Married Together

Categories: Blog Feb 15, 2015

When I was growing up, my family would visit my grandparents, Papa and Granny, every Sunday after going to church. Papa and Granny lived in a small, ranch style home out in the country; a home you might expect grandparents to live in. To me, their home seemed "normal" on the outside. But on the inside, I always found their home to be quite confusing. Papa and Granny had separate bedrooms. They were married, but they didn't share the same bedroom. This really confused me as a child, and to be honest, I still struggle with it as an adult. It just didn't make sense to me.

My imagination used to run wild as why they slept in separate rooms. Granny kept a pistol under her pillow (I think she still does), which makes me wonder if Papa had a bazooka under his bed! Granny and Papa loved each other, don't get me wrong, they just had separate bedrooms and you would never know that looking at the house from the outside.

I think this is how it is in the health and fitness world. We all have one body. It may look "normal" from the outside, but on the inside it is separated. Or at least we have tried to separate parts of it. Take mobility and strength, for example. We often treat them as two separate qualities. We often try to put them each inside their own separate bedrooms. But mobility and strength live inside the same body. In fact, mobility and strength are married together. They are supposed to be in union with one another. Yet we try to isolate them apart. We train them separately. We treat their marriage as if it didn't exist. But it does, or at least it should.

Mobility and strength are married together. Just as a married couple should be joined together by the bond of love, mobility and strength should be joined together by the bond of reflexive strength. As love is the foundation for a good marriage between two people, reflexive strength is the foundation for a good marriage between mobility and strength. They are in union with each other. They are one in the same. They were never meant to sleep in separate rooms.

The same is true for muscular strength and cardiovascular endurance. We have separated them with exercise and our philosophy of exercise. One is often focused on at the expense of the other. And for what? Usually for some temporary goal, or narrow minded focus. ****There is nothing wrong with temporary goals, and achievements - except that they are temporary****
Endurance is often focused on and worked on to the expense of having strength, and even often at the expense of losing reflexive strength. In others, strength is often focused on at the expense of having no cardiovascular endurance whatsoever. But this is a mistake. Those two qualities should be married together. They live in the same body. The body should be capable and able to posses tremendous strength along with tremendous endurance.

It is no different than a husband spending all his time at work to provide for his family, always chasing after a promotion, a deadline, or a gold watch, yet never actually spending time with his family. All the effort to provide for the family, but no time with the family. Again, on the outside, the home looks normal, maybe even good, but on the inside, there are separate, divided, lonely lives.

Every quality inside of you - your strength, your mobility, your flexibility, your endurance, your joy, your thoughts, your emotions - they are all supposed to be married together, in union together, as one, as you. You are to be wonderfully integrated. Nothing about you is to be isolated. Nothing about you, nothing inside of you, was meant to have its own bedroom.

Within our homes, and within our bodies, we were meant for union, for relationship, for conversation. The body is much like a marriage, or a home: trying to separate qualities and isolate parts creates confusion, weakness, loneliness, and sadness.

Your body is whole. It is meant to be in complete union with itself. You are not a sum of independent parts and individual qualities. Life is about union. In you, and around you.

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