“The language of movement is written in feel - not in words and pictures.” Gray Cook observes the natural process of childhood movement development, how it happens without coaching and how positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and pain are essential motivators.
The Functional Movement Screen uses basic body weight patterns like a deep squat or lunge to screen for pain and dysfunction. Why would you want to load a pattern for exercise when it is difficult, impossible, or painful with body weight? That’s the power of the FMS. It identifies the movement patterns we should not stress and guides us to movement function using corrective exercises.
Systems that communicate about movement through feel should be the starting point in combating growing problems like obesity, low-back pain, and female ACL injuries.
The FMS helps establish a correct perspective on movement - individuals can be overconfident in their movement patterns, which can lead to risk and injury; underconfident, which can hamper full development; or they have a good idea of how well (or not well) they move and are thus good at self-regulation. The Functional Movement Screen helps give more people the objective outlook of self-regulators.
The Hidden Health Risk Affecting Our Kids
Even young children are subject to body imbalances that increase their chances of pain and injury by the time they're pre-teens.
Too many of our pre-teens today are physically compromised. The most obvious manifestation is down at the feet. Watch any ten, eleven or twelve-year-old walk, and you’ll notice that most of them do so with their feet pointing out. You don’t even have to watch them walk. If a junior high student is standing still, chances are his or her feet are pointing out. We call that everted feet. I’ve already written about that subject here, but now I want to address how it happens to children at such a young age and what you can do about it.
From the moment we’re born, movement is integral to our development. Crawling, walking, running, climbing—all these activities and many more are key to the growth of our muscles, our bones, our internal organs, everything. The more naturally our movement is allowed to develop, the more likely we will avoid physical compromises. Take, for instance, crawling.
Crawling isn’t just something we do in order to cope until we can walk. Crawling is something we do in order to develop the body we need to walk properly. Babies are born with flat feet, and crawling is instrumental to developing arches. With those arches, we are able to walk with a proper foot-striking action of heel, balls of feet, toes. Without those arches, we end up walking in a compromised manner that leads to future dysfunction and pain. Anyone with planter fasciitis will tell you just how much life without proper arches hurts.
But it’s not just about the arches. In general, we are too eager to get our kids walking. Many believe that walking is a sign of progress, a sign of intelligence, a sign of advancement in their children. It’s simply not true, but since so many parents believe it is, they encourage walking prematurely in many ways, not least of which is buying their children shoes with hard soles to give them support. But in so doing, they’ve interrupted the metabolic processes of growth.
Related: The Surprising Ways Baby Shoes Affect Alignment
Walking requires many motor skills, chief among them balance and a proper heel, ball, toe foot strike, which is possible with arches. When parents put hard-soled shoes on their children too soon, they render the proper foot strike unnecessary; kids now have a platform with which to push off, and further development of the arches is impossible. In addition, since proper foot striking is no longer necessary to walk, balance becomes the main issue a toddler must confront. How best to keep balance on shaky legs? Turn those feet out. Thus, those hard soles pave the way for our children to learn how to walk with their feet pointed out, and by the time they’re ten or eleven, those feet have been pointing out for a long time. Which has subsequently taught the knees to respond in a compromised fashion, subsequently leading the hips to respond with their own compromise.
So what can we do? Well, a few things.
First, get your youngsters crawling again. Seriously. Whether they’re seven and eight or 11 and 12, get their shoes off and get them back down on the ground. It will probably be easier with the younger ones because you can trick them into getting down with some games that involve crawling, bear crawling, whatever. The constant act of getting up and down will also help, and you can certainly devise ways to get your kids to do that. The older kids might be a little tougher although getting kids to frolic like kids again is a good thing and might be easier than you think. You might take the honest approach, too, by showing them how their feet are everted and telling them that bear crawls and crawling can help correct it.
Another great way to remedy physical compromise is simply get children doing whatever they’re not doing. If they don’t usually climb a tree, get them to climb a tree. (In fact, anything off the ground is good—monkey bars, jungle gyms, whatever. It engages a range of muscles often under-utilized on the ground.) If they play a lot of baseball, take them swimming. In general, too much of any one thing is bad for the development of our children. Every professional athlete I have known, as well as every high-level coach and trainer, agrees that specializing in one sport at a young age is a foolish mistake.
