Form Follows Function

I understand the urge to look a certain way and lose weight and I also understand how frustrating it can be to not be where you want to be. The frustration and stress generated by a negative focus ("I'm not where I want to be") don't help your progress and can serve to sabotage your efforts. That's why I'm going to ask you to stop worrying about it and shift your focus to something  more positive. By improving the areas of health and skill related fitness (cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, power, speed, agility, flexibility, reaction time, balance), this is the function part of our equation, then the form, the where you want to be, will follow!

If you concentrate on getting stronger, faster, more flexible, etc than you are now, you will lose weight, feel wonderful, have fun, and you'll get where you want to be. Constantly focusing on how you're not there yet will lead to you never getting there at all. It's frustrating for me to see how some people literally only care about the aesthetics of their body and not with how functional or healthy it is (or isn't). You can be as skinny and hot as you want, but a heart attack will kill you just the same. You can be as skinny and hot as you want, but when it comes time to move your furniture around and there's no one to help you it will do you absolutely no good. Osteoporosis doesn't care if you're aesthetically pleasing, nor does cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, the list goes on.

Please think about what being active and eating a healthy diet do for your living longer, living healthier, living happier, being more functional, and warding off diseases instead of what size jeans you think will make you perfect (even if you have to cram into them dammit!). Form will follow function.

Being fit and healthy will do more for you than you ever imagined. Have you ever been in a car accident? Were you hurt? If so, would you give anything to not be hurt? You may know that in March 2011 I was in a very serious car accident. I was stopped in a line of traffic in my Honda Civic and got rear ended at about 40 miles per hour by an International truck into another International truck. Everyone who saw the wreckage assumed I was dead because no one could have survived it. Including the guy at the impound lot when I went to get my stuff out my car the next day. Yes, I walked in there the next day to get my stuff out of my car after that. I was sore for a couple weeks, but I walked away from this:



 with whiplash that subsided within a couple weeks and a minor bulging disc in my lumbar. That's it. If you know anything about these kinds of accidents, if you do survive them you generally have major back injuries, shoulder injuries, hand injuries, brain injuries, and who knows what else.  I basically walked away unharmed. Why? My doctors and myself credit my muscular strength and flexibility. I saw the truck about to hit me the moment before it happened and covered my head with my arms and tensed my entire body to it's limit (involuntarily, believe me). My muscles were strong enough that they shielded every joint in my body. My flexibility level allowed my muscles, tendons, and ligaments to stretch with the forces of the impact to keep them from tearing.

The functionality of my body saved my life and gave me the ability to get through that accident without putting me in a wheel chair for the rest of my life (or worse). Personally I only focus on function and I think form has followed quite well, but it wasn't my size 3 (or whatever) pants that saved me that day. Something to think about.

Live well and the rest will follow,
Cassandra Wyzik
ACSM Certified Personal Trainer
Satellite Beach, Brevard County
www.FitToYouBrevard.com