A very long time ago, in a place where most educated people held dear the ideal of a healthy mind in a healthy body, ancient philosophers would enjoy busying themselves with deep and thought-provoking discussions of essence. Roots in the ground, a trunk and branches are conditions that would need to be fulfilled by a tree for it to be truthfully called a tree.

Precisely, these conditions represent its essence. The essence of something is what makes it what it is and what differentiates it from other things. A fair question by a healthy modern mind might be therefore, what is the essence of good fitness?

Perhaps a description as simple as this could be just what you needed to hear before deciding to take the plunge into a more active lifestyle, because if the essence of good fitness isn’t something you think you might like to share, then your time and effort are probably genuinely better directed elsewhere. But if you think you might like to be fit, then you ought to consider some conditions that truly make a fit person fit.

First off, fit people enjoy higher energy levels. We could always list a complex range of physiological changes that occur in your cardiovascular and respiratory systems in response to an effective exercise programme, but we could just as easily describe what these changes actually feel like. Having more energy means you are more alert. You feel more able to do things and respond to everyday challenges, you have a greater sense of urgency about you, like you’re ready to deal with whatever life throws at you. This in turn helps contribute to another all-important benefit of better fitness, one we might classify as psychological in nature.

Fit people tend to feel and consequently appear more confident. If you feel more functional and more effective, then it’s only natural your confidence levels will likely increase. It’s great actually being more confident about your abilities, but appearing so to other people could cause a host of additional benefits. It’s hard to deny the importance of appearances in our society.

Fit people enjoy higher energy levels

Talking about appearances, fit people can improve their posture and the attractiveness of their figures and physiques. Lower body-fat levels and increased muscle mass achieved in unison quite simple transform the contours of any human body, and could actually represent the biggest reason people are taking up more active lifestyles across the civilised world. More attractive contours,  when combined with better posture as a result of stronger core and stabilising muscles, make themselves plainly obvious in any well-selected outfit.

Fit people often report feeling healthier and “cleaner” overall, which in turn helps lead to healthier and cleaner choices in other aspects of lifestyle too, like healthier eating. Doing well with your exercise programme can create a positive cycle when you get in the swing of it, making you more motivated to control your intake of unhealthy foods, or cut down on bad habits like smoking or consuming alcohol when you could relatively easily avoid it. If you’re putting all that effort into hitting your training targets, then why sabotage yourself? This brings us to our next all-important criterion.

Fit people tend to become increasingly driven and goal-oriented. This certainly isn’t to say that people who don’t exercise aren’t driven of goal-oriented, but people who are fit generally become so by achieving a series of small goals that ultimately lead to bigger ones, a well-versed habit that tends to spill over into other activities too. Whether it’s more repetitions or weight on the leg press machine or a faster time on that 2,000-metre row, whatever the goals are, they keep us going from week to week in preparation for those regular inch-tape checks of our waistlines and appointments with the bathroom scales. Setting the right goals can be highly motivating in the gym and anywhere else.

And finally, perhaps even my own personal favourite, fit people have an excellent outlet for dealing with stress. We all tend to pent up stress and anxiety in response to the pressures we face at most quarters in this modern world of ours.

Physiologically, we still tend to process threats the same way our cave-dwelling ancestors did. When stress hormones course through our veins priming us to fight or flee what we perceive as threatening situations, physical exercise provides us with an excellent release. Lower stress levels mean you can remain calmer and hopefully exercise better judgement in all things.

This list of criteria is far from exhaustive, so here’s an idea. To expand it further still, we need some more people to get fit and report their experiences. If you think you might like to get fitter, consider what by all reports it might actually feel like, and let the essence of better fitness inspire you to employ the faculties of a healthy mind, towards developing a healthier body in which it resides.

matthewmuscatinglott@gmail.com