Sometimes people ask me why I am so active and what’s my motivation for doing sports. I started to look for an answer that could possibly explain my vision but soon enough I stopped searching. I have realised that there is no perfect answer therefore I’ll try to simply share my view about what lifestyle means to me.
When I say “lifestyle” I speak about our day to day activities. In my case, I often do sports twice a day, I have a 6 hours office job and in between I try to make time for reading, cooking, travelling, spending time with friends and family and for the usual stuff that we all do at home.
One of the keywords here is the term “habits” which really guides our entire existence despite of either being aware of it or not. Deep rooted habits will then form patterns which could be emotional and postural. We even develop movement and thinking patterns.
For me at least, having a healthy lifestyle it means three things: living healthy on the emotional, physical and psychological level. Let me explain myself a little.
I am very interested in the term “functional” which means how functional are we and how healthy we feel on a day to day basis. This gives me freedom to do all the things I want to do, to move free, without pain or worry. Being aware about the way we move, our body posture and the relationship we have with our bodies will influence how we approach training, eating, resting.
For me training doesn’t mean only giving it all during a run or an workout or any other physical activity I do. It simply doesn’t stop when the training session stops. It will continue during the day because it will have a tremendous influence on my performance. My advice for you is to pay attention to some details which you might not be completely aware off:
- mindset (pay attention to your self esteem, confidence, your positivity, how you approach failure and success, patience and what is your state of mind or your stress level)
- motivation (what is your deepest motivation for doing sports, even those little things that you are not (yet) aware off)
- your body posture (when you sit at your desk, standing, sleeping and even when you do the usual stuff like bending, carry stuff, pulling, etc.)
- movement patterns (many injuries are caused by poor posture or dysfunctional/ compensatory movement patterns)
- food (education you have about food and your honest relationship with it)
- hydration (muscles means 75% percent water which also has a vital role in important chemical processes happening in the body during physical activity and during recovery)
- sleep (sometimes all we need is a good damn sleep)
There is a geeky side of me which is constantly hungry for learning and understanding. I have a particular interest about how the human body and our physical abilities have evolved over time and how we adopt to the modern life. I am intrigued how we instead of cultivating and exploring the natural and unique movement capacities we have been gifted with by nature, we follow a sort of involution path with all the obesity and diseases happening in the world caused by the modern lifestyle.
Therefore, I have a “holistic approach” if I can call it this way on how I train. My goal is to be healthy and be capable to move in my 70’s with my grandchildren. The human body has been designed to move, adapt to the environment and perform endurance activities like running. So why instead of exploring our potential we waste it?