Related: A College Football Coach Reveals His #1 Advice to Parents of Young Athletes
But it’s not just sports. Years ago, I had some parents call me because their eleven-year-old son suffered terrible headaches. The child was a piano prodigy, so when I visited him, I naturally joined him on the piano bench. He showed me how, when he had to reach with his left hand, he couldn’t play as effectively. I wasn’t schooled in music enough to hear any difference, but I could see a difference in his body when he struck the keys in front of him compared to when he struck the keys to his distant left. I told him to get up and follow me outside. His father was an avid softball player, so I had the son play softball with me. I had him hit while I pitched; I had him throw me the ball with his right hand then throw with his left. In other words, I got him to engage a bunch of new muscles. When we returned to his piano bench forty-five minutes later, he was amazed to see that when he had to reach left to play, there was no difficulty.
That’s the amazing thing about the body. It is always ready, even eager, to return to an uncompromised posture, and the younger the body and therefore less entrenched the development, the quicker and easier it will respond to corrective measures. But the sooner you tend to your children, the better. For compromised posture untreated only gets compounded with time, and that has led to the epidemic in today’s teens of surgeries, headaches, and an untold number of premature physical maladies.
No, parents, those teenagers’ shoulders aren’t hunched because of texting. But I’ll address that in a separate article.
Known as the Father of Postural Therapy, Pete Egoscue has helped relieve thousands of people from their chronic pain, including many of the world’s leading athletes. For more information on Pete and any of his 25 clinics worldwide, go to egoscue.com.
By Pete Egoscue
Published on July 23, 2015
How Your Feet Reveal Why You’re in Pain
If you experience chronic pain your foot alignment can likely provide clues about the source of discomfort and how you can heal.
In order to understand that the body is all connected and that all of its systems and subsystems are interrelated and interdependent, one of the best places to focus your attention is your feet. How your feet are positioned whether you’re standing still or moving is a clear indicator of how balanced, or unbalanced, your body is. And if you suffer from chronic pain, the feet are a great place to start figuring out why.
The human body is designed so that both feet point straight ahead after the development cycle, which is the age when toddlers are able to stand, run, and play on their own two feet without assistance (it varies among children). Furthermore, at that stage, when we walk, the heel strikes the ground first, then the ball of the foot, then the toe. When that foot-striking action occurs in a balanced fashion with both feet pointed straight ahead, the body is symmetrical.
There are four load-bearing joints in our bodies—ankles, knees, hips, and shoulders. These joints have two functions: first, they bear the body’s weight, and second, when we’re moving, they absorb the shock of that movement. In order for those joints to do that effectively, they must have a full range of motion, and they do if that body is symmetrical. But joints do what muscles tell them to do, and when muscles become imbalanced through specific actions or inaction, the joints become compromised and lose that full range of motion. When one joint is compromised, all are affected because all are interrelated. If the ankle loses its full range, that will impact the knee, hip, and shoulder.
Regarding pain, it’s logical to focus on where the body hurts; if your shoulder hurts, it makes sense to look at your shoulder to figure out why. But that is true only if you’ve just had an accident, that is, you just fell and landed on your shoulder. If we’re dealing with a chronic condition, such as a herniated disc or torn cartilage or rotator cuff, then the reason for that pain lies elsewhere. That’s why I often look first at the feet for clues. Repositioning the feet changes the position of the load-bearing joints which subsequently impacts the place of pain.
So, an example. If you are suffering from chronic back pain, do this experiment real quick. Stand up, close your eyes, and walk in place. Don’t march; just pick your feet up and walk normally. After a few steps, stop and look down. You will likely notice that your feet are not pointing straight ahead at 12 o’clock. One, or both, will be pointing off in a different direction. Now, with your feet in that position, close your eyes again, and get in touch with the weight bearing down on your feet. You’ll probably notice that one foot is carrying more weight than the other, and that the weight rests in different places. For instance, your right foot may feel the majority of the weight on your heel while your left foot feels it along the outside of your foot. That means your body is out of balance. And if it’s out of balance, pain is inevitable.
Now, a quick test on the back pain. Make sure your feet are parallel and point them straight ahead. They have been compromised for so long that you’ll probably have to look down to make sure that they’re actually pointing straight. It will feel awkward. Then close your eyes and notice how that stance impacts your lower back. Next, go pigeon-toed, pointing your toes in so that they are almost touching, and close your eyes again and register how that impacts your symptoms. If each of these different positions has impacted how your back feels, that is an indication that the cause of your back pain lies not in your back. The solution to that pain is realigning your body to symmetrical balance and not specifically targeting just the back.
