*The Route 56 Challenge: Day 12*
How do you evaluate someone’s health? Can you tell how fit someone is just by looking? It’s only human nature to see something and make snap judgments. Unfortunately, what you can see doesn’t tell the whole story, especially when it comes to health and wellness. Often what you can’t see better tells the tale.
With “skinny fat” rampant in a world that is extremely aesthetically driven, many folks are walking around trim and thin looking with poor body compositions, cholesterol problems, lack of ability, and blood pressure issues. Now, this isn’t the first time you’ve heard this, from me at least. “It’s not what’s on the outside that matters…yadda…yadda…”
What I’m talking about here, though, is literally what it looks like inside a fit human body and what it looks like in a de-conditioned one. Here are some startling images courtesy of Laura McIntyre of The Urban Athlete:
As you can see in the various cross-sections of the different subjects’ quadriceps, within the same relative size of quad there are a few different ways to fill that space. The sedentary lifestyle of the middle subject shows a person that’s largely made up of harmful, useless adipose tissue. And at the impressive ages of 40 and 70 years of age respectively, the two triathletes seems to simply be made up of better stuff on the inside.
This is a great perspective shift on how activity, or lack there of, can literally change you from the inside out. And, if your getting older, the research is mounting for exercise as a way to maintain lifelong lean muscle mass. What does a cross-section of your quad look like?
Logan Gelbrich
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Thursday’s Workout:
With a partner, complete the following for time:
Run 800m
Then with one partner working at a time:
150 Front Squats (95/65)
**Every minute on the minute complete 4 burpees and switch.
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