What Is A Holistic Approach To Fitness?

by brandon gallagher

August 14, 2018

Fitness has always been a part of my life. Even as a little kid, I was constantly testing my physical limits through various sports, as well as lifting weights. It was almost as if I couldn’t help myself. I was always pushing my body to work harder and harder. Challenging my body physically, I learned very early on, had much to do with how prepared I was mentally. Especially in the more uncomfortable workouts, I would take the time to find myself in the appropriate headspace for what it would require to get the work done. Along with this, I learned, the way in which I fueled my body could also increase my chances for success. Wanting to take advantage of every angle I could, I did a lot of experimenting with nutrition in an effort to put forth the most vigor. In the last 5 years or so, a new aspect of fitness has emerged in my life. Broadly speaking, this piece of fitness is a practice or discipline of stress management. In this article, I will discuss the 3 modules that define what A Holistic Approach To Fitness means, and how we can use awareness of their existence to empower ourselves, as well as our fitness. The 3 modules are: Physical Fitness, Nutrition, and Stress Management.

We’ll start with the most obvious aspect of fitness, Physical Fitness! There isn’t really a whole lot beneath the surface on this one. In my experience, this seems to be the major selling point for most people in deciding that they need fitness in their lives (at least initially). It’s not uncommon that we seek working out to help enhance our physical appearance. We don’t mind a little sweat and soreness if it will result in our clothes fitting better. As we subject the body to physical activity, it will change and adapt as it is required based off of the variety of stimuli (which boils down to variety of activity as well as applying varying intensities). It has been pretty well accepted that intensity is required in any fitness regimen in order to generate any physical adaptation. What constitutes “intensity” is a topic for another time, but let’s make note that it is subjective in many respects. To sum up this module, we can say that if we are performing physical activity on a regular basis, we can expect to see some sort of physical change. This makes it inherently necessary as one of our ingredients to A Holistic Approach To Fitness.

Nutrition! Hate it or love it, it’s indisputable the place it holds in our Fitness and Wellness. How we fuel our body WILL affect our lives! Whether it’s performance (and recovery), losing/gaining weight, or just trying to be proactive in the role we can play in our health, we are what we eat. While there are some good analogies out there that drive this point home (one that I’ve heard pertains to fueling a race car with lower grade gas - it won’t perform as well), but suffice it to say that whatever sustenance you are putting in your mouth is responsible for ALL of your body’s by-products (by-products referring to hair, skin, nails, breath, energy, mental processes, to name a few). Now, we can joke all we want about how delicious fast food is, but is this honestly what we want those by-products to be comprised of? I’m hoping you’re with me on this one for a firm, “No”. This ties into our Holistic Approach To Fitness as it directly implicates our body and mind, which in turn directly affects our quality of life.

Interestingly, in the first two modules we subject ourselves to them, in stress management, we become subject to it. As we are children being educated in schools and maybe trying out a sport here and there, we are constantly pushed to go harder, further, faster, and take less rest. We are seldom ever encouraged to take a break or to slow down. Instead, we are misguided and conditioned to ignore our body as it signals to us that we are beat down or worn out. Instead, we are given a cup of coffee or try out the new, hip energy drink. Managing our stress is no easy feat, and it doubles in difficulty as we are trying to combat all the years of conditioning alongside all the societal pressures of go, go, GO! Our body strains, our body gets tired. We get physically beat up, even when some of us may live a predominantly sedentary lifestyle. Most of us don’t sleep enough. Most of us don’t fuel ourselves properly. Most of us don’t work out as much as we probably should, and those of us that do, may have the propensity to drive ourselves into the ground by overdoing it. With this module of A Holistic Approach To Fitness, we are looking to increase our awareness of what our habits are and what implications may be associated with them. Working 12 hours a day, 6 days a week in a high stress job is going to leave us in a heightened state of stress. That means a greater likelihood for a higher resting heart rate and increase blood pressure, which in turn means that our body is working harder with every single breath we take! Now, I mean not to tell you that you should just eliminate all your stressors and live out in the woods somewhere in a cabin with no running water. I don’t believe that is the solution here. What I am presenting with this Holistic Approach To Fitness is that we consider how stress in our day to day life, as well as the stress we put on our body in our day to day workouts may be influencing all the other aspects of our life.

I’m going to force myself to end here. When we came up with the methodology for A Holistic Approach To Fitness, our mission was to not just bring Fitness into people’s lives, but an overall better quality of life. Being more Fit is merely one aspect of this (⅓, to be exact). We believe that through these 3 modules we can generate better balance in our lives, and through this balance, we can forge a better quality of all our many life’s experiences.