When I started my fitness and nutrition efforts, I wanted to lose weight. I figured that getting in shape meant losing 100 pounds. As pounds started to fall off, I realized that I was no longer just interested in weight loss. I wanted to be more fit. Now, fifty pounds in, I’m working up to a challenge.
The premise behind Mark Verstegen’s CORE PERFORMANCE is that fitness is a far more holistic experience than what is being pitched to the average person today. Gone are the ideas that you should stretch, work a few body parts, and do some cardio. Instead, everything in the book points towards full-body exercises, the kind that blur the lines between stretching, cardio, and weight training. In fact, he doesn’t much like most of those terms. He believes we should be after power and strength, and that words like “weight training” and “cardio” are out. I buy it.
I’m starting to feel around the program by working through the exercises, so that I can get used to doing the actions the book prescribes. I must admit that I’m really klutzy about learning new things to do with my body, so I take a slightly longer time than most learning new routines. The one time I *ever* tried aerobics ended after only a few minutes, because I couldn’t do the simplest thing, which was akin to marching in place.
As I’m doing all this, I realize that I no longer care about losing weight. In fact, I’ve made April a scale-free month. I don’t care what I weigh. Instead, I’m focusing on maintaining my good nutrition habits while I shift my fitness program towards something a whole lot more athletic. The people who follow the workouts in CORE PERFORMANCE are people like Nomar Garciaparra of the Boston Red Sox. And I’m not saying that I’m any kind of an athlete, but I’ll tell you this: the program I’m learning about is much more about the motor, and nothing to do with the chrome.
I want to be flexible. I want to be powerful. I want to have strength and endurance. I want to be able to make my body do what I ask it to do.
I’m a little intimidated by the book so far. It’s not going to come easy. I blanched when I read the word “sprints” in one section. But hey, I’ve come pretty far from my fairly low-impact lifestyle. And I’m definitely in a bit of a fitness rut. This program looks like a great “next level” for me to work towards.
I’ll keep you posted.
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