At Train Denver, we believe in training for LIFE!
Getting the fastest time in the gym, hitting a barbell PR, or even developing the coveted 6-pack abs are all awesome and amazing things to celebrate, BUT they are the icing on the cake. Our mission is to empower YOU to live your most full life both inside and outside of the gym. We want you to feel great every day. We want you to have good health markers. We want you to come into the gym consistently to lay the foundation for what the quality of your life looks like 30+ years down the road.
So, where would you put yourself right now on a continuum ranging from sickness to wellness to fitness?
The Sickness- Wellness- Fitness Continuum
CrossFit defines fitness as your work capacity across broad time and modal domains meaning: how effectively can you generate power to complete a wide range of tasks involving a variety of movements and combinations over different time durations (short, medium, long)? Health, on the other hand, equals your fitness measured throughout life as you age. Our goal is to continually improve, maintain, and slow the inevitable decline of your fitness as you age. This requires developing healthy behaviors that support performance at every stage of life, which will lead to overall improvement of health markers.
Exercise and nutrition are ESSENTIAL to preventing sickness and improving your overall health. At any point in your life, your health exists on a continuum that spans from sickness to wellness to fitness. The sickness-wellness-fitness continuum shows the important role of fitness in promoting health.
Sickness
This lies on the left side of the continuum and includes individuals who suffer from chronic diseases, ailments, or poor health habits. Think of someone who rarely exercises, if at all, has a poor diet, and may struggle with health issues like obesity or high blood pressure.
Wellness
Moving across the continuum, we have wellness, which includes individuals who may not be at peak fitness but are actively working towards better health. They engage in some form of exercise, watch their diet to an extent, and take steps to manage stress and other health factors. There is no disease present and health markers are within "normal" ranges.
Fitness (Super-wellness)
At the far right, lies fitness or super-wellness, which includes individuals who have achieved a high level of physical fitness and overall well-being. They consistently engage in exercise that challenges them, maintain a balanced diet, and actively pursue healthy lifestyle habits.
Achieving super-wellness means you have a protective buffer against time and disease. This means your health would need to decline significantly before reaching wellness (normal) and even further before reaching sickness. Individuals with health markers centered around wellness have less room for decline before they reach the state of sickness.
What is tracked on the Continuum?
Many measurements can show you where you lie on this continuum including blood pressure, body-fat percentage, heart rate, and glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels, inflammatory markers, and heart rate to name a few. Understanding and tracking these markers will provide insight into your body and help optimize your health and performance.
Health markers aren't the only metrics that can be tracked on the continuum. Performance markers are important too! These markers such as deadlift weight, Fran time, Mile time, Back Squat weight, or number of unbroken pull ups can be mapped on the continuum. If you are someone who can deadlift 2x your body weight, run a mile in under 8:00, and perform more than 10 strict pull ups unbroken, you are likely sitting closer to the right side of the continuum. This is a sign of optimal physical fitness which can lead to greater resilience against potential health declines.
Our goal is to move along the continuum from left to right by prioritizing exercise and nutrition. CrossFit prepares us for the unknown and unknowable. We don't know what's going to happen in life, but life is going to happen for all of us and we do not have control over it. However, there are certain things that we DO have control over, and if we can use those things to push us towards fitness, we're creating the best line of defense for ourselves if and when something goes awry.
High Fives to that!
