Porsche vs Pick up Truck

Porsche vs Pick up Truck 

 I have talked before about what I call "Best case fitness" and "Worst case fitness". In my opinion best case fitness means you get enough sleep at night, your nutrition is awesome you're getting all the quality food you need. Before and after your work outs you are able to warm up and mobilize properly. You also have great supplements to support your body. I think of Best case fitness as a sports car. Sports cars get the best fuel, they have special tires and great mechanics to work on them. They race on the nicest tracks where the debris and dirt are cleared off the track for them. They get transported from race to race. For what they need to do they are amazingly fast and nibble on the race track. I adequate best case fitness to Pro athletes or peoples lives focused on a competitive endeavor. 

Worst case fitness in my opinion is where you don't get enough sleep, you can't eat good food regularly, when you work out it's quick and you don't have much time for extras around your work out. You don't have time to mobilize and you're not taking any supplements. I imagine worst case fitness as an older pick up truck. You give it the cheapest gas, you only put money into it when it needs to be fixed. You abuse that pick up truck by driving it off road, hauling heavy loads and it just keeps right on trucking. I adequate worst case fitness to ("life") times in your life where work, family, obligations and other distractions take over. 

SO what happens when you race the Porsche against the Pick up on a race track the Porsche wins of course. What happens when the Porsche and Pick up have to race on a dirt road and they have to pull a boat, who wins? The pick up wins because no matter the load or any other factors it keeps right on trucking.

There have been a couple times in my life that I've been the pick up truck(besides being slow and old). Two prime examples were when I was in the Army and when my twin sons were born. In the Army if you need to get to an objective or accomplish a mission it didn't matter how much sleep or how much you had eaten in the past couple days. You had to get the job done. When the boys were born at first Katie and I didn't sleep much because the boys were smaller so we had to wake them both up every two hours to eat so they could gain weight. In the Army often you have to go to the field(training) for weeks at a time. When we were in the field you don't have much but we would find anything that we could use to work out with. We would flip tires, lift tow bars, carry water cans. For what we we needed it worked great. When the boys were born I worked out whenever I could get a chance but it didn't matter what I did for a work out or how long I got to work out I got it done and I always felt a hundred times better after I got to work out. 

Even now sometimes I'm not able to warm up before a work out(which I don't necessarily recommend) it's not because I don't want to. Maybe somebody needs a last minute partner for a workout and I wasn't planning on doing that work out. Other times I don't warm up because I want to prove to myself that I don't need 5 minutes to warm up and 5 minutes to mobilize before I want to 

work out. I just take what I can get. None of that makes me tough or smart and I'm not telling you that to me make me sound macho. I telling you that because having a mentality that it doesn't matter that you didn't get eight hours of sleep last night or didn't eat enough food before you work out is a useful tool. Plenty of sleep and adequate food aren't real barriers that should stop you. There just excuses that keep you from getting what want/need to do. I use the example of working out but it could be anything. Having the mental attitude that it doesn't matter what is going on you're going to get the job done is useful in all parts of your life.

Now I believe we should treat ourselves like "Porsche's" but we should always have that pick up truck mentality. You should try to get enough sleep, eat good whole foods, drink plenty of water and spend time on your mobility and recovery. But if time and "life" doesn't allow that who cares just get it done anyway. Mentally you are capable of so much more than you know. Mental attitude has more to do with performance then food, water or sleep. Their are people in this world have survived unimaginable events on pure mental toughness alone. On top of having mental toughness don't wait for a perfect moment or perfect timing or perfect solution to do anything there's only right now and procrastinating. Go work out or go be active or go attack that huge project at work or whatever it is that's in your way and don't let an excuse or anything else that might pop up stop you.

I hope this doesn't sound preachy that wasn't my intention. One of the biggest things I hope people get out of our gym is that Pick up truck mentality and mental toughness. We have a choice everyday, we can choose to let outside factors decide our fate or we can choice to ignore those outside factors and take personal ownership of our day.