Fitness. It’s a word with so much power and potential but, at the same time, it can sit there, tormenting us. We all want it but getting it can feel like climbing a mountain with a peak that’s always just one more ridge away, while maintaining it can feel like trying to massage an eel. So what is the secret to getting and staying fit? Well, if we could answer that in one article, let alone one sentence, we’d probably be hanging up our walking shoes and retiring to our own personal island in the Bahamas! Actually, forget that, make it a castle in the Pyrenees!
Seriously though, the reason fitness is such a tricky character to get to grips with is because we are all different and you really can’t apply one formula to ensure success. What works for some, isn’t a good fit for others, so how do you know which route to take?
Getting the better of the fitness conundrum is a combination of understanding yourself, understanding the fundamentals and having realistic expectations. What’s really important is first of all framing this as something exclusively personal to you. Fitness regimes you might see on social, advice from friends, even programs offered by highly successful elite athletes are all viable but may not work for you and the only way you can succeed with fitness is to do what works for you.
So, having told you that there isn’t a one size fits all approach, let’s risk contradicting ourselves by looking at a few things that are universal and can help you formulate your own approach to building fitness and in this respect, we’re talking about being able operate at a reasonably high intensity, not just feeling healthier while living an inactive or low intensity lifestyle.
Consistency is king!
Fitness is gained through consistency over a long period, which is why Sport Walking is so good because it’s not about high energy output, it’s about the joys of just walking but with additional effort, so you’re unlikely ever to struggle to complete a Sport Walk and you’re also more likely to be happy to just go out walking and once out, you can then put some effort in.
But whereas you can enjoy Sport Walking as an occasional ‘Weekend Warrior’ activity, if you’re using it as your primary means of getting or staying fit or if you’re pursuing a challenge goal that needs a good level of fitness, getting into a routine, building that consistency is essential. You’ll never break free from the ‘gravity of inactivity’ and float freely towards celestial fitness (perhaps we’re overdoing the similes) without it!
A key factor is doing something that you enjoy, something that you want to do, so that you keep doing it – you build that consistency by embedding Sport Walking in your life, as an activity that you primarily do for pleasure. As long as you make every walk count, you’ll be making progress.
Patience pays
The single most important factor in building fitness and, in understanding how to get it back if you lose it, is that it’s a long game. Possibly the longest game you’ll ever play! You need to give it time, you need to be patient and understand that you won’t change your fitness state in a week, two weeks or even a month. It’s the gentle progress you make over six months or more that will really fix that improvement.
Even if you’ve had a high level of fitness and are looking to get it back, you need to be patient and plan your journey over six months minimum. OK, you will see changes and feel the benefits sooner, partly because you’ll probably have retained more fitness that you might think but it’s more about setting realistic targets and, let’s face it, six months of consistent work to receive the reward of improved fitness, is a good investment.
There is no quick or easy fix
Once you’ve mastered your own patience, you can sit back and patiently reflect on an element that is the undoing of many people – there’s no such thing as a quick fix. Yes, the two elements are connected – you can’t have a quick fix if you’re patiently training over six months but there’s a reason why we highlight the two elements separately.
A quick fix isn’t just about your overall journey and the time it takes to achieve your main goal. You can still get distracted by supposed ‘sort cuts’ while being prepared to play the long game overall. Quick fixes aren’t just about the time it takes, it’s a mindset. If something is quick to implement and has a quick impact, that’s good but seeking or being drawn towards something that promises a short cut to success, is a gamble.
But let’s not focus too much on this being a time thing. The ‘quick fix’ problem is really about seeking to cut corners and that seldom works out. Fitness is built over long periods and the best way to get the best results is by embracing the process and seeking to enjoy it for what it is. If you’re only focused on the outcome, it’s easy to be drawn off course by thoughts of arriving at your destination with less effort.
Embrace discomfort
By this, we don’t mean that you should expect to have to endure great discomfort but real functional fitness is hard to achieve if you’re not prepared to get out of breath, to raise your heart rate or get sweaty. All three are connected.
