The Morality of Fitness

FatherJohn Corapi is a well known Catholic preacher, scholar, and theologian.  He also happens to be a black belt in karate, a former competitive boxer, and football player.  In this video he addresses concerns over his health and his startling weight loss.  He begins by assuring the people who care about him that he is not sick at all; in fact he is healthier than ever!  Father then goes on to remind us that fitness is a moral obligation we all have.  As Fr. Corapi states in his video address, “we are all precious, unique, and unrepeatable.”   Take care of yourselves!

You do not have to be Catholic to benefit from Father Corapi’s thoughts on fitness.  In fact, his words transcend religion and get to the heart of being human.  As he says, if you know there’s action you can take to improve your health, such as diet and exercise, you must do it. 

Stay healthy and strong!

Want to know more?  Check out Warrior Fitness: Conditioning for Martial Arts!

Motivation

Everything sounds like a great idea when you are thinking about it and planning it out. The problem, as they say, is in the execution. Sunday afternoon you are superbly confident of your plan to get up at 5 AM Monday morning and do your prescribed workout. However, when that alarm goes off, suddenly your mind finds every excuse in the book to hit the snooze button and sleep “just 10 more minutes….” How do you remedy this? What do you do in the early hours of the morning to drive the demons of laziness out of your head and get up to get that workout done? Well, there really is just one way. Force yourself. Drag yourself. Make yourself get up and do it. I know, that’s not what you wanted to hear. You expected something magical, something logical, something practical, something that wouldn’t require you to exert any effort to make it happen. Me too. I used to think the same way. Why isn’t there some sort of crazy mental trick I can use to motivate myself? Why does it have to be so hard to force myself to get up and get the workout done? There actually is a trick, in a way. It’s called the law of accommodation. Whatever you keep doing over and over again becomes easier. If I’m lazy and unmotivated, then as I repeat that action of hitting the snooze alarm, it becomes easier for me. If I drag my lazy ass out of bed and make it to my basement gym just one day, it becomes slightly easier the next. As I keep pushing, prodding, coaxing, cajoling myself to get up at 5 AM and workout, it becomes habitual. It becomes easy. My body and brain naturally “accommodate” me. Don’t just do it. Get it Done.

How do you get and stay motivated?  Discuss!

The “I Don’t Have What I Need to Start” Myth

So many people want to begin a diet or start an exercise program, but labor under the false pretense that they can’t start because they don’t have what they need yet and therefore have to wait.  For example…

“I want to start my diet, but I didn’t get to the grocery store, therefore I have to wait.”

“I want to start working out, but I don’t have a gym membership, so I have to wait.”

“I want to start working out, but I don’t have the right equipment yet, so I have to wait.”

Or, one of my favorite ones, “I want to start an exercise program, but I don’t have time right now so I have to wait.”

None of these things are true!

They seem like such insurmountable hurdles only because the people who subscribe to them are looking for excuses. They somehow believe that if the excuse is good enough, then they are, well, excused. That they are off the hook. They tried. Better luck next time. Maybe things will be different – NOT!

The problem is that things will never be different unless you actively do something to make them different. You want to lose weight? Start now. You want to be in better shape? Start now. You want to improve your athletic performance or martial art skill? Start now. Don’t wait. Don’t let those excuses become so entrenched in your psyche that you actually start believing them. Start right HERE right now.

Goals for 2010

Happy New Year!

Welcome to Warrior Fitness in 2010. This year, like every year, is full of potential. It’s a new beginning, another opportunity to change, to reinvent yourself for the better. To make improvements by forging your body physically, challenging yourself mentally, and growing spiritually. There is a sense of excitement at all the possibilities that lay before us.

How will you change yourself this year? What goals have you set? What do you want to accomplish in your training and in your life? Whether the goal is to improve your fitness levels for martial arts training, to enhance your performance in those martial arts, to lose weight, to gain muscle, to improve mobility and increase flexibility, or just to be a healthier, more fit you, Warrior Fitness can help you achieve all these goals and more.

January is the busiest time of the year for gyms and health clubs, but guess what? In February, those places are ghost towns. How do all those well meaning goals become unsustainable for so many, so quickly? How can you assure yourself that your motivation won’t quit, that your will won’t weaken? One way to do this is to have someone else hold you accountable for your goal setting, progress, and accomplishment. Motivation is a funny thing. When we think no one is watching, it becomes much easier to slack off or make an excuse to ourselves as to why we can’t workout today, or why those cookies are better for us than that salad. When you must hold yourself accountable to a third party, it’s much harder to stray from the goals you have set.

Warrior Fitness offers personal training services, both in person and online, to help you hold yourself accountable. Together, we will set goals, create a step-by-step plan to meet them, and work toward achieving them. If you would like more information, or want to get started now, please email me here. and reinvent yourself this year!