Longevity by Design: Evolving Through Movement, Memory, and Momentum

Standing in the Eye of the Spiral: Navigating Life's Twists with GT

WARM UP. Good greetings to all the readers joining me now. Here we are midweek and I feel a good amount of momentum building up on projects that will keep moving toward completion. Now when I say complete, it’s more a situation of evolving to a final form. As stated in the previous blog I intend to standardize my information gathering for clients to more accurately track or log progressions. If there is a way to sway the health insurance industry to my favor in letting me bill their clients, my patients, I may as well have a protocol in place and set a standard WITHOUT them asking. Taking initiative. It may allow me to start discussions with other health professionals (MDs mainly), to have them send referrals my way. I’m playing the long game with this. There are many already in the field of health coaching that are employing the same system of biomechanics as myself. I trust that in the grand scheme of things there will be enough of us with a collective data pool to change the health insurance industry’s view of the work we do. It’s painfully obvious that the health coaching industry has been captured, regulatory captured specifically. This industry has been writhe with snake oil sales, quick short-term fixes, and basing data off “exceptions to the rules.”

I have been in the health coaching industry for 16 years now. The foundation of my motivations for being a health coach were driven by people like Jack Lalanne. A gentleman who lived until he was 96/97 years old. And for all intent and purposes of his PR, that man thrived. All I knew was this dude was old, was muscular, active and vibrant. You could say he was the exact opposite of what a ‘common’ old person in my limited experience at the time was. He seemed to be a shining beacon of what I would qualify as ‘high quality longevity’ and what it could look like. Somewhere in my life I have adopted a foundational mindset of living my life, choosing my behaviors, and setting up my environments to maximize “high quality longevity.”  The earliest memory I have of how this mindset came to be stems from an art project in the fourth grade. We were asked “what would you like your tombstone to say?” I drew my tombstone and recall writing “died at the age of 111” or slightly older, which seems absurd for a fourth grader to write even to this day. As a side note, in the same fourth grade art project context, we were asked to invent something. I swear to you, I drew up the shoes with roller blades that popped out the bottom! Mine were drawn as hideaway wheels into the sole of the shoe. Not nearly drawn with the same sophistication of the actual wheelies as an engineer would, however, I invented those! Put in on record! Coming back to longevity. I don’t seem to recall why that number came to me or if I even had a concept of what aging really is. Growing up generally athletic, from an athletic father, playing sports was just what we did as friends groups. We had a neighborhood filled with growing families with kids about 2-4 years of age gaps. So staying active wasn’t a problem in or out of school. Being active wasn’t ever considered in my mental processes as “exercise.” Now I exercise, and have for many years.

I recall my first exercise class being in high school as a freshman. All I recall is when we had to hit the weightroom for one of the first times.I hit a set of “tricep pushdowns” and recall my triceps getting that “pump” and hurting so bad! I told myself “why would anyone want to do this?!” Yes, I hated it. I had my share of physical pains that were inflicted upon me by others, why the hell would I want to do this TO MYSELF? Eventually many years later, I didn't mind bringing physical pain to the tissues. You could say I really enjoyed it eventually, in certain places! My foundation for exercise outside of sport and generally being active came in the form of traditional bodybuilding. It was done in the most “bro” way my group of friends could think of “chest and biceps,” as priority. We had a close friend of ours come back for a visit from the military and he showed us a few other exercises to round out the “bro lifts.” It led to me purchasing my first ever piece of study material, a book called “Exercise Anatomy.” My “swole bros” hopefully read this and know exactly what I’m talking about. We consumed an “iron diet” for many years, consistently every other day, three times a week. Monday, “Buckwheezy Wednesday,” and Friday.

COOLDOWN. The stories that remain in our friendships from those days will remain a fond memory between us all. The thing is, I think I am the only one to continue the tradition of exercise. In fact there might have been months or week-long gaps over the years where I didn’t exercise, but I know I am the only one to have not stopped since starting. It does help that I eventually made a career from fitness coaching, that doesn’t change that it is a fact. My views on exercise as it pertains to longevity has changed dramatically since those days. The limited, short-term damage I was able to inflict physically all those years still lingers in my tissues to this day. Calling it limited or short-term might be out of order. I have spent the last several years attempting to rewire connections in my tissues to better suit my longevity mindset. I dare say that today, I may be more athletic than I was 10 years ago. Physical evolution takes time. Adaptation to physical change takes time. As one ages, most humans will see a rapid regression in their athletic ability. Currently our environment externally and internally are rapidly regressing as a society, as a whole. Which could be the cause of such mass rapid regression. I choose to set my life up for progression. My choices are to evolve. Are you evolving? Or do you want to