MILO BRYANT: Resolve to understand your body

As the new year began on Thursday, millions of people probably vowed to stop smoking, lose weight, spend extra time with the family, become debt free, quit drinking and spend less money.

Each is admirable.

But didn't we do them last year? Let us look at a different resolution this New Year. This resolution is about physical fitness. But the theory behind the resolution transcends the fitness boundary.

This year let us resolve to understand what we are doing to our bodies and why.

An example: We want better fitness or better bodies. We start jogging. We constantly see people running, and they're obviously burning the calories because they're always running, right?

Add uncommon common sense to this.

Do we jog during our daily lives? The rain pours. We must rush to the car. Do we jog?

Our 2-year-old chases a ball heading toward the street. Do we jog to grab her? Running late to catch a flight, do we jog to the terminal? We play volleyball, softball, soccer, football, baseball, racquetball, tennis and others. Do we jog to get to the ball?

We sprint through life. We rest. We sprint again. We don't jog through life. Ask a runner how often she jogs outside of jogging.

Do not twist this message. If running distance and distance races are the passion, then run. Run as much as the heart wants to run.

But if life does not require our active bodies to move at submaximal levels - jogging - we should understand that life does not necessitate that we train that way.

High-intensity intermittent activities saturate our lives. They should saturate our training, too.

We will talk about these activities in the coming weeks and months.

This resolution applies to fitness professionals, too - the physical therapists, athletic trainers and fitness trainers who help us take care of our bodies. What do we have our clients and patients doing and why? Those folks depend on us to come up with the best ways to help them reach goals. Are we doing that?

Trainers, are we giving a program largely based on what a computer tells us? Computers do not understand our clients; we do. Computers cannot test our clients; we can and should, repeatedly. We should have a system of checks and balances assuring that our prescribed programs do what they should.

Therapists and doctors: Are you diagnosing problems to fit ailments? Or are you getting to the cause of the ailment?

A patient's lower back hurts. Some literature suggests that up to 90 percent of low-back-pain patients will not have an identifiable cause of that pain. Will you take that to be law, or will you test the patient to see if the pain happens because the right glute is so weak that the hamstrings and lower back compensate with the lower back pulling most of that compensation?

Let us resolve to surpass the status quo and understand.

-

Bryant is a former Gazette reporter now living in San Diego. He holds training certifications from the National Strength and Conditioning Association, USA Weightlifting and the Titleist Performance Institute. Reach him through the "contact" link at www.nobullfit.com