Filling in the framework: Seasonality and Change

So when I set out my philosophical framework for fitness I built it up to a fairly vague sentiment that it had something to do with acknowledging our place within the ecosphere. I've also since referred to it as our strongest selves on our weakest days as well as our weakest selves on our strongest days. Not to mention a more literal prescription of activities that a 'fit' human should partake in. There are plenty of other people out there who will tell you exactly what you need to do day after day to be fit and healthy. What I find more commonly missing is that first point, and more specifically the influence of seasonality on what we do. Or to put it another way, fitness is inherently interlinked with change. Prescribing a single diet or exercise program is acknowledged to be flawed for a population, but people still seem to think they can find the one true answer for them while failing to account for the fact their environment is constantly changing - and if fitness is about resilience and coping with the unexpected or unusual then the lifestyle ought to reflect that.

So what does this mean? Basically I'm saying that doing the same thing all the time is not the healthiest, easiest or most effective approach. Our bodies are hugely complicated systems that have developed to handle changing conditions, both cyclic changes (such as seasonal or even diurnal climatic conditions) and unpredictable chaotic events. It's easy to see that a system that only experiences a constant steady-state input is incredibly vulnerable to changes to that input. I won't go further into chaos theory now but suffice to say the stronger system is one which is able to make compromises to adapt, and as a species our success is down to this ability. To be human is to be resilient to change. But if you try to achieve this by controlling your environment and holding the inputs steady, don't be surprised if things break down when you lose control. Better to learn how to work with your body on what it excels at.

I should probably bring this back to ground and focus back in on popular conceptions of fitness. From the training side, this isn't terribly controversial. Cyclic programs are many and varied, linear progression is accepted to be a reasonable model up to a point, but ultimately people are comfortable with the idea that they need 'rest' days (or days of varying intensity), that they generally require deload weeks, and beyond that athletes aim to peak for their competitive season. Sure, people dismiss random chaotic workouts designed to 'confuse' the muscle, but they do embrace progressive overload which is to say that performing that something should change from workout to workout. And then there are those who advocate sub-maximal loads, or fartlek runs (where you vary speed according to how you feel). There's no single right answer. As noted in my previous post, if you are doing this things, then you are fulfilling part of your fitness lifestyle. How you structure it, what goals you have to motivate you, whether you want to concentrate on perfecting the technique of a small number of exercises so that you can get an increased training effect or just want to get up every day and challenge yourself in new unexpected ways, it's all details. Trying to find the optimal workout is going to be different for every person, and for every day, and for every year. Perfection is only achievable for one specific set of circumstances at one moment in time. Be fit, not crazy.

It's one thing to be comfortable with the abstract idea of change and variation being the way we work, but is that really why I made such a fuss about nature? No, when it comes to aspects of lifestyle other than physical activity, considering the environment becomes a bigger issue. The other main pillars as far as fitness go are diet and sleep, and while some people are experimenting with these varying from day-to-day, fewer and fewer think about variations over the course of a year, except perhaps to entrain their habits with their competitive activity cycles. This is the cart driving the horse. I say fewer people think about this because in the past they had no option. In fact only going back 100 years we have people going to bed when it got dark, and eating only what was available locally and was in season. They slept more in winter, and ate more in summer. Ok, so seasonal variations are different from place to place and another remarkable faculty we have as a species is to have adapted to a fairly large range of ecosystems, but each of those is still internally consistent. Places where days are of fairly constant length still have different foods available than places nearer the poles where the seasons are more marked. And our expansion into these areas took time and has driven differences in genetics. And within a generation we have created a new, entirely artificial and inconsistent environment where the sun shines whenever we want and we can eat anything at any time. Naturally when faced with this choice we tend to always create the most favourable inputs, and as a consequence we become more vulnerable. I'll leave it here for now and pick it up again when I look at the evolution of nutrition in more detail.

An exercise in bifurcation

It should come as no surprise that I could take issue with the definition of resistance training. Usually it's set up in dichotomy with 'cardio', which is really no better defined. Do they refer to different classes of exercise? Anyone who has ever done high volume barbell complexes or tried to run up a hill could tell you the limitations of that approach. Perhaps then we can define them by their impact on the body, but what physical activity doesn't involve muscle contraction or the cardio-vascular system? These terms have become shorthand for opposite ends of a spectrum that in reality has more than one dimension.

Now I could spend some time coming up with a handy graphic at this point, but what we're talking about here is strength, endurance, agility, technique etc. No training is going to exclusively affect only one of these areas. For the elite athlete this kind of reductionist approach may be necessary to beat the competition, but it's a complication we can do without. That's why I appreciate the step away from these terms in the Primal literature. Instead there is an identification of moving slowly a lot, moving quickly occasionally, and lifting (and moving) heavy things occasionally. If we allow that the body is a heavy object, then all of these can actually be fulfilled by moving around an appropriate environment (ie. one that includes climbing, gradients, the ideal obstacle course if you will). I'd recover our dichotomy by saying that we want to:

• be physically engaged most of the time - moving under our own power or just supporting our own weight, small details such as the mobility and strength involved in getting up and down from the floor
• occasionally exert ourselves beyond our comfort zone - stressing all our systems to trigger adaptation is how we grow, and in life we either grow or decline

All the scientific/ancestral/logical reasons for doing something can be fit to these without the negative connotations that cloud so much thinking.

Of course, these are still pretty vague, and as soon as we start talking about training strategies rather than being representations of normal day-to-day life then we do have to get more technical. The key here though is that fitness is not served simply through one thing or the other. However we go about it, whether regular walks, standing desks, sprawling in the floor instead of the couch, practising yoga or being a member of a nomadic tribe you will be missing out if you don't find ways to significantly increase the percentage of the waking day spent being awake - or to put it another way significantly decrease the time spent zoned out slumped in a chair. And similarly whether you sprint up hills, climb trees or rocks, do gymnastics, play rugby, or just find something really heavy and pick it up you need to include these sorts of activities to maintain a healthy body, preserve (or build) lean mass, strength, coordination.

It's increasingly popular to identify diet as the main factor behind fitness. More often than not, people are actually conflating fitness with fatness. Nutrition is obviously a massive issue, and will be addressed in later posts, but if a currently healthy person does the activities above then they would have to try very hard to sabotage their fitness. I don't really want to separate diet and exercise, I believe they're synergistic, I merely want to stress the point that fitness isn't necessarily a visual thing. For that matter, it's not always ideal to live by athletic goals. We define metrics to evaluate progress as a matter of necessity, much as we have training programs because our working lives don't provide the physical stimulation we need. But for my money, fitness is doing the right things however imperfectly, and growing as a person. An individual may pursue a specific activity to compete and excel, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are more fit. If they do so without compromising anything else then great - many people need that drive and it's inspiring to see what can be achieved, but that doesn't have to be the target. Exertion is relative, and if done properly should naturally lead to progress.

Similarly, official guidelines of 30 minutes a day may be a useful strategy to get people started in the real world, but you need other changes to follow on to call it a truly fitter lifestyle. So, as far as exercise goes, is there more you could be doing throughout the day? Is there some aspect you're overlooking? Or does the idea of being able to cover 15 miles in a day, run up a hill, or lift your own bodyweight seem impossible to achieve? There's always something you can do however small to move forward - even if it starts with stepping back.