Minimalist Fitness

Imagine this scenario. You have this fat guy who eats crap, smokes lots of cigarettes, and spends the bulk of his leisure time watching sports on TV from the comfort of his couch. His health is bad, and his fitness is zilch. Then, one day, while flipping the channels from SportsCenter to the local news for sports coverage, he gets an epiphany. He needs to stop being a slob and get off his ass. He needs to get in shape. What is the best way to get in shape? That's simple. Become a mountain climber and climb Everest.

This is absurdity, but I see people making similar decisions all the time. The 90-pound weakling decides to become a bodybuilder. The fat ass housewife decides to become an Ironman triathlete. The office drone decides to become a Spartan from 300. Now, I don't mean to denigrate these aspirations, but they seem a bit vain and unrealistic to me. Yet, when you talk about fitness, these are the wild things that pop into people's heads. Fitness today means having a sculpted physique or accomplishing some massive feat of endurance. The reason for this is a direct influence from media and marketing that appeals more to people's vanity than to a real desire to be fit.

My mindset on this began to change by two things that happened over the past year. The first was watching the classic movie The Hill with Sean Connery. In the movie, Connery plays a British soldier in the stockade for infractions that we learn later sprang from noble intentions. The film was made in 1965, and it required all the actors to be in top physical condition especially for all those brutal trips over the hill in 115 degree heat. The film struck me because it was made before Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Statham. Connery was a top action star at this time. Yet, the man baring his chest appeared to me as an ordinary looking guy. He wasn't muscled the way action stars today are with the help of steroids.



The second thing that happened to me was meeting an Army Ranger who had spent two turns in Iraq and two turns in Afghanistan. I worked with this guy, and he told me he liked to go rock climbing on the weekends. This guy looked like any normal guy you would see on the street. I consider him to be a true bad ass, but you could not tell from looking at him. He looked ordinary. He was a trim guy without some muscled physique. He looked oddly similar to those guys in The Hill. I immediately coined a term from these two experiences--"army fitness." This was very different from the alternative which I now call "vanity fitness."

The military has different fitness requirements than what you would find in either Hollywood movie stars or world class endurance athletes. They don't care what you look like. They care what you can do. They want to see if you can climb a wall, march 20 miles in a day, carry a fully loaded pack, or carry your buddy off the field of battle. This concept is what my Army Ranger friend called "functional fitness." This is the ability to perform physical feats that used to be an everyday part of life but have disappeared. When was the last time you chopped a load of wood?

Vanity fitness is different because it wants to make you look good naked. There is nothing particularly wrong with this ambition except that it distorts fitness considerably. This is why you have guys who work hard on crunching their abs for the six pack but are utterly worthless in other areas of their lives.



The conventional wisdom today is to pursue vanity fitness by signing up for a membership at Bally's and working out with the machines and the sterling chrome weights to look totally buff in front of the wall-to-wall mirrors. This is quite different from the mentality of Gym Jones and CrossFit that focus more on functional fitness and use crazy methods like slamming a sledgehammer into a tire repeatedly. The mirrors are absent. The irony is that it was Gym Jones that gave us the physiques of 300.

This blue collar turn in fitness is a welcome change, but the key turns on what you are able to do as opposed to what you look like without a shirt. CrossFit finds special appeal among the military, law enforcement, and firefighters because that program helps them do their jobs better. These are not pretty boys preening in a Speedo.



The cornerstone of minimalist fitness is a rejection of vanity in favor of function. That function will depend on what you wish to accomplish. A mother of three may merely want to be able to carry more stuff up the flight of stairs in her home. Another person may simply want to shake off the sluggishness and detraining effect of a deskjob. Someone else may have a blue collar job that requires a lot of lifting and whatnot. But if the desire is to win Mr. Olympia, minimalist fitness is not the way to go.

The second aspect of minimalist fitness is a balance between strength and endurance. Bodybuilders are not good marathoners, and marathoners are useless when it comes to moving furniture. This isn't to be critical of those sports, but it points out the trade offs in each. For most people, they want a midpoint between these outliers. This would be carrying boxes up two flights of stairs without gasping for breath. This goes backs to the functional fitness I mentioned earlier. This is the generalist vs. specialist argument all over again. The thing you learn about Army fitness is how it balances the two concepts of endurance and strength. In the military, you have to move yourself and your equipment over great distances and obstacles. Carrying 50 extra pounds of unnecessary muscle runs counter to this objective. Having washboard abs doesn't matter a whole lot in these endeavors.

