Health is fitness perpetuated with those you love.

Yesterday I talked about the definition of fitness: work capacity across broad time and modal domains. Today I wanted to show a graphical representation of one’s fitness, and then graph it across a lifetime thus showing one’s health.

Below you will see a graph with power on the y-axis and time on the x-axis. The plotted dots on the graph represent various fitness activities that can be performed inside and outside of the gym. If you measured the force, distance, and time of each activity, this graph would be precise.

After plotting benchmark data, you would then need to draw a “line of best-fit.” It would look something like this:

Since work is the derivative of power, I can then calculate one’s fitness across broad time and modal domains. In other words, the area under the curve represents your fitness today.

But that’s just your fitness. If I wanted to accurately measure your health, I would need another variable. Since we define health as fitness perpetuated, I drew in a z-axis that represents your age.

With this third variable, I can continuously plot your fitness across progressing ages of your life. This will then begin to form a three-dimensional solid.

This solid allows me to find the total volume of fitness perpetuated across your life (i.e. your health!) It would look something like this:

Isn’t that incredible? With this model, fitness and health can finally be measured!

Instead of using lagging indicators like blood pressure and body fat, I can now predict your health through benchmark workouts. All I need to know is your age, the weight on the bar, the distance it traveled, and how long it took you. Then, I can tell you how healthy you are!

This is why we use a leveling-method at RxFIT. These levels help me not only see your deficiencies in work capacity, but also predict the overall health of our community. And it’s perfectly in line with my mission of creating healthy cities all across Utah.

For example, the medical community relies on lagging indicators like bone density and body fat to assess your health. They plot your data on a continuum that starts with sickness, passes through wellness, and ends at fitness (“super wellness”). Doctors are trained at treating disease, not preventing it–so as long as your biomarkers aren’t bad, you’re good.

To use an analogy, if doctors are life guards, my coaches are swim coaches. Instead of learning how to treat sickness, our staff is trained on how to get you to fitness. We don’t want to resuscitate you, we want to ensure that you never drown in the first place!

So, instead of regularly testing lagging indicators that do nothing but tell me that you’re sick, we use predictive indicators that represent work capacity. Our leveling-method plots your fitness across eight colors to ensure positive returns in energy for your life.

The nice thing about being in the brown color (and beyond) is that it provides a hedge against sickness. In other words, a fit person can’t ever become sick unless they first pass through wellness.

Strive to keep working so your overall level at RxFIT reaches the brown-level. When you get there, stay there by remaining consistent.

Which leaves us with the final aspect of health. Health is having the capacity to do anything, at anytime, with anyone. Yesterday I covered how to be able to do anything. Today I covered how to do it at anytime in your life.

Tomorrow I’m going to give you some strategies on how to encourage your family and friends so you can do it with anyone.

Tyler