We are brilliantly designed. And we’re incredibly adaptable. If you are off balance, your body will adjust to compensate, and that will cause some pain somewhere. That pain is your body telling you that you’re off balance. Once you return your body to balance, your discomfort will disappear. And that’s just the beginning of all the good things that will happen to your well-being.
Known as the Father of Postural Therapy, Pete Egoscue has helped relieve thousands of people from their chronic pain, including many of the world’s leading athletes. For more information on Pete and any of his 25 clinics worldwide, go to egoscue.com.
By Pete Egoscue
Published on May 19, 2015
Regional Interdependence And Limiting Factors To Performance
Part 3
https://www.functionalmovement.com/articles/1014
In Her Power: Mary Cain Focuses on a Healthy Future For Girls and Women in Running
In 2019, Mary Cain alleged abuse under the most renowned distance running coach in the country. Then she promised to do whatever she could to fix girls' sports.
JANUARY 4, 2022ERIN STROUT
You probably remember her. It was 2012 or so and this high school girl from the New York City suburbs started popping up at pro meets and beating athletes 10 years older. Her post-race interviews were peppered with giggles, appearances by her stuffed duck Puddles, and updates on her AP Latin exam and impending driver’s license test. She was everything you’d expect from a brainy teen who also happened to run abnormally fast.
Mary Cain, now 25, was the next big thing for U.S. track and field. Spectators were drawn to her talent, as well as her exuberance. But when her talent outgrew what her high school could support, it got serious. Alberto Salazar—the Nike Oregon Project coach who had watched her set an American high-school record in the 1500 meters (4:11:01) at the junior world championships in Barcelona—came calling, interested in guiding the career of the promising prep star, the way he had done with another famous phenom named Galen Rupp.
Salazar started coaching Cain remotely during her junior year in high school. Before graduation, she ran her lifetime bests (including 1:59:51 for 800 meters and 4:04.62 for 1500 meters) and became the youngest American athlete to ever compete at the world championships. She gave up her NCAA eligibility to sign a lucrative contract with Nike at 17 years old. Then she moved across the country to Portland, Oregon, in a female body not yet fully developed, to join one of the most revered pro training groups in the world, led by Salazar with Nike’s backing.
But by 2015, at age 19, Cain’s star had faded. She chalked her lackluster racing up to “growing pains” and told the media she hoped they’d pass soon. What she didn’t say out loud: she was cutting herself, suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts, had amenorrhea and other symptoms of relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S). Years later, in a 2019 New York Times op-ed, she alleged that during that time, Salazar regularly weighed her in front of teammates, withheld food, and berated her because he thought her breasts and bottom had become too big.
“For a very long time there was this stunting of myself. I’d always been that person who would say, ‘Hey, you’re doing something wrong. I don’t want to be a part of that; I’m going to speak up,’” Cain says. “But I think when you’re not able to understand the experience you’re going through and there’s no understanding that it’s abuse, you self-blame during it. That personality that would step up and make the world better wasn’t there for a few years.”
Cain chose to publicly share her experience after reading an unrelated U.S. Anti-Doping report that found Salazar guilty of violating anti-doping policies. He was banned by USADA until October 2023.
“It suddenly made me realize I’m not crazy. This wasn’t just me being weak. This wasn’t me being overdramatic,” Cain says, two years to the day since the New York Times piece, during an interview in her New York apartment. “This wasn’t just me.”
During those subsequent two years, several former Oregon Project athletes have corroborated Cain’s story and have also come forward (publicly and privately) with their own allegations of abuse. Nike shuttered the Oregon Project in 2019 and Salazar no longer has a coaching contract with the company. Cain, who left the team officially in 2016, filed a $20 million lawsuit in October 2021 against Nike and Salazar for long-term and permanent injuries suffered, as well as an eating disorder, major depressive disorder, and post-traumatic stress.
The U.S. Center for SafeSport, which is charged with investigating abuse in Olympic sports, has permanently banned Salazar for sexual misconduct. In response to Cain’s allegations, Salazar has denied wrongdoing, but issued a statement in 2019 saying, in part, that he did not know that discussing weight in elite sport was abusive. “I may have made comments that were callous or insensitive over the course of years of helping my athletes through hard training,” he wrote.
RELATED: Alberto Salazar is Permanently Banned for Sexual Misconduct
But it wasn’t insensitivity that led Cain to find her calling. It’s the desire to help make sports a safer, more supportive place for the generations coming after her.
