How to Remain Fit For Life

Chris Albert 00:00:01 (link to this point)

The Warrior Soul podcast is written, edited, and produced by me, Albert. Our mission is to provide tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas that help The US military veteran community to show up as the wisest, strongest, most capable versions of themselves in the civilian world. If you're not a veteran, stick around because anything we talk about will most certainly apply to you as well. This podcast is made possible with the help of F Bomb Nutrition. They make delicious packets of fats that you can carry around anywhere with you in little portable packets.

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They don't have any sugar. They also make a lot of cheese snacks. They make meat sticks, and it's just a great company. These guys send packages of this stuff to the troops who are on the front lines overseas to supplement their MREs, and we didn't ask them to do that. They just did that on their own initiative.

Really great company. If you wanna get 20% off your first order of f bombs, head over to www.dropanfbomb.com and use the code Warrior Soul at checkout. This podcast is also brought to you with the help of Save the Brave. Savethebrave.org is a five zero one c three charity for veterans. They run camaraderie events that include fishing, golfing.

They also do a lot of work with gold star families. And unlike a lot of other organizations, their board doesn't take a salary. Really great organization that is doing amazing work. So go and check them out at savethebrave.org. With that, thank you guys so much.

Let's get into today's programming.

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And we need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul podcast.

You know, I think one of the problems I've always had with the fitness industry as it is here in The United States is that it's very much centered around vanity. And what do I mean by that? Well, when you look at the advertisements for training or if you look at the advertisements for supplements, it's always centered around abs, around ass, around body shape, around what you look like. Very little of it's really centered around what you feel like. And I think that the way things have been over the past few weeks without gyms, without a real fitness industry, because the fitness industry has pretty much been shut down by this whole crisis.

I think we're having a bit of a reawakening about what fitness is and and what it means to people. One of the things that I think this community needs to to really stay on top of is using fitness as an outlet. Right? I always train sometime in the middle of the day and the reason why I train in the middle of the day is because it helps me to break up my day, right? So my stress point usually comes to a peak between 11AM and noon.

And then I'll go, I'll do a run, I'll weight lift weights, I'll do a kettlebell session, I'll do some burpees and I'll come back with a clear head ready to attack the rest of my day. And that is something that has helped me quite a bit, because a lot of times when I stress, I tend to get very dark. I tend to my thoughts tend to go toward they tend to bring out the worst in me. And being focusing on fitness for forty five minutes to an hour at the middle of the day allows me to bring myself to the present, allows me to focus on my breathing, focus on my body, get out of my head, and it keeps me stabilized. The other aspect of this is, you know, as somebody who is going to be 41 next week, I'm feeling the cost of time.

Time has definitely taken toll taken its toll on me through chronic disease, through wear and tear on my body, through my military service, you know, I served in the infantry and a lot of us who have served in the combat arms, we have chronic injuries that set us back all the time. And I think the most important element of fitness is something I've always said, which is freedom. Being fit is a source of freedom for all of us. It allows us to do what we want to do for as long as we want to do it. And I'm somebody who doesn't want I don't have this vision in my mind of being 50, 60 years old, 70 years old, sitting down on a rocking chair, reading a newspaper and not doing much else throughout my day.

I want to still be able to hike, I want to still be able be active. I want to still be able to have sex. I want to be able to travel. I I want to play with my grandkids. Right?

I want to lift them up in the air, wrestle with them, do all kinds of crazy things. Right? And I think, you know, as you're getting older, you need to keep this stuff in mind. Because by the time you get to the age of 41 or 51 or 61 or 71, if you're sitting there and you're thinking about getting yourself back in shape, it's going be harder and harder. But if you're already in shape, if you're keeping yourself at a baseline of fitness, then you are going to be able to maintain that, right?

If it's something you have been maintaining throughout your life, then there isn't going to be as much of a problem trying to get yourself back on track if you fall off for a little bit. Right? So how do we think about fitness, not in terms of vanity, not in terms of the short term gains, but in terms of what it's going to give us throughout our lives? And I think the answer comes down to understanding why you're doing it. Alright? So whenever it comes down to you having a choice, a choice between not training one day or or, you know, going for that slice of cheesecake or going through that for that bowl of ice cream. I think the thing you have to ask yourself is, am I earning this ice cream? Am I earning this break?

Right? Am I on the long term track to being the best version of myself? Not today, not tomorrow, but ten years from now. Because we we tend to forget about that. We tend to just think, oh, I want to get in shape for the beach or oh, I want to get in shape for for this party I'm going to.

And if you just constantly think in those terms, fitness just becomes a nice to have. It becomes a luxury that you're gonna throw out the window when times get hard. Figure out a way to do it every day, no matter what it is, whether it's burpees, whether it's it's actually going to the gym and lifting weights when when all this shit passes as far as COVID-nineteen, figure out a way to incorporate healthy eating into your life. And that's going to be different from everybody. Somebody said to me, I don't give a lot of specific advice on this.

And it's because in my time as a trainer, one of the worst things I see other trainers do is they put out these cookie cutter programs and when you put these cookie cutter programs out there, if people can't follow them, then they write it off. But what I want you to do is I want you to take a look at your life, say where can I fit ten minutes of activity in? How could I fit in a couple of ten minute periods of activity in throughout my day? Right? How could I fit this into my life so that it's not going to be inconvenient, so that it becomes part of me, part of my life?

That's a really, really important thing to think about because if you do this the right way, you'll be fit not just for the next week, not just for the next month, not just for the next year, you'll be a very fit 70 or 80 year old. That's all I got for this week, guys. I'll be back at you next with some more awesome content. I want you guys to live your best lives while you can. This is Chris Albert, the Warrior Soul Podcast, and I am out.