Picture is from the Hunter X Hunter anime series
Greetings to All!! 🙂
It’s been a while since I have taken the time to write in this blog. Lots has occurred within my life and much learning has taken place, so I wanted to share knowing some of my initial writings were dealing with struggles I created out of a goal mentality I held due to an erroneous idea I placed upon my life. The brushed over aforementioned idea was basically that I could bang my body into competition shape, foolhardy, without regard to the natural order of life and the body’s capacity to heal and get stronger. I ran myself into the ground so many times I began to doubt myself and self-sabotage even more. I kept getting injured, having setbacks and being disdainful with my self. Throughout that time, I did have that nagging presence of conscience voicing the need to trust the process, even though it was suppressed for the most part. I was still very immature and not yet in grasp of the wisdom I hold now as I continued to harbor an idea of who I thought I should be. For many years I placed focus and energy on becoming something I thought was worthwhile and important, you know to get acknowledgement and praise outwardly, that I dug holes so deep it took me months and even years to crawl out of. Crawled out I have!! 🙂 Hence my desire to share in the hope that if someone else is going through something similar this might light a path in the direction of their heart.
My last post here was the fact that I opened up a small fitness studio in Miami, Fl. Gymclusive. It surely was the last piece of my RunHolistic puzzle. This type of, what I’ll call, ‘therapeutic fitness with resistance training’ opened up my path to the possibility of being very strong, a healthy type of fit and always ready to handle the challenges life throws at us while having more time to spend enjoying and engaging with life. I took time to heal, get stronger and then push for more growth again. A cycle of breakdown due to exertion and effort against a resistance, in control, meditative even, until the point I am unable to perform another repetition; then, time off doing taiji, spending time with my boys and wife venturing through life, and the feeling, all the while, like I am youthifying myself. Because of this, enjoying the present moment became more important than anything else!
You can see through my previous posts how I approached training (even though I did have hints of what I am now embodying more of). My mindset was locked, hellbent and unrelenting towards a goal for the most part of that time of my life. To be fair, my fitness was sharp, yet that sword was double edged with the other side of ultimate performance being injury or complete systemic fatigue. Now I just feel super capable, loose, light, springy, supple and free from the encumbrance of an ever present achy sore body, tired mind and weakened Spirit.
Since I now understand the proper training stimulus, recovery, overcompensation, and repeat, it’s a different world, one where I listen to my body respecting and loving it first and foremost. Nonetheless, I continue to train for track competitions, and I’ve taken up BJJ/MMA again, and these activities leave me more with that broken down achy sore sensation. Instead of banging it out like I used to, now I just enjoy the process and take it all in stride. That means, there’s a body learning curve and it is our responsibility to understand it and apply it for an ultimate form of a healthy type of fitness. And in more general terms: “Life is a journey to be enjoyed, not a problem to be solved in haste.”
If this resonates with you, feel free to connect with me at Gymclusive to learn a sustainable way to take a healthy body, mind and total being into our elder years. Life is to be had so we need the ability to do so.
Cheers! 🙂