“We have to identify the people who are problems. Screw winning, screw your history with the team, screw your relationships,” Cain says. “If somebody is a problem, we have to get them out.”
Making the Team
Mary Cain (center) with the two Atalanta NYC teammates Jamie Morrissey (left) and Aoibhe Richardson (right). (Photo: James Farrell)
On a November Friday afternoon, Cain curled up on her gray couch in the apartment she shares with her boyfriend, Jake Kaufman. The couple bought the place during the pandemic, a little more than a block from Central Park where their rescue pup, Nala, gets plenty of exercise alongside her humans.
Inside the door, a pile of running shoes from all brands (except one, noticeably absent) is stacked against the exposed brick wall and spills into the Manhattan-sized kitchen.
Cain works all three of her jobs from the fourth-floor walk-up. She’s employed full-time as a community manager at Tracksmith, helping coordinate events and activities for the brand in New York. She’s a coach at New York Road Runners. And her newest endeavor is founder and CEO of Atalanta NYC, a nonprofit that employs pro female runners who help create and execute youth mentoring programs while pursuing running careers.
Cain acknowledges that holding down three jobs is unsustainable while trying to get back into her own training, rehabbing some chronic injuries that have required surgery on her hips.
“We always talk about periodization in your life,” Cain says. “For right now, at my age, and for how the world has been in the last year and a half, and because my training’s in the place that it’s in, I could take on more. But it means working really long days and multitasking a lot.”
Atalanta has sponsors such as Tracksmith, Nuun, and AirBnb, plus private donations. It also has a well-connected board, including former NYRR CEO Mary Wittenberg; Olympian and entrepreneur Allyson Felix; and Evan Roth, founder of a wealth management firm. Its mission addresses many of the issues that led to Cain’s experiences as a young runner. Pro athletes, who are provided coaching, go through a rigorous interview process to be salaried employees, providing them more stability than a traditional sponsorship, as well as career development for after they’re finished competing. The mentoring component exposes girls in underserved communities to the benefits of movement and exercise.
“I’ve always found one of the biggest problems within the world of sport is that people don’t learn how to be healthy in sport until they’ve been very unhealthy and then have a major intervention,” Cain says. “We’re really trying to get in before and help introduce to kids how to create a healthy environment.”
Two athletes have joined: Jamie Morrissey, a middle distance graduate of the University of Michigan, and Aoibhe Richardson, an Irish runner who competed at the University of Portland. They are coached, alongside Cain, by Jon Green (also coach to Molly Seidel).
Morrissey, who trained with the New Jersey-New York Track Club before joining Atalanta, was attracted to the larger purpose of the organization and its location in the city, she says.
“Mary has obviously been through an incredible amount. To come out on the other side fighting for not only herself and her career, but many others, I knew it was something I wanted to be a part of,” she says. “And the city gives me energy. It feeds me. I’ve always thought it was electrifying and inspiring and motivating.”
As Atalanta adds more athletes to the roster, it isn’t necessarily looking for the fastest PRs or the most athletic potential. It’s far more important that the runners have passion for the nonprofit work they’re hired to do. “Aoibhe immediately said, ‘My career goal has been to create a space in the U.S. that gives free resources to people; where we can teach them how to cook or do exercise classes or provide a health clinic,’” Cain says. “She understood the goals. They’ll be expected to do community service work. There are hours outside of running where they’re expected to perform, but in a different way.”
Richardson, who has a master’s degree in public health, went for the opportunity the day Cain launched it.
“I felt like somebody created my dream job and wrote it down,” she says. “I had something to offer outside of running. I wanted to have something else to devote my time to, but in a way where I could have the flexibility and support to train.”
Using Power for Good
(Photo: James Farrell)
Cain doesn’t take her position lightly. She recognizes that she’s been given a spotlight that others who have lived through similar experiences have not. “I’m a white blonde girl who grew up in a privileged family. I did that New York Times piece and I had millions of people listen and watch. I’ve already achieved a certain level of athletic performance that makes people recognize who I am,” she says. “That power is a privilege and a responsibility. I have a platform, and I’m going to keep running with it.”
RELATED: The Injuries You Can’t See: Lessons From 3 Sports Psychologists
Cain’s story has stoked a broader conversation about the systemic failures of youth sports, particularly for girls, who drop out at a faster rate than boys in their teen years, mostly due to body image issues, perceived lack of skill, and feeling unwelcome. In track and field specifically, more athletes are recognizing abusive coaching practices, calling out strategies like public weigh-ins or body fat tests, used in some NCAA programs without any accompanying education about nutrition, fueling, and body composition.
