Fitness is a Destination

SUMMARY

• Health has become a loose term in America. How can health be defined? Is there an objective definition?
• What is fitness? To be fit, you'd lead a healthy & sustainable lifestyle in regards to exercise, nutrition, and your mind.
• The goal of NCEP and personal trainers, is for the client to obtain & practice the knowledge of a holistic lifestyle.
• As a personal trainer, are you aware of the variables and boundaries of a realistic and fulfilling life?
• Do the people that I teach understand & practice the information that I share? They probably do, but we must continually share it, especially for the people who need it.
• YOU are a beacon of exercise & health. Constantly share with people the information they will surely need to maintain or develop a truly healthy lifestyle.
• When it comes to fitness, there is no room for uncertainty. You are fit and your lifestyle serves as an example, or you're still on your way to fitness. 
• Share your wisdom and pass it on. Greatness isn't dedicated for one person, but it is achieved only by those who seek it.

OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT

Hi, Mike DeMora coming here from NCEP fitness. You know, in today's version I just want to go over, what is fitness? You know, some of you aren't going to like this, this tutorial or this video, because when it really comes down to it, I'm going to give you my opinion on some things. And maybe they aren't as, as popular as someone else's, but I'm kind of really, really freaking out a little bit about what is happening in America today with fitness. Now there's some other things we can talk about as well, but I didn't want to get too political. I just, I just want to talk about fitness for a second. What does fitness mean to you? What does having a personal trainer mean to you? And the reason I'm saying this is because I've just freaked out.

You know, yesterday I don't do much time watching TV and I was flipping through the channels.
And all of a sudden I saw this channel of this, this, this big girl, this big, big girl. And it was 'My Fat and Fabulous Life' or something like that. And she was going on about how she loves being fat. And she loves doing all this kind of stuff, but she loves herself and blah, blah, blah. And I just started like, is that really the message that we want to give out? So once again, you should love yourself no matter who you are, where you are, what you're going through, everything else. I agree, but it's the message that we want to get out that that's okay? Or that that's, it's good to be fat? Or you can still have a homemade..? They're just not really that, they can't be that happy. Right? And you know, that it's made for TV. It kind of frustrated me.

So I started started thinking about what is fitness? What does fitness mean to people? What is health? What is wellness? What are all these words? And so I really wanted to define it a little bit for you. The goal of NCEP, hands down is to what? Is to express a healthy lifestyle to as many people as we can. We want our clients to adapt a healthy lifestyle for longevity, so that they can move better, feel better, and enjoy a more vigorous life. And so when we look at that, I start to wonder about what some of these trainers are doing, right? So in our model, the goal, and maybe this isn't going to be once again and adapted as one of the most, uh, popular beliefs. But when you start with a client, the goal should be, how long?! How long is it until this client will not need me?

Trainers look at me like, are you crazy? No, I'm not crazy! If you're good at what you do, guess what you want to work with someone, get them to a specific point, where what? Where they don't need you! It's not about building dependence as a trainer and say, oh, I'm like a drug where they need me. No! It couldn't be more opposite. Fitness is a destination, not a journey. And when I say that people always look at me and freak out. What I'm saying is, everything in life is about results. Everything in life is about what you end up with, right? Are you, or aren't you? There's none of this gray bullshit. Yes or no. Are you fit or are you not? There's none of this. Oh, well I'm kind of fit. And I kinda, and, and I kinda, I kinda are you fit or are you not, right?

And so here's the thing. Once you're fit, you're fit! That's the idea. And then the idea is that you have adapted a healthy lifestyle enough where you keep your fitness up. Do you need to keep going to a trainer? Do you need to keep paying for a service? Do you need to keep doing this? Well, if the trainer's doing well, you don't need to. And that's the big difference, need. Now don't get me wrong. If you've developed an amazing relationship with your trainer and you like to go, and the trainer's a wonderful person and you have a great relationship and you want to go because it's a great hour and what have you. Well, that's a whole different scenario. If you go to your CrossFit gym, or you go to your local gym and you enjoy the time there, and you want to work with a trainer, you, or there's a specific group exercise instructor that you really prefer. And you'd like to go to it's because you want to, not because you need to.

