Wellness is a precursor to fitness. You cannot build a house on poor foundations. When it comes to fitness so many attempt to cut corners by not chasing wellness. It’s more common than you think for fitness driven individuals to focus on their adrenalin-fuelled time at the gym where all the exciting stuff happens. When you get caught up in the fitness side of things, it’s common to over train, eat poorly, train only your strengths, and not bother with the less exciting but fundamental part of the equation that drives wellness.
The real progress happens outside of the actual fitness session. Your time away from training, is what most influences whether you make it, or break it. Focusing on wellness above all other fitness goals, will accelerate fitness results.
Chasing fitness without building wellness will result in a deficit in the system. It’s easy to go after fitness goals because they can be directly measured, and often change rapidly session to session. For example you might see a direct increase in the weight you can lift in a squat the second time you perform that same workout. Sometimes fitness results occur despite wellness. Ever seen those biggest loser contestants being absolutely hammered and stressed so that they get fitter, but a year later often gain back all the weight because they didn’t build up their wellness foundations to fix the underlying issue behind their weight gain?
Wellness is the accumulation of many variables so measuring it is difficult. Wellness tracking is much trickier. Because wellness is a combination of several variables, it’s sometimes hard to know exactly what is affecting your total wellness. For example if you have only drunk 1 litre of water for the day, it no doubt affects your wellness. But is the lack of hydration affecting you more than your mental stress from the day, the fast food meal you chowed down at lunch, or last nights poor sleep. Measuring wellness is harder than fitness which is why it can be easy to dismiss when you have a fitness goal in sight.
Tracking wellness is best done by balancing the things in your life that are helping, or hindering you. It’s not an exact science but by covering the basics as best as you can, you can build up your wellness foundations.
Essentially there are only 5 factors that can make you or break you.
1. Nutrition quality 2. Hydration quality based on water intake and movement 3. Movement amount and quality 4. Recovery amount and quality 5. Mental and Emotional happiness
Doing them all as best as you can will build you up. Failing to address them properly will break you down. When you work to build the success of the above factors you can guarantee you are building wellness AND fitness.
What can you do right now to build wellness to make your week better?