Minimalist fitness is not for athletes. It is for everyday people doing everyday things. Competition in a sport has its own routines and ideas about what works and what is effective for that sport. The reason many people choose to do these workouts when they aren't true athletes is because this is what the culture and the marketing have sold to them as fitness. This is how we get fat smoker wanting to climb Everest when he can barely climb off the couch. He could get to Everest shape with time and discipline. But why do this? Why be a mountain climber when you can die in the comfort of that couch?

What needs to be rejected is the idea that fitness is just for athletes. This reduced expectation actually makes fitness more attainable. When fat smoker realizes he can get in shape while watching TV, he is more likely to do just that. So, why do so many people believe they have to go to such lengths to get in shape? This is because of marketing and hype. Sports come with sporting equipment. The equipment makers sponsor the sports to sell more equipment. This is why the ab machine has replaced the simple sit up or why people want to enter triathlons. This shit did not exist in 1965. Back then, fitness was Army fitness. It was measured by sit ups, push ups, and chin ups.

This leads to the third aspect of minimalist fitness which is to eschew gear as much as possible. For the endurance part, you don't need an indoor rowing machine, a stair climbing machine, or a treadmill. All you need is to walk out your front door. Begin with walking and move up to running. This is Army PT. Just move forward as fast or as slow as you feel. Toss in some hills and stairwells. If you get winded, take a rest. Recover and continue moving forward. You don't need a machine or a gym for this. This shit is FREE.

The strength part is also free. Perform bodyweight exercises. You can pull these up on YouTube to find some that appeal to you and give you what you need. I will also add that it helps to toss in isometrics as these really build you up in a short amount of time. Do crunches, burpees, push ups, pull ups, and what have you. These old school exercises from your days in gym class are very effective. These things were the mainstay of the old days of Army Fitness. This is because they were cheap and effective.

If you do decide you need some equipment, you don't have to be expensive with it. You can make weights out of something as simple as things around your home. Gravity doesn't care. A 25-pound cinder block weighs as much as a 25-pound chrome freeweight. Paying $50 a month to use something that is virtually free is stupid.

Many of the strength exercises especially the isometric exercises can be performed in front of your TV or at your desk or in the car. My deltoids have become like rocks just from holding my arms out in front of me while driving. I just switch arms when the burn becomes too much. The cost in terms of time and money are virtually zero. You can literally work out all day long.

A typical minimalist workout would be to go for a 30 minute or hour walk or run when you get home from work followed by isometric bodyweight strength exercises on the living room floor while watching the evening news. This would be push ups, sit ups, squats, lunges, leg lifts, etc. Done daily, this simple program will result in greater endurance and strength with minimal impact on your wallet or your schedule. Will this result in you winning an Ironman triathlon? Hell no. But this is what Army PT is. I've talked to those guys, and this is what they did in the Army. To be honest, it is actually more since they may only run four days out of the week or play a game of basketball to fulfill PT requirements. Yet, the difference in fitness between a soldier and your average couch potato is huge.

What people actually do is go out and buy a bunch of athletic shit or sign up for an expensive gym membership with some fantastic athletic achievement as the goal. Then, after a couple of days, they are back on the couch. Or, they may pursue those lofty goals until they have achieved them and let them drop. Instead of aiming for the easy and attainable, they opt for the difficult and impossible and end up worse off as a result.

What makes minimalist fitness minimal is not that it is no-frills and cheap. It is simply the minimal level of fitness you should have to function well in your daily life. We have no problems setting maximalist standards of fitness. But what we need is not a new ceiling but a new floor in this area. We don't have this. The result is fitness is considered a hobby now instead of a necessity for living. The Army sees things differently which is why they have a minimum. You need this minimum as well.

You can find many resources on the type of program you want to put together, but I want to change people's thinking in this area from a maximalist mindset to a minimalist mindset. You may very well decide to do the Ironman or climb Everest. But do this from that base of minimalist fitness instead of from the basement of couch fitness which is good for changing the channel and lighting another smoke. You need to decide what you want the floor of your basic fitness to be. Then, use the minimalist approach I just outlined for you. In time, it will be just another daily task along with taking out the trash and washing the dishes. The difference is that all those other tasks will become easier and more enjoyable.



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LINKS AND RESOURCES

1. Are You as Fit as a World War II GI?

2. BodyRock TV



3. CrossFit

4. A Concept for Functional Fitness

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