What is fitness for?
Function >>> aesthetics
For a long time, fitness has been treated as a means to a visible end.
For women, those ends have typically been: get smaller and weigh less. When a particular method doesn’t result in weight loss, it’s cast off and swapped for something else. Who cares if you can move better if you still haven’t lost those inches?
Plenty of people online talk about how this approach is fatphobic and damaging. We know it can spark unhealthy relationships with exercise and food. But what’s often lost in the conversation is the fact that exercise on its own is good. Like all good things, it can be abused, but the body needs to move.
Over the last five years, I’ve interviewed people — many of them in the CrossFit space — whose fitness practices directly influence the rest of their lives. I’ve met people who are paralyzed and use exercise to maintain a level of independence that their peers once thought impossible. I’ve heard the story of a woman who was run over by a car three times in a row and survived because, as her doctor explained, her muscles basically held her together. I’ve written about an adult daycare for folks dealing with dementia where exercise is part of the daily curriculum, because along with being good for our bodies, physical activity is good for our brains.
All of these examples challenge the popular idea that fitness is only for attaining a certain look. When your concern is being able to pick up your children or climb back into your wheelchair or remember how to tie your shoes, fitness takes on a different purpose. It’s more basic and useful than “getting a bigger butt” or “winning a bodybuilding competition.” Rather than being laser-focused on a visible outcome, this approach sets its sights on what athletes call performance.
Performance-focused goals can take a variety of forms. Depending on your fitness level, yours might be to carry all the groceries in one trip, take long walks without getting lightheaded, give your niece a piggyback ride, or deadlift 300 pounds.
Unlike aesthetic goals, performance goals are concerned with what you can actually control. You don’t determine how your body looks in response to your good-faith efforts to get fit, which means some appearance-focused goals may never be attainable. But if you’re training consistently, your body will adapt and get better at what you’re training it for.
The more you run, the easier it will be to kick up your heels for a quick mile or two. The more you lift, the stronger you’ll get. All you have to do is consistently complete your training sessions (and, of course, recover).
Performance goals place the emphasis on the core purpose of exercise: maintaining or improving physical function.
While exercise does change body composition, those changes are a result of the body adapting to the demands of exercise. When you challenge the body in a new or more difficult way, it will start to make changes to be better prepared for the next challenge. The more you challenge the body, the more changes it will make.
Your body isn’t concerned with its appearance; it’s concerned with keeping you alive. It’s not trying to “snatch” your waist or “bulk up” your biceps. It’s simply responding to the demands of exercise so that next time, it won’t be caught so off-guard. These adaptations lend themselves to better performance. (That’s why cardio is good for your heart: purposefully increasing your heart rate strengthens your body’s most important muscle.)
Exercise, then, is not about punishing your body. It’s not about achieving perfection — visually or otherwise — or proving you’re a certain type of person. It’s simply part of taking care of yourself. It’s a way to maintain and expand your physical abilities so you can continue enjoying simple pleasures like a Saturday morning bike ride or surprise yourself by doing your first pullup or squatting your bodyweight.
Maybe you start working out because you want to lose weight or fit into your jeans better. That’s fine. Everyone needs a “why” to get started. But the reason you start working out may not necessarily be the reason you keep working out. My hope is, if you, like so many people, embarked on your fitness journey with aesthetics-focused goals, that you’ll eventually transition to longer-lasting and more satisfying “why”s that have nothing to do with your appearance.
Setting Your Performance-Based Goal
Is there something you’ve wanted to be able to do for a long time, but for whatever reason have not yet achieved? Maybe you want to run a 5k or do a Tough Mudder or get your first pullup. Hone into those physical interests and choose one “feat” to pursue. Then, work toward that feat a few times each week in your training.
Do all of those options sound awful? Then forget the word “feat”. Instead, think of a physical activity you enjoyed at some point in your life. It could be anything: swimming, playing on the playground, hopscotch, basketball. Now, set a goal to simply do that thing (or its adult equivalent) more often. For example, playground-lovers could do hangs and pull work on a pullup rig.
My current performance-based goals: Increase my pushup and pullup strength, do unassisted pistol squats to full depth.
What’s coming up:
Women of the 2023 CrossFit Open
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