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6
Dai Manuel’s Whole Life Fitness Manifesto
With this book, I hope to both educate and inspire you to develop a better understanding of fitness, one that’s based on how your body functions and feels—today, tomorrow and for the rest of your life.
FUN-ctional Fitness
Let’s stop the insanity of a vanity-based approach to fitness, and start prioritizing a function-based understanding of fitness. This, as I like to call it, is FUN-ctional fitness, with a big emphasis on the fun. This means taking an enjoyable, exciting and uplift-ing approach to health and well-being, one that’s grounded in real life, not the numbers on a scale, or the size of your pants. Foremost, it’s a lifestyle. It’s about tying our goals to a lifetime quest to be the best that we can be.
To have a sense of direction on that quest, we need to ask ourselves: How do I want to feel in 10, 20 or 40 years’ time? What quality of life do I want to have now, and when I’m older?
Be honest with yourself, and you’ll start to visualize a new path. You’ll start to see how fitness is the very thing that allows you to perform everyday functions, from sit-ting and getting up, carrying groceries from your car, lifting your child, playing with your grandchild, or putting together a piece of ikea furniture (don’t laugh, that’s actually one tough workout!). In these everyday scenarios, we’re recruiting the same muscle groups that are used in the conditioning movements I explain in Chapters 7 and 8.
So using that chair (or sitting on the toilet, for that matter) mimics a squat. Lifting your groceries from the floor to the counter, then from the counter to the cupboard, combines a deadlift, bicep curl and shoulder press all in one fluid movement. And simply getting up from a prone position is the basis of a burpee. (What’s that? Never heard of a burpee? Turn to page 92 if you can’t contain your curiosity!)
We may take these daily actions for granted, but if we don’t look after ourselves, or consider our fitness on a daily basis, our muscles and bones will deteriorate with age, and our mobility will be restricted, compromising even the simplest of movements. After all, there’s truth to the old adage: Use it or lose it. That is, losing the ability to move your body unassisted results in a serious downturn in your quality of life. Think about it: We all know the importance of investing and saving for our future financial security, but what daily investments do we make in our health?
A man’s health can be judged by which he takes two at a time—pills or stairs.”
—Joan Welsh
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7
whole life fitness
Will a FUN-ctional fitness-focused program improve your appearance? Absolutely. Is that the ultimate end goal? No! FUN-ctional fitness energizes you in every moment of your life. It gives you confidence in the knowledge that you’re prepared to tackle—if not conquer—whatever physical or mental challenges that life throws at you. You’ll be able to do the things that you enjoy now, and as you age. Just as changing the oil in your car makes it run better, FUN-ctional fitness is all about tuning up your body so it can smoothly carry you through your life.
If you’re like most people who build a fitness routine into their everyday life, you’ll eventually want to complement it with other activities, like playing sports, hiking and playing with your kids. Can you see how fitness is about much more than how you look?
Beyond the physical, great fitness feeds into all aspects of your life. I’ve trained many folks who initially get into fitness to lose weight. They are spurred on by little vic-tories as they progress, and of course it’s great to see them light up with their improved results. I hear them say things like, “I’m down a dress size,” or, “I don’t remember the last time I was able to tie up my own shoes.”
But that’s only the beginning. I know my clients are on the right path when I hear them say, “Wow, I haven’t woken up with this kind of energy for 10 years,” or, “o-m-g! When I used to bring in the groceries, my back would hurt,” or, “I used to get winded just from going upstairs to get my laundry. Now I can do this stuff with ease.”
I feel pumped when I see clients put their mental energy toward achieving a partic-ular health and fitness goal, such as when par-ents come to me, wanting to be a positive
