House Cats

Here is something we know about house cats: they don’t often tend to last very long when they escape the comforting confinement of our house. Unless they have experience in the great outdoors, they quickly get scooped up by meat eaters or find themselves a new couch with the lady down the road. 

Cats are tough critters who have the capacity to be successful killing machines that have the capacity to be a royal nuisance to ecosystems. But when Mr. Jingles slips past you, his chances of survival drop dramatically. Why? 

Conditioning and exposure

Consider being unprepared to handle load in a new environment. House cats are anatomically and physiologically designed to succeed in challenging situations. However, without conditioning and exposure, these tools are often useless. Mr. Jingles quickly finds himself in trouble. 

Congrats, you made it past my cat metaphor.

Sedentary lifestyles can leave us in a similar situation to the house cat. As unconditioned people, we are not conditioned or exposed to enough athletic variety to maximize our inherent biomechanics thus making physical challenge that much more difficult.  

We get hurt more easily, our athletic variety drops dramatically and we often become afraid to try new things.

And we just don’t feel as good. That is no way to live. 

When the body does not have a consistent varied load, it loses adaptability. Reduced adaptability to different types of load or positions predisposes the body to injury. Muscles and connective tissue require load to maintain proper cellular turnover. We also need our nervous system challenged to create a steady connection between the requests of the brain and the response of the body. If these functions are not challenged often, we cannot expect to get by on shear anatomy alone. 

Cross training or varied physical activity improves our overall health as well. We know that physical activity improves things such as blood pressure, regulates hormones and improves digestion. What we also know is that different types of exercise improve our health systems in varied amounts. For example; hot yoga makes us better at temperature regulation while mountain biking will improve heart rate variability. Both are excellent ways to stay active but combined, they tone different systems for a far more toned overall picture of health.

When we forget how adaptable we are, we miss out on trying new sports, meeting new people or getting after totally attainable goals. By forfeiting physical challenge, we lose touch with our bodies. It becomes easy to forget what we are capable of. If you know you can run 5k, you are a lot more likely to sign up for a 10k or go on that boys skiing trip. Life gets a lot more fun when we have confidence in our bodies.

CrossFit is a sport that is really good at making people overall more adaptable. Barbell, KB, gymnastics and mobility programming that makes it’s members more ready for life outside the gym. Gyms like CrossFit Vernon work hard to provide programming with a wide range of physical demand and coaching staff so knowledgable, the members have the confidence to try new exercises and challenges.

But you don’t have to do CrossFit to have varied exercise. If you like to run, try a yoga class to improve your mobility. If you like to riding your bike, try kickboxing for more ____. And if you like your couch, try going for walks outside.

The goal is to become more versatile. When we have a higher capacity for cardiac, weight or neurologic load, we become more athletic overall. Things like moving heavy furniture, carrying kids around, joining a run club and skiing all weekend become far less taxing. When we aren’t taxed, we feel more athletic. Athletic is adaptable.

Wrapping it up

House cats generally lack the adaptability required to succeed outside. They aren’t good at trying new things and they get hungry quick. People who don’t challenge themselves on a regular basis have a similar response to physical challenge. That challenge can look like learning a new hobby or having to shovel snow out of your driveway. If our bodies are conditioned and exposed to a variety of loads and situations, we get more athletic and life gets easier.

Shots Fired Blog: This may come across as shaming people for not being active or only having time for one way to stay moving. Instead it’s a cute metaphor to convince you to try new things. Your limits are only those that you build for yourself. You keep yourself inside. You owe it to yourself to stay moving because life is a lot less scary when you do.

And in injuries keep you from trying more activities, make an appointment with your local Vernon chiropractor or physiotherapist to get the issues sorted out.

Don’t be a house cat. They don’t have nearly as much fun as outdoor cats and they don’t have nearly as many stories.