As coaches, we always ask our clients to outline their goals to us, so that we can tailor our programmes to their needs. Or realign their goals together if they are unreasonable or unspecific.
But I was looking at some dolphins the other day. A friend had been watching them and taken some really amazing photos. It’s hard to imagine a more athletic, happy-looking, physically-balanced creature. Everyone’s favourite, surely – who doesn’t love a dolphin?
Dolphins well over 20% fat. Even moreso our local Scottish ones – our social stereotype extends even to our aquatic mammals it seems.
But they are also beautiful. And yes, I know I’m massively simplifying and ignoring where that fat is stored, but we love dolphins and we don’t see them as fat or ugly.
This might be a bit controversial for someone who makes their living from essentially making people smaller, but maybe we should learn to love ourselves a little as we love the dolphin.
At Fitness Soul, one of the aspects I’ve found most rewarding is the “Open Mind/Strong body/Beautiful Soul” trilogy of goals. Our desires should be more about increasing our ability to enjoy living a healthy, mobile life and less about changing our overall size. In fact, I’m all in favour of encouraging the ladies especially to follow Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu’s advice of learning how to take up a little more space in the world (check her badass self out at https://goo.gl/q8H3dc) rather than a little less.
So I’ll end this rather unfocused blog entry by asking the question again:
Why are you here?
Our bodies are such incredible machines, enabling us to explore and adventure and play in so many ways.
Our bodies, complete with scars and wobblesome parts, can do so much. Or as one client put it (and I’m paraphrasing for legal reasons) “I want to be a tough girl who can throw heavy stuff around with ease”.
So, let’s try to enjoy the physical changes that our play brings as a by-product, rather than the end goal.
Richard
