my bowel movements are not the same. If you are wondering what the glitter experience is, it is every time I use the restroom to defecate and look into the toilet it looks as though I pooped glitter. So, I go back to my Doctor and ask him what do I need to do to get off of this medication. His response:
“Stop eating like an asshole and get back to being physically active”
This is the start of my physical fitness journey. We cut a deal and he gave me 30 days to start making a change. So, I get on bodybuilding.com and my 30 day journey turns into a 6 month experience of Monday chest, Tuesday legs, Thursday biceps and triceps, and Friday shoulders and back. Whey protein, caseine protein, multivitamins and omegas with some mixed martial arts. I sky rocket. I go from 135 pounds to 155 pounds and look like a roided out thumb. Not very strong physically but pretty big for someone my height. My triglycerides started to come down and my doctor has taken me off the medication. I continue with my elevated cholesterol. During that time period, a couple of years go by and I am physically active on and off.
Knowledge is power 2010/2011
I have the opportunity to attend an exercise physiology course at the university and from the very first day I realized I knew nothing and that bodybuilding.com is not always right. I also realized what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I started learning other methods of training. I got a copy of Mark Ripetoe’s Starting Strength and all I did was squat, bench, deadlift and overhead press. I definitely got stronger, however I failed to notice my mobility begin to decline. I also took a graduate level course during my undergrad called Elite Conditioning and was assigned a project to design a workout program for mixed martial arts. At this time, I got the opportunity to meet Jesus Gallo and intern under him. Two weeks later I was hired. If you do not know Jesus, he is the Strength and Conditioning coach for many athletes, most notably Jorge Masvidal, and is the owner of Elite Athletes Performance. Jesus is amazing. He took me under his wing and became a mentor to me. Jesus taught me everything I know about sports performance. He also trained me during this time and put me through a functional strength program. Jesus told me squat and bench are cool but they won’t necessarily always help you in your athletic endeavors. I go from 155 pounds to 148 pounds and become stronger than I had ever been. I was rear foot elevating split squat for 180 pounds for 5 repetitions for three sets I was deadlifting 275 pounds for 5 for three sets, and was back squatting 265 for 5 for three sets. Sprinting, lateral bounding and change of direction work. I also go down the Mcgill rabbit whole of core rigidity anti-extension, anti-lateral, anti-rotational and anti-flexion. At this point in my life, I am physically stronger, more powerful, and can run faster, but man I am getting a lot of Sacro Iliac distress, my hamstrings are “tight” and I am having issues. However, that is how I trained despite my issue and considered myself to be very fit.
The Irony of being an Exercise Physiologist 2015 – 2019
Still working at EAP but take a full time job as a Wellness Coach/Exercise Physiologist for a local hospital system in Miami, I go from a gym with all the equipment to small fitness centers with limited equipment. Machines, dumbbells up to 50 pounds and maybe a cable column. During this time, I find myself sitting at a desk a lot more doing research, creating spreadsheets, emailing and doing health promotion campaigns. I also worked in a lifestyle modification program with Dieticians and Nurses. This is when you are a trainer and coach. A quick side note, I alluded to something earlier, being a physical educator. You teach them all these skills to combat the diseases they have from lifestyle and you see how it works. However, you can see how quickly they can regress and get back to where they were before. It leaves you rather perplexed as to why are they are not keeping up with what they have been taught. I did not realize it at this time, I was not able to put 2 and 2 together. The gym and fitness in itself is not naturally inherent in a human being. That is not how we move.
I got exposed to things like Animal Flow in an ad and look at it speculatively and really all together ignore it. During this time, I notice my fitness level start to decrease. I lose weight as I am not as physically active as I was when I was only at EAP. I am sitting infinitely more and during this time is when I first experience the famous Sciatica pain.
In 2018, I get a bout of Parsonage Turner Syndrome and lose the use of my left arm rapidly, almost complete function for about three months and slowly it started to return, and at 6 months had a decent bit of atrophy. I could not even hold a plate or even lift the comforter on my bed. I will continue this battle until 2020.
Fitness Manger 2019-2020
I get a job at a Fitness chain as a Fitness Manager where my job was to train personal trainers on how to personally train. I was very fortunate enough to have some very experienced trainers working under me. One in particular was a Master Instructor for Animal Flow. A lot of other trainers I encountered in the organization did not look at it too highly. I noticed though that this guy was significantly stronger than the majority of the trainers, if not one of the strongest trainers pound for pound. He single arm KB pressed more than the heaviest trainer in my gym, could squat and deadlift roughly around whatever they were doing. The most important thing was he moved better than all of them. I still was not sold on the animal flow but I am not a complete denier. I was just unsure of its practicality.
