Faith and Fitness

I've often been the guy who found a deep desire to motivate others and pour into them out of a sacrificial type of love. I've always given freely of myself-whether praying for a member of my local church or pushing someone to get out that last rep for a set of twenty of "whatever's". It's one thing to motivate others and help them attain their goals. I love asking the hard questions more and more, but I'm finding myself lacking in the self-motivating aspect- or at least I keep convincing myself negatively. As a member of the clergy (other leaders always jokingly call me "Pastor"), or as a personal trainer, or as a peer advocate at the methadone clinic that I work at, I've always prided myself in taking a sour situation and turning it sweet. For the others. But not me.

I would always give to the point that I poured out so much that there was never enough for me, or my wife, or my kids. I would finish a full day of working with the people that struggle with the disease of addiction followed by working with clients that don't want to think of what the proper succession of exercises have to go in whatever order. They just want to "pick things up and put them down." I pour into people all day, hoping for their "best outcome yet."

But what I'm going to talk about is how the human body needs to have the right cycles of push and pull; of might and restoration; of destroy and build. That requires a schedule of training and recovery. There is a careful balance that we must maintain in order to bring optimal performance results in a controlled setting, with a whole big life surrounding it on all sides.

Biologically, we are a mass of cells, organized in systems; systems like the integumentary (skin), the digestive. the excretory, the endocrine- to say a few. There is a very careful balance that comprises how the human body functions. We forget that sometimes.

A moment captured in a time of passion and vitality.

Let's put it this way. There is stimulus and reaction. A body in motion must remain in motion. Newton's first law states that is a body at rest or moving at a constant speed in a straight line at constant speed in a straight line, it will remain at rest or keep moving in a straight line at constant speed unless it is acted upon by a force. Muscle doesn't grow unless you use it. Move something up and down.

The main point of this discussion is for you to hopefully realize that anybody, and any BODY can improve through movement. As long as there isn't a disorder that doesn't allow you to adapt properly, every person has the capacity to grow and evolve- body, soul and spirit!!!