Our fitness is something we must build. And like all solid building projects it must be built from the ground up and with a strong foundation. Enter the Theoretical Hierarchy of Physical Development – a no-nonsense approach to how we must layer our health and fitness to reach our athletic potential.
Let’s break it down:
Nutrition: The foundation of our fitness pyramid. We are what we eat and our fitness starts at a molecular level. Our athletic ability is supported by our fuel. Eat shit, perform shit – simple.
Metabolic Conditioning: The next building block to our health and fitness is what we commonly refer to as ‘cardio’ – it’s best described as our bodies ability to store and deliver oxygen. You can have all the strength and skill you want – if your body can’t supply enough energy you won’t get the opportunity to use it to its fullest potential.
Gymnastics: With our energy source and supply sorted in the foundations we can develop our physical ability – first through moving our body. Gymnastics is where we build control over of bodies and develop a strong system of tissues to support our athletic endeavours. Gymnastics is often overlooked in favour of throwing some heavy weights around but for a bullet proof body it’s crucial to incorporate it into your training.
Weightlifting and Throwing: Once you can control your body it’s necessary to start controlling other objects around your body. Applying force to external objects in where we build serious strength and athletic ability.
Sport: Most of us will have some other reason to train than to look good. Any application of your fitness is sport. At Saxon CrossFit we have several members whose sole purpose of training is to enable them to keep up their gardening as the years pass.
As anyone who’s ever built anything will know – if you skip the foundations, ignore the basics, the whole structure is likely to fall or at the very least stop progressing. This doesn’t mean we should all stop lifting weights or playing sports until your nutrition is 100% perfect or you can do 20 strict muscle ups. This means we should all remember to prioritise certain aspects of training when the option is given and give a little more thought to what we fuel ourselves with – apart from on Saturdays because that’s a day for Ben and Jerry’s!