Monthly Archives: November 2024

Aging gracefully starts with a focus on health span and life span—the quality and quantity of your years. While life span measures the total years you live, health span is about maintaining vitality and independence throughout those years. The key is aligning these two through intentional choices, like prioritizing strength training, proper nutrition, and daily movement. By doing so, you can ensure that the later years of your life are as fulfilling and active as possible.

Muscle health has been the overseen factor for health and longevity until the recent years. When it comes to fitness adaption for longevity, the heart and lungs often steal the spotlight. We’ve been taught to associate heart health with lifespan and strong lungs with fitness. However, the role of muscle health for longevity is critical. Muscles are not only essential for movement and strength but are also crucial for metabolic health, disease prevention, and overall well-being. But just as muscles can build resilience, they can also decline—often without visible signs from the outside—diminishing their impact on long-term wellness.

In today’s world, we’re frequently reminded that “everyone is different.” While it’s true that each of us has unique preferences, genetic makeups, and lifestyles, this mantra has quietly become a convenient excuse to sidestep universal health basics. We’ve embraced the idea of tailoring everything to our personal liking so much that the concept of universal health practices can feel outdated or even intrusive. But the reality is that some aspects of well-being don’t care about our personal preferences, lifestyles, or opinions; they simply work because they are based on the human body’s core biological needs. Ignoring these basics is, frankly, ignoring what is universally good for us.

In the realm of fitness, we often hear about strength, endurance, and power. But there’s another essential component that often gets overlooked: mobility. Mobility is about more than being flexible—it’s the ability to move a joint through its full range of motion with control and stability. When it comes to training, mobility matters because it directly influences movement efficiency, which is essential not only for athletic performance but also for functional, everyday tasks. In fact, becoming a “better mover” can mean the difference between winning or falling short in both sports and life.

At CrossFit Kreis 9, we prioritize training as the first step in a health transformation journey, even though we acknowledge that nutrition is just as crucial to overall health as physical activity. Many people know that when it comes to weight loss, nutrition can be the key factor, often yielding results without changes to exercise patterns. However, we believe that lasting lifestyle change starts with training first, followed by gradual nutritional adjustments. Here’s why we take this approach.