So what I'm trying to say is this, you either are fit or you aren't. And when trainers try to talk their clients into getting more and more in shape, what does that mean? So let's say you had, at one point, the goal of having a body where you felt comfortable with taking off your shirt and walking around on the beach, right. And maybe say, let's say the body fat level, we're going to say for a guy is about 15%, right? At 15%, you feel really good. Well, at 15%, that's great. You're already part of, uh, my new population of people in great shape. Right? So now if the trainer then says, okay, now let's go for 12%. Okay. Let's go for 10%. Okay. Let's go for 8%. Okay. Do you understand that that's not healthy? We, as fitness trainers are not here to turn our folks into fitness freaks like we are. Even if we love fitness and it's part of our life and part of our whole blood, and that's all we think about and all we want to do, that's not who our clients need to be. Look, once we have them adapting a healthy lifestyle, you check off the box, that's one more down, now, let's go for the next person. The idea is you need to spread yourself out to as many people as possible. Our goal was to reach 1 million people! 1 million people!

We want our philosophy and our thought to hit over a million people. And the idea is once we have adapted someone, let's see, they start with three or four sessions a week. And we teach them pushing and pulling and bending and twisting and squatting and lunging and gait pattern.
Once they're able to do those things and it becomes part of their lifestyle. And every time they drive past McDonald's, they go, hell no, I'm not going there. I want to go home and make my next organic salad with, you know, with avocado in and what have you, right? Then, you know, they've already arrived. They're fit. Can they walk a mile in under 10 minutes and not feel winded and gasped. Can they touch their toes? Can they do these normal things in life? And once they can they're fit. Now, if it's their healthy lifestyle, you need to what? Pass them on, so you can work with people who haven't adapted that as a healthy lifestyle. That's the goal to recycle. Everyone has friends and family and people they know that are grossly overweight and their lifespans are shorter and shorter every day.

Those are the people that we want to help. People that can't walk from point A to point B because their joints hurt and they're sore and they're heavy and they don't feel good. Those are the people we want to touch. And we want to touch as many of those people as we can. That's the goal of a fitness trainer. It's to teach health and longevity. It's a life style. So when I say it's not about the journey, it's about the destination. All I mean by that is when they've gotten to a point where they are fit. It's not a need anymore. It's not a need. Take what you know, and all the special characteristics you have, and use them for people who truly need it. There are so many people in need. There are people dying every minute of cardiovascular disease and people dying because they're not in shape, and because they make poor, and they don't understand what health is. Once you've educated an individual on what is health. Once they demonstrated that they understand what good health is. And once they have demonstrated that they are fit, it's time to find more people. And this shouldn't be hard. This should not be hard at all, because if you've done well as a trainer, you have taught what it is. These people are telling everyone about you anyway! It's one of the greatest experiences that they've had. If they've, if you've taken someone who looks like they're not going to last the next 10 years, and you've taught them a healthy lifestyle and they've adapted it, and now they wake up and all they think about is what they can do to stay in that healthy lifestyle journey. Do you understand it's your obligation to go now, teach 10 more people.

It's not about holding onto the one who's already fit. If you want to meet with them once a week, just to say hey, then meet with them once a week. Right? But open up your schedule to give your blessing to more people. It's about passing that message down. If you have a gift of being able to help someone, if you have a gift of being able to help change their lifestyle, then pass it on to as many people as possible. Do you understand where this is coming from? It's not a point of anger. It's not a point of there's right and wrong. There's a point of obligation. There's a point of there's more to our lives. And that's just what I wanted to express to you today. Touch as many people's lives as you can. If you have a special gift, it's your, it's your duty to do so. It's your duty to help as many people as you can. And I challenge you to go do that. We need to hit our mark of a million sooner than later. It needs to be sooner than later. Make it something, adapt our goal, adapt our mission, and help as many people as you can to adapt a healthy lifestyle. All right. Hopefully that didn't sound like I'm on my soap box and I'm speaking down. I really wanted just people to express how I feel and that it's okay to feel a specific way. And let's, let's take that healthy lifestyle and bring it to as many people as we can. Thank you, God bless. Have a great day!