“I hope the more people step up, the more it will be listened to,” Cain says. “And when somebody is not listened to, it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t step up. People who have done it always know that whether or not it creates change, you live a little lighter.”
Since leaving the Oregon Project, running hasn’t come back together the way many had hoped for Cain. She’s focused on recovering from the eating disorder, stress fractures, and hip surgery. Over the past six years, she’s also dealt with another injury that makes her lose control of her right leg while running. Doctors now think that an injury from years ago was misdiagnosed, as well as mistreated, remedied at the time by increased strength training. Now, doctors suggest it’s led to long-standing piriformis syndrome, which causes overcompensation on her right leg, where she has a bursa on her knee, resulting in instability.
“The truth is that this whole experience has just made me realize that I’m OK without running,” Cain says. “I think as runners, we’re so often taught that being a little banged up is OK. But it reached a point where I couldn’t really walk without feeling it. And I don’t, long term, want to have more health issues than I probably already developed. From a running perspective, I don’t really care anymore how it goes.”
As her coach, Green wants running to play whatever role is best for Cain. “She’s an extremely good competitor. If she’s ever back on the track racing hard and going after titles, I would fully support that,” he says. “But if changing the sport is the most interesting thing to her, we know that there are phases to life and I’m here to support and help her do that.”
RELATED: Mary Cain: “Creating a Super Healthy, Positive Dynamic is My Biggest Priority”
That girl holding court in the mixed zone in 2012 with Puddles the stuffed duck may never reach the athletic achievements that once seemed all but assured in her youth. She’s at peace with that—and has just as much of a desire to disrupt the system as she once did to win world championships.
“If tomorrow I win the Olympic gold, that will never be the fairy tale for me. That will never be the thing that heals the wrongs and makes everything right,” she says. “No matter what I do in sports at this point, I’ve done the big thing already. And that’s standing up for myself, that’s standing up for other people, and that’s trying to create change.”
This profile was first published in the Winter 2022 print issue of Women’s Running as part of “Women Who Lead: Power Women of 2022” which celebrates 15 women who are reshaping the running industry for the better. You can see the full list of honorees here.
Are You Suffering from Fitness Fatigue?
Pete Egoscue
If your workout routine has got you beat, then maybe it's time to stop obsessing over what you “should” be doing and start thinking about what you want to do, so you can start having fun already.
Fitness fatigue is not a physical phenomenon. It’s an emotional one.
Our world has become all about measurement and data. Much to our detriment, many have come to believe that everything can be measured and, therefore, should be. Fitness has not escaped that trend, and working out has become an issue of external measurements. It’s about your body mass index. Or your heart rate. Or how many crunches you can do in two minutes. Or what weight you’re maxing out at on the bench press. Or how many steps you took today.
It’s as if going out for a terrific run doesn’t matter unless we achieve a pinpoint goal of how long we ran or how far we ran and how quickly we ran it. Or playing for an hour with your kids on the jungle gym doesn’t really matter because there’s really no way to measure the physical impact of that play.
There’s an even more insidious measurement of our fitness, and that’s our appearance. We do more and more sit-ups because we want those six-pack abs. We pound more and more miles on that treadmill because we’re trying to lose those flabby saddlebags at the base of our buttocks. We bike more and more miles to shed those love handles and get those chiseled calves. We don’t play soccer with our kids or friends because, well, we’re just not sure how many calories that will burn, and we know exactly the minimum of calories we need to burn each day if we want to look a certain way, so we do intervals around the track instead while they play on the field within.
It is this focus on these external measurements, the numbers and the appearance, that’s leading to our fitness fatigue. Let me explain.
First, the numbers game. Part of the reason it’s impossible to judge fitness by numbers is that the numbers keep changing. The rules are never the same. To make my point, I turn first to nutrition. Some of you are old enough to remember the time that butter was bad for you, so we all ate margarine. Now, turns out, both butter and margarine have their pros and cons, or at least that’s the story this year. Then all fats were bad for you, except now there’s actually a good kind of fat. Or fruits are fine, but just don’t eat them in the morning or too much since they’re high in sugar. Or red meat is off-limits. No, wait, Paleo dieters love it, so actually it’s good. Frankly, I forget what it is these days.
