Recently I was reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and found this that he had written about his adoptive father: “He took a reasonable care of his body’s health, not as one who was greatly attached to life, nor out of regard to personal appearance, nor yet in a careless way, but so that, through his own attention, he very seldom stood in need of the physician’s art or of medicine or external applications.”
If you aren’t familiar, Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor (A.D. 121-180), and while his writings are from long ago and in a very different world, this description stands out to me as perhaps the minimal ideal for a body owner.
One of the driving reasons for me to choose my career path as a fitness trainer is my belief that biomechanics has the biggest impact on quality of life. Something as simple as adjusting posture can be the difference in spending every day in pain or not. Or, how hip strengthening and alignment can make your exercise more effective as well as less damaging to your joints.
This is not to say that I don’t still love to see how much weight you can lift or how excited you get when you see the definition of your muscles that you have worked so hard to develop. I am merely saying that the all-or-nothing model shouldn’t apply to our health. Instead, as a baseline, it makes sense to me that we should all take reasonable care of our body’s health.
As always, let me know how I can help.
Adam
If you aren’t familiar, Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor (A.D. 121-180), and while his writings are from long ago and in a very different world, this description stands out to me as perhaps the minimal ideal for a body owner.
One of the driving reasons for me to choose my career path as a fitness trainer is my belief that biomechanics has the biggest impact on quality of life. Something as simple as adjusting posture can be the difference in spending every day in pain or not. Or, how hip strengthening and alignment can make your exercise more effective as well as less damaging to your joints.
This is not to say that I don’t still love to see how much weight you can lift or how excited you get when you see the definition of your muscles that you have worked so hard to develop. I am merely saying that the all-or-nothing model shouldn’t apply to our health. Instead, as a baseline, it makes sense to me that we should all take reasonable care of our body’s health.
As always, let me know how I can help.
Adam
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