Fitness in building Resilience.

Among the many benefits of working out, there are a few that stand-out because they impact many things other than fitness. Emotional and mental health are greatly impacted by training, for example.

But arguably the most important one is the building of Resilience.

Physical and Mental Resilience refer to the ability to withstand stressors and be able to bounce back from setbacks.

In life it is unavoidable to run into obstacles. So Resilience is a neccessity for everyone. Those that do not have it tend to quit projects, be easily frustrated and struggle with the confidence to start new endeavours.

Now that we’ve established what Resilience is and why it’s important, we need to discuss how we achieve it in training.

There are other ways to build Resilience, but if training is something we are already doing, might as well reap all the possible benefits from it.

Resilience in training comes mostly from doing things that are hard (duh!). But let’s break down what that means a little further. What are some hard things we run into in training:

– Being Consistent 

–Show up day in and day out. Develop a routine that lasts months/years. Keep a promise to yourself to stick with an activity.

– Progressing on movements

–You must become able to do things that you previously couldn’t, to see your body become stronger and fitter. If not, you weren’t really exposed to real stressors.

– Learn new skills

–Seeing your body accomplish tasks that come from your mastery of body control will build the sense of being capable of doing things.

– Take risks

–This sort of summarazies the points above. But it points to the idea that taking action when the result is unknown (you might get hurt if you push too hard, you might look like a fool when first learning something new, you might waste time and money and effort getting into a routine that you don’t know will help you). And some of the time, the result will NOT be what you intended, but that’s what build the ability to bounce back.

– Fail

–If you followed the steps above, you will inevitably get here. No great training journey happens without failure. No great achievement happens without failure. The more you push and the bigger the risks you take, the more often you will fail. And that exposure to failure is what build the Resilience to be able to bounce back, to adjust course.

Resilience is necessary for success in any endeavour: bussiness, personal, financial, professional, fitness, etc… And nowadays it’s easy to live a life free of challenges, so building Resilience can be a challenge.

Working out by itself isn’t enough. As with most things, it’s not WHAT we do, but HOW we do it.