It’s the same with all the numbers around fitness. We should all be walking 10,000 steps (just under 5 miles) per day, and we’ve even got little devices to count those steps. Once we hit 10,000, it was a good day for our body. Or we should all be doing 30 minutes of aerobic exercise four days a week, and if we do, we reduce our chances of a heart attack by 50 percent. Or was it 150 minutes of exercise per week, which is a half-hour five days a week, not four? No matter, next year, on New Year’s Day, when we get all those articles about fitness that coincide with the annual resolution to push for a new you, the standard of measurement will have changed. See what I mean by this madness of numbers? It’s very difficult to feel like you’re winning any game where the rules keep changing.
True fitness requires peace of mind, and if you’re entire routine of fitness is based on discipline, rigor, doing more and doing it harder, then you cannot achieve peace of mind as it relates to your fitness.
As for appearance, well, let’s start with the abs, which is a very common measure of looks. If you are going to the gym to achieve a washboard stomach, it’s safe to say you are unhappy with your appearance. If that’s the case, then it becomes almost impossible ever to be happy, no matter how taut and ripped those abs become. That level of self-judgment makes it almost unrealistic to ever approve of yourself in any form. We’ve all seen these people in the gyms and in our lives. Working out is about achieving perfection, and perfection is an unfeasible standard in everything, including fitness. What’s more, bodily perfection is driven by ego, and feeding the ego is like feeding any addiction: no matter how much you give it, it only wants more.
And so we keep going to the gym. And going to the gym. And going to the gym. Or we switch and start pedaling the bike. And pedaling the bike. And pedaling the bike. Or now we do routines with kettle bells, and more routines and more routines. But when does it end? When are you satisfied with your numbers or your appearance? For too many people, that satisfaction is an unattainable holy grail. But they keep going and going and going, and is it any wonder they’re fitness fatigued? We keep physically active to achieve goals that are either arbitrary or impracticable, and I believe much of the fatigue is borne of the subconscious knowledge that what we’re doing isn’t really working and isn’t any fun.
To avoid fitness fatigue, we need a new measurement for what it is to be fit, and for me, that measurement is internal. True fitness requires peace of mind, and if you’re entire routine of fitness is based on discipline, rigor, doing more and doing it harder, then you cannot achieve peace of mind as it relates to your fitness. Fitness is a calm sense of well-being. Now, that’s not to suggest that there are no physical components to fitness. Clearly, someone who is 70 pounds overweight is not fit, but then I have never met anyone who is obese or who thinks he’s overweight who exudes peace of mind. By the same token, I have met absolute physical specimens with nary an ounce of fat who live their lives in a state of agitation because those perfect bodies still aren’t what they want them to be. They are just as agitated as the person 70 pounds overweight.
The main remedy for fitness fatigue is fun. It’s spontaneous application of movement. It’s approaching your exercise not with the answer why, but the question, “Why not?” This way of thinking is the operative ethic behind Patch Fitness workouts. Yes, they compel the body to move in different directions across different planes to achieve a full range of motion for all joints, and there is definitely a physical benefit to that, but they also get your body on the ground and over logs and on top of benches and moving backwards or sideways and walking on all fours because it’s fun. When you get lost in the fun of a workout, you no longer care about numbers or specific goals. You just play. And the body reaps the benefits.
Believe me, I know many of the lords of fitness in today’s world are scoffing at what I’m saying here, but for a minute, just tune out all that they’ve said and listen to your heart on these questions: If the existing fitness industry were really offering you a viable solution to your fitness needs, why are there so many fitness fads? If you’re not having fun with that gym workout, how long do you really think you’re going to continue doing it? And how good is it for your body when you’ve essentially quit all forms of fitness because it became drudgery?
I don’t care who’s telling you how many steps you need to take today. If you’d rather spend the afternoon gardening, you should spend the afternoon gardening, and you’ll be more fit because of it. I don’t care what elevated heartrate you may achieve with a cardio workout, if you’d rather spend the next hour all over the playground with your child, then you should go to the playground, and you’ll actually be more fit because of it.
One more thing: If you’re tired today, skip that run and take a nap instead. It’s what your body is asking for. We have become so enamored with measuring things that we’ve come to believe that if something can’t be measured, it has no value. Therefore, we’ve come to believe that the only fitness that is worthwhile is that which can be measured externally. The fitness that matters most is gauged internally, where things can’t be measured.
Mary Cain Is Fixing Women's Sports | Rich Roll Podcast - YouTube
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