Health vs. Fitness???

After an almost 3 hour visit with my alternative medicine doctor Darrick Sahara, DC, AK, I’ve been questioning myself, and my purpose as a fitness professional. I’ve been wondering what exactly my purpose in the health care field is? I mean sure people who are more fit tend to get sick and ill less often than their unfit counterparts, but if Dr. Sahara can actually do what he claims to do, which is basically hit the reset button on your system, and totally make you strong again- what’s my purpose, and certainly what is the purpose of multiple sessions with me or someone like me? I mean isn’t that what exercise over time is suppose to do; be a sort of reset button for your movement so that you can adapt and get strong, endurant, flexible, better posture, or whatever… ?

Now, before you go on reading I’m not depressed, and there’s a reason why I’m putting these questions to myself and out in the open for you to read about. But to understand that you need just a little background on what has happened the last few weeks.

First, I’m injured again! If you know anything about my background, then you know I’ve been injured multiple times in my athletic career; the most significant being: my elbow reconstruction, Quadricep tear, and fractured shins- three injuries that ended my baseball career. The injury I have to deal with now is a disc herniation in my cervical spine, and the multiple other bulges shown on the MRI. The symptoms that I am having are called cervical rediculopathy from the infringement upon the root of the C7 nerve.

Second, I believe that I am the fittest I’ve ever been. In fact I believed this claim so much, that I think that even though I haven’t run in over 2 years, if someone asked me to run a 10k I could. My heart is in that type of condition, and even though it might not be smart if I had to do something I could. In fact I was once asked why I train, and my response was, “so if the world blows up and I am projected into space that I would survive in space the longest”- (to which the friend immediately responded: hahahahahahha; moron).

Why am I going to a Doctor of Alternative Medicine? That’s easy to avoid the surgery recommended by my neurologist, to avoid stoping my martial arts and strength training practice recommended by my physical therapist, and to get back to Jiu Jitzui and my crazy phone book tearing self. Furthermore I believe in the power of the body to get over a lot! I’ve been through many different stresses in my life from weeks with almost no sleep, to playing with broken fingers, muscle and joint spains/strains, and even playing baseball with 1 eye being patched; Furthermore so far I’m even surviving a life with a wife and kids - (my wife is going to “kill” me for saying that one, lol). Even furthermore, this injury was probably sustained the easiest way I’ve ever been injured; I never even knew I was injured until two days after the incident. In essence WTH- How did a guy at the fittest point of his life get injured without ever even knowing it?

My Western Medical Pro’s would suggest that I had something structurally wrong that is common in my age group that was asymptomatic before, and became inflamed after taking on new challenges. Yet I don’t believe them entirely. Maybe I’m weird but I believe I was physically fit enough to handle the stresses of my new martial art, even if I was structurally misaligned. In essence I believe something else went wrong; I believe that somehow I wasn’t recovering - (whatever I could’ve done) - and that my health failed. Enter in Dr. Sahara!

With all this said last Wed, I went into an appointment at 1230pm with him and was tested and worked on until about 3pm. Now he didn’t give me a blood and urine test, but looked at my blood pressure, and heart rate in different positions, and then pushed on my arm in an almost undetectable way, and came up with the result that I needed some sort of solution spray for adhesions and scars, that I needed 4 leiters of water/day, that I needed him to rub “the living hell” out of my chest with his knuckle, and that I needed more meat, less fruit, and no nuts- HIP HIP HURAH MORE MEAT! After all of this I then past my subscapularis manual muscle test, as well as my lat and triceps test- which have all been weak since my injury, and these were not just assessed by him, but by my PT, MD, and me. After all this I began wondering, “If it’s really that easy to get a muscle strong enough, then what am I practicing?”

First off- I thought- My practice as a fitness pro is important for biomechanical concerns, obviously. So if you come to me because you don’t know how to squat, I can teach you. But that certainly can’t take as many sessions as I sell, nor should it.

Second off I’m important to people who need to lose weight or who want to reach some sort of fitness goal- i.e. bench press a certain amount or get into the splits, run a marathon, etc. There are plenty of studies out there to suggest that people who pay for trainers get more results than those who don’t. Furthermore, because I’m NSCA and RKC certified I’m more than well versed in the science of training for fitness, sport performance, and everyday performance needs. Yet once again this stuff is just like learning to squat- it’s really purely mechanical, and a matter of your work ethic, and a little coaching; IT’S NOT REALY THE WHOLE OF HEALTH. And although all of these points make what I do important, because I do enable your fitness, performance, and health, what I do is certainly not the pinnacle of what needs to be done for great health, and because health is so much if you wonder to far from it you’ll feel it despite your fitness.

See many people sign up with the idea that somehow they’re going to achieve this healthy being from training with me, because to most fitness is health. But health is so much more than just being strong, flexible, muscularly endurant, cardiovascularly endurant, in the right body composition, or even able to perform whatever you’re doing in a better- stronger/safer way. Look I’ve said it many times throughout the years- “fitness is rooted in its five aspects!” And I should have said this more, “health doesn’t end with being fit!”

In other words, Health is this huge encompassing idea. I mean fitness isn’t small, and certainly by being fit you are helping your health in many different ways, but being healthy is so much more , and to be honest it’s so big of an idea I’m not sure how to define it. It seems like it’s not just being alive and thriving, which fitness has quite a bit to do with, but it’s something so big it takes a team of people to find, get, or even understand. Yet while health is so big it’s also so small, and easy to picture when it is absent or not wholly present. I mean we all feel when we aren’t healthy- i.e. when we need recovery/a vacation, less stress, more happiness, more faith, more support, less adversity, more security, etc… . Yet there are just so many feelings that seemingly need satisfying, that while we feel them we don’t seem to be able to meet all of them. This is where I think both Dr. Sahara, and I fit in, and perhaps everyone in the health care community- we all help people meet some aspect of the giant idea that is health. And although this experience has brought me to an enlightened perspective about just how big it all is, one thing remains completely unquestionable that in the end although fitness isn’t everything it’s a big part of what total health is. How big of a part it is, is a topic I’ll leave for another article.