Cross-train
My grandpa Alex was a broad-shouldered, burley man of European decent.
He came to this country when he was 19. He left his family's farm in search of freedom and hope. He used his brawn in a steel mill in Ohio, where he and his wife and three daughters lived. I remember him with rippling muscles and a work ethic that never stopped. He could hoe, rake, tend a large beautiful garden, and then turn around and fix anything that had a motor or repair the sole of a leather shoe. He had the gentleness to tend an arbor of grapes and the muscles to haul a truckload of bricks.
He had patience to sit with an armload of grandchildren and peel them apples with the skin held together in one long strand and the strength to haul a load of hay or corn. He would take walks with us in the evening in the garden and tell us about all the yummy veggies that were growing and why we needed them to make us healthy.
He was definitely cross-trained.
Maybe it isn't the way we think of being cross-trained now, but he was definitely a cross-trained man. He worked his heart and lungs everyday. He stretched and moved and his body and had muscles that we grandkids marveled at until he was old.
How cross-trained are we?
We seem to be "all in," with working all day and doing are chores at home. We are done. There is no time for our physical health. We don't seem to notice it until the doctor says we gained 20 pounds last year or he tells us we have high cholesterol or high blood pressure.
What do we need to do, have a hospital just for exercise?
You can check in and learn how to have fun again while getting strong and healthy. You can learn how it feels to have muscles in the places where most of us have adipose tissue now. It can be a place where we learn what it feels like to not huff and puff up one flight of stairs and how good it is to chase our kids around the block and not get tired.
Is it a place we need to check in to or a mindset we need to adopt?
To be cross-trained simply means we do more than one activity to keep us fit and healthy. We bike, run, hike, play tennis and lift weights. Maybe not weights like in the cross-fit world, which is up to 55 percent of your body weight, but we still lift weights to help build lean muscle mass three times a week. And then we do some form of aerobic exercise everyday, 30 minutes at least. In the cross-fit model, they have a WOD. That just means their workout of the day. I love that WOD idea. Everyday, you already know you have to do something for your physical health. It's already arranged and scheduled, so there is no mystery. And often that mystery is half the problem. When you have no plan already set up then you often lose your drive and ambition for daily health goals. So go ahead and establish your WOD and you will see less deviation from your health goals. As a side note, many people are just not ready for the intensity of the true cross-fit movement, but we can be cross-trained and we can utilize a lot the good ideas from this training. So don't worry if you are not ready to do that level of training yet. Set-up your own training regime, and if you don't know how then visit your physical therapist, because they have WOD for their patients and they would be happy to help you establish your own work-out goals, so you can be cross-trained and healthy. Because all of us can have rippling muscles like my grandpa.
Sheree DiBiase, is the owner of Lake City Physical Therapy, and she and her staff can be reached at (208) 667-1988. Please call us if we can help you with your WOD, so you can be cross-trained, and live a healthy and fit life.