Fitness Lessons From the Road

For most of us, we are wrapped up in our daily routines of life and our fitness practice, not giving too much thought into the deeper meanings behind it, but knowing that we want to stay healthy and strong. We get into the car to go to the gym, or we step into our garage gyms, lifting weights, running on treadmills and glad we checked off the box for the day.

Taking some time off this spring to go travel the west and taking my clubs with me to swing in some of the most scenic places, that deeper meaning of why we have a fitness practice becomes realistic. Strong bodies also create strong minds, and when we are away from our “easy“ lives in the city where the conveniences are a-plenty, we realize that forging our bodies was once rooted in the hardships that are ancestors went through to pave the lives we now have.

Swinging, chopping, lifting from the ground and placing overhead, pushing heavy objects … All these movements had meaning and purpose behind them. Without them, a house wouldn’t be built, food wouldn’t be put on the table and infrastructure would not have been created. And often times, meant life or death. Strength at least set you up for survival. Becoming, “Ozempic thin” would’ve certainly set you up for fatality. Yes, of course we don’t have the same survival struggles as back then, but it does give you something to ponder about.

Our modern lives allow us to think of our fitness practice in more aesthetic terms and in creating happiness within our lives. But in the quiet stillness and vastness of the western skies and terrain, we are immediately struck with the truth that our bodies were made for hard work and that our present gym time is just a faint reflection of what our bodies were doing on the daily.

I will take these memories and thoughts back into the city and into my daily life, to remember that strength and skill has a much greater purpose.

~ Monica ♥️