Limbo 2020
Then the Pandemic hit. I lose my job and go back to working for myself. I decided I want to empower as many people as possible and began writing an E-book to teach others how to program for themselves. At this point I come to the conclusion that everybody just needs to be following gross movement patterns. I still have not figured out the climbing game I am only thinking of pull up being a movement. My goal at this time is to teach people how to program themselves by understanding the concepts behind regressing and progressing movements. Not just giving them all the progressions and regressions but the concepts related to making a movement easier or more difficult. Things like change in volume, intensity, tool, angle, height, etc. I also come to the conclusion that everybody should learn how to defend themselves. I myself practice Brazilian Jujitsu and this taught me how to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations. It provided me a level of confidence and perspective on how to treat someone else. Once you know what you are cable of and what that same capability feels when applied to oneself, you learn you don’t want to do it to someone else and you do not want things to escalate to that point. As I was working on the e-book I was looking at MovNat. On their site they asked for an email to read the pages that were not put in Erwan Lecour’s book. So, I gave the email, I read the book and in the words of Jon Murray, I came to a conclusion from a preponderance of evidence. I realized, Erwan did what I wanted to do and did it better. It convinced me to do the Level 1 and 2 certifications. I learned about under and over the bar skill (climbing). Had a great experience and was also introduced to this concept of capability, that humans were designed to be generalists.
Capability vs Fitness
Fit does not necessarily mean capable. I had an intern who could deadlift 375 pounds but could not front hang or climb on top of something very effectively or efficiently. Now, there is the argument “well we don’t really need to climb anymore” and you’re right. However, climbing is one of the things we are well designed to do. We can climb, that is how we move, so why not just do that? This made me look at fitness as something that is really not that important. In MovNat, one of the things they highlight is capability, your capacity to do something multiple times (Fitness related aspect). The capable part is, can you pick up something heavy if you need to? Climb a tree to save your life? And can you protect yourself if something happens? These are not the only examples of being physically capable.
I have come to this conclusion from my own wellness journey of body building routines, and functional fitness. I went from someone who was really jacked and not very flexible or mobile and struggling to get enough calories, to someone who was a lot higher skilled and very specialized. Now I just want to be a generalist. Also, prior to writing this article I suffered a pretty bad knee injury, grade 2+ sprain of my LCL, PCL and MCL knee ligaments. 12 weeks after that injury I was back to being fantastic, I did have excellent physical therapy but I spent a lot of time just doing some ground movement.
At this time, I am more capable than I have been in a long time. I still find myself to be relatively strong. I can pick a 150 pound sandbag and walk that bad boy for 30 yards 8 times in a 15 minute period, that’s 1,200 pounds of volume not including the walking. That’s just picking up, lapping it, then front carrying it. I can get on top of something very easily and my new found abilities have really shifted my view on fitness and the profession. We are often looked at as trainers, when we should be viewed as educators and coaches teaching people to become more capable and empowering them to do so. The funny thing is that none of this requires a gym. It requires heavy things to lift, things to jump on to, things to climb on to. Having a gym that has stuff like that would be great and ideal, but not necessary. I think it’s about teaching everyone these skills and you will see how the cost of healthcare plummets. Imagine a world where everyone can move, hinge, climb pick up heavy things. We’re not talking about physiological components, that is not the purpose of this, however, movement is fuel for the brain and the brain helps you move so this is pretty powerful.
We need to be physical educators and coaches. Empower others to move better not bench more. Now if they want to bench more and that is their goal then that is their goal, we help them achieve it.
All of us should be trying to teach everyone to be generalists. I am not saying you should only do natural movement. I think MovNat is a phenomenal teaching tool and great certification and probably the most ideal thing to do. Animal flow has its validity too because movement should be free and should be expressive. We are locomotive, manipulative, combative, and can be expressive. We are capable of a huge suite of movements and we should all be striving to learn as much as we can. Explorative, inquisitive, expressive, strong, rigid and just have fun in our movement. If we all did that a little more, we would all be fit because we would all be capable.
Hope you enjoyed my story!