Could You Be Allergic to Sickness?

A few weeks ago, Coach Teal, gave a guest lecture in our coaches development meeting on the inverse relationship fitness has with sickness. It’s an interesting topic that Greg Glassman used (with three other models) in an attempt to objectively define who specifically is “fit.” 

The general premise is that when any number of objective health measures (i.e. body fat percentage, 2K row time, LDL cholesterol levels, resting heart rate, 1RM deadlift, etc) are worse a person is generally more sick and less fit. And, when they are outstanding, a person is somewhere on a spectrum that is more fit and less sick. Furthermore, someone with an incredible body fat percentage, work capacity, and blood panels is a person that would find it harder to become unhealthy. 

Recently, Facebook memories showed me a throwback photo of me doing a double bodyweight back squat. It was eleven years ago and I still own this capacity today. It doesn’t take much mental gymnastics to see that having this capacity for decades wouldn’t just serve itself, but it would have a tendency to resist decline. 

Last week, I met with my gym owner mentor, and we laughed about a comment I made about him almost twenty years ago when he took a break from lifting weights. I said then that, “He’s been so fit for so long, it won’t matter.” 

He can’t not have a six pack. 

We laughed about it, because it’s true. What I like most about this sentiment isn’t the obsession with being fit. I don’t think that’s what we’re saying here. I think that if we took the pressure off the moment and viewed training as a fifty or sixty year long game, we’d all reap unimaginable benefits. 

If you can string together some GPP capacity for twenty or thirty years, you’re going to be so much harder to kill. And, we love that, don’t we?