Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Seasons Change

There is a time for everything: seasons come and go, cycles go round and round, tides roll in and out. Everything has a season. The health and fitness world is experiencing the beginning of a new season. Or, the end of an old season. Either way, a change is here.

The "natural movement" is now. There has been a shift. I don't know when it exactly started (maybe within the last few years), but the fitness industry is about to drastically change. The season of big box gyms, gimmicks and general "body building" is about to end, and the season of natural movement is "on the move". Get it? 

It is an awakening. People are growing tired of the fitness lies: the false promises of the treadmill, the leg extension, the pec dec, the eliptical, fill in the blank... People are becoming aware that man-made exercise equipment can never improve upon the best exercise creation ever designed: the human body. People are learning that the best "gym," or fitness center, is their own backyard, or the local park. The secret is out: the world is a playground. 

All a person needs to get healthy, to get fit, is their own body and an imagination. Do you have access to a grass field? How many different ways can you travel across it? How many times can you carry something, or drag something back and forth across that field? Do you have access to good climbing trees? Or a couple of hills? Maybe you just have an open floor space. How many ways can you roll, crawl, spin, flip, and twist your way around? How long can you do these things? Have you ever tried to see how many different ways you can get up off the floor? This simple skill can not only improve your health, it could improve the quality of your life better than any peice of "cardio" equipment ever could. 

Health is not about "mirror looking muscles". It is about quality of life. Getting out and learning how to move your own body in your own natural surroundings will always serve you better than spending time in a smith machine, or even in a squat rack. (dont hate me because I'm telling the truth, just deal with it.)

Your body is the best exercise equipment ever created. Your imagination is the best playbook ever written. All you have to do is put these two together and you can join in on the new health revolution. Watch and see. Five to ten years from now, health clubs - as you know them - will be drastically different, if they are even still around. Soon, magazines like Men's Health will be writing articles about guys who do amazing things like run sprints in their 90s. They will have to write about real world feats because no one will care whether or not bent over rows are better than cable rows for back musculature development. Soon, aesthetically beautiful, but useless, muscles and the often false articles about how they are achieved will cease to matter.  

Yes, things are changing. People want to be bulletproof, functional, primal, and natural. If you haven't seen the tide change yet, you will. Things are going back to the way they were thousands of years ago when man was healthy and capable of doing anything. People are catching on: movement = moving the body the way it was designed, is the best thing you can do to become strong and healthy. Using your body the way it is designed is the best way to obtain beautiful strength that won't let you down and it is the best way to obtain true health. 

Every winter fades so spring can begin. The fitness industry is about to get a new breath of life. Health is not complicated. It is simple. It is time for simple.


Move on!







     

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