swer to those questions, while completely reliant on one’s per- spective, typically makes your mind run to one of two places: fitness in terms of body composition or fitness in terms of performance. There are many subcategories within the two and sometimes they overlap - but for the most part, we (as humans often do) have tried to compartmental- ize and categorize something that probably should not have been constricted in the first place. The result is ambiguity, lack of a solid definition and false measurement. Fitness (or being in shape)
W
STEP OUT OF PAIN The Rossiter Way
Neck & Shoulder Pain • Arm, Wrist & Hand Pain
Golfer’s or Tennis Elbow • Low Back Pain & Sciatica Hip Pain & Knee Pain
• Plantar Fasciitis
hat is fitness? How do you know some- one is fit? The an-
has become almost an en- tirely visual concept. If some- one has a 6 pack and a lot of muscle definition are they fit?
Maybe they are fit, or maybe it is superficial. What we tend to overlook is that at
one time, fitness was a measure of how likely we, as a species, were to survive. Accord- ing to the New Oxford American Dictionary, fitness is:
an organism’s ability to survive and reproduce in a particular environment. Our particular environment now is city streets, office buildings, cars and living rooms. But what was life like before the advent of "civilization"? Humans have developed the ability to manipulate their environment, however, we still cannot escape our basic needs. Fitness is a term thrown around far too often and everybody
Kathy Howard, LMBT # 2259 Senior Rossiter Instructor / Massage Terapist
336-708-1727
Kathy@RossiterSoutheast.com
1400 Battleground Avenue, Suite 213 Greensboro, NC
ROSSITER CENTER 18
www.RossiterSoutheast.com
NaturalTriad.com
has the solution. Advertisers promise quick fixes and show you ads with people smiling, with bleached white teeth, while they are walking on the treadmill or lifting weights. It has been estab- lished by the medical and exercise community that exercise is good for you. Everybody recommends different amounts of train- ing: 3 days a week strength training; 60 minutes of cardio/day for weight loss; 1 day of vigorous exercise. While some of these plans are better than others, most neglect how we are actually designed to move and expend energy. To figure out how we are supposed to move and “exercise” (using that term liberally be- cause it did not use to be exercise like we think of it) we need to look at the environment of early humans and what skills they needed to survive from day to day. Before the agricultural revolution, people had to hunt, fish and gather their food, dam rivers and build shelters. These ac- tivities were time consuming and physically demanding. People followed migrating herds of animals and food supplies. Some- times, there was famine; sometimes people ate well. Our entire lives revolved around the acquisition of food, maintaining shel- ter and finding water. We, as humans, like to separate ourselves from other animals because we are intelligent - but we all need food, water and shelter (or some type of niche, like thick fur) to survive.
An often overlooked aspect of our modern day interpretation is the notion of alertness. In a world with no hospitals, the small-
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