Photograph: @Juansharks/Juan Oliphant/AFP/Getty Images
Hey friiiieeeend,
So sometimes great analogies for fitness/training come up and smack you right in the kisser.
That's what happened recently for me.
One fine May day, as I was scrolling my way through good ole' YouTube I stumbled across a mini-doc about Great White sharks being kept in aquariums.
It didn't go well.
Literally every place they have tried it--no matter the size of the tank, the conditions, or the care taken to transport these ginormous fish--the shark hasn't lived for more than a ~year, but usually much less.
Like days.
Now putting aside for a second the morality (or lack) underpinning the cavalier way that humans always seem to be kidnapping, caging, and torturing-to-death animals (the bigger and more exotic the better!), aka our fellow earth-dwellers 🤬 …
As they began unpacking why these Great Whites were not able to survive while other bigger sharks and animals could, the documentary made it clear right away that all fish need water constantly flowing over their gills in order to 'breathe'.
But while some gilled creatures can suck water in and out across their gills, and therefore breathe while staying still in place in the water, Great Whites rely on locomotion--changing their location via movement--through the ocean to keep that oxygen a-flowin'.
They have to keep moving.
As I thought back to this documentary a few days later, I realized that this is what I'm coaching folx about all the time.
'Cause guess what, we humans have the same thing going on.
Well--it's not exactly the same… our apparatus is different (lungs vs gills, arms vs fins, etc), and our medium is different (air vs water).
But the principle really does overlap: we all need motion in order to access the physical nutrients required for life.
We need it, it's not a nice to have.
Now how that movement happens, what it looks and feels like, what it's for (sports? dancing? making sweet body music with your honey??)... all of it is up to you.
Society will try to tell you, in obvious and covert ways, what the "right" kind of movement is for you. Plus, the physical context of your life--your work, your living situation, etc--will surely dictate the kind of movement you find on a regular basis.
This human movement need can be, and often is, ignored; sometimes, life just doesn't feature enough movement for what a body needs. And there's no moral judgement about that, at least not from me.
But over time, that turning away from our physical bodies results in a loss of connection with the very signal that prompts us to get moving.
It's as if those sharks slowly lost the impulse to move, and therefore stopped breathing voluntarily*. As if they suffocated themselves...
Ok, ok, so dramatic, I know. But the point here is that this is a front a center-and-topic for almost everyone we work with, once we get down to the real grit.
Which is why, along with educating folx about how to communicate clearly with their bodies, we at The Fitness Alchemists are interested in sparking that impulse to get moving.
To tuning in to what movement really feels like, and how it really impacts us.
How good it feels, how necessary.
Go ahead try it… reach your arms as far in front of you as you can, andn the over your head, and now behind you.
See what I mean?
Go find your gold,
Coach Will
*that's not exactly what happened in real life, but it works for my analogy!