You might be surprised how common it is for people to actively avoid getting out of breath, sweaty or raising their heart rate. Each can feel unnatural and challenging to someone not used to higher intensity activity and, in some cases that can be scary. But each one is just the body’s natural response to the very tests that will deliver fitness. Each one has a purpose and it’s valuable to learn to celebrate these uncomfortable bodily reactions because through them you can become really fit.
Let’s take them in order. When you undertake higher intensity activity (compared to just simply moving around), a Sport Walk for instance, your heart rate will rise naturally. This will also make your breathing faster. This increased activity generates heat and it’s absolutely essential that your body releases this heat. The way it does this and protects you from disastrous consequences, is to sweat.
So you see, the only way to avoid any of these unpleasant bodily reactions is to be active at a low enough level as to prevent your heart rate from increasing. But how is that going to help you get fit, when fitness comes through raising your heart rate?
While it is possible to gain fitness benefits from low intensity activity, it’s fitness that can only support lower intensity activities. So, if you want to feel better while you’re gardening, then low intensity movement, where you’re not raising your heart rate or at least not raising it much, can work for you. But if you desire to be fit enough to play football with your kids, to complete a Park Run without wanting to collapse or maybe go hiking in the mountains, you need to confront the discomfort issue and learn to cope with it.
What’s interesting though is that you can learn to tolerate the discomfort that naturally accompanies higher intensity activity because you understand why it happens and accept that you have to go through it to get what you want. Getting sweaty for instance is what you grow to expect and, in fact, you see it as a measure of whether you worked hard or not. You no longer see it in isolation as an unpleasant feeling. You see it as a natural component of the sport or activity you love.
The only impact it has on you is that you need to remember to take towels with you in the car if you travel to a location to go Sport Walking and you need to maintain a regular laundry schedule! Apart from that, it has no real impact on you, as long as you don’t fixate on it.
It’s the same with getting out of breath and raising your heart rate. These are like a live indicator of how hard you’re working – if you’re getting out of breath and your heart rate is rising, you know you’re pushing yourself into a zone, where you’re improving your fitness.
So, although the fitness process shouldn’t be painful and it shouldn’t be really uncomfortable (as that indicates you’re trying too hard), you should expect to experience discomfort, as this is all part of what it takes to get fit.
Just keep going!
So, what about maintaining your fitness or getting it back after a period of abstinence? Well, these same factors apply but in the case of maintaining it, you need to focus on consistency and frequency overall. It’s not enough to gain fitness, you need to keep it and while that doesn’t have to mean that you work as hard as you did to get it in the first place, it does require consistent and regular activity, otherwise you’ll lose it again.
Always remember that your fitness level sits at your activity level. So, if you’ve worked hard to achieve a high level of fitness, you are going to need to continue to work at a similar level to maintain that level of fitness, not necessarily general functional fitness itself.
It’s not the same as climbing a mountain, which gaining fitness is often compared to. When you reach the summit of a mountain, you can, in theory, stay there as long as you like doing nothing and still be on the summit.
With fitness, you have to keep climbing, you can’t stop if you want to remain that fit. So it’s a really good idea, on your way up – on your journey to the fitness you want – to plan for what happens when you get there. You need to be ready with a schedule of activity that’s going to maintain the gains you’ve achieved before you achieve them, so that you just keep going.
It’s like the principle of active recovery after a climb. You work hard walking up to the top of a hill but then you need to keep going and recover after you crest the peak. If you stop and take a rest to admire the view, you lose the time advantage you gained by working hard on the way up. So, understand that fitness isn’t a goal, it’s a state of being. If you view it as a goal, then it’s too easy to pause or stop when you achieve it, after all, once you achieve your goal, it’s mission accomplished.
No, fitness is a state of being, a condition that you hold and maintaining it means, essentially, just keeping on doing what you did to achieve it in the first place.
This is why Sport Walking is so great because it’s an activity that you can enjoy for its own sake. You walk strongly on trails or paths, having adventures along the way and challenging yourself. This is a fulfilling pastime, regardless of what it brings you in terms of health and wellbeing benefits. You do it for the fulfilment and you get fit along the way, as a consequence and that’s the best way to build a lifestyle that can sustain strong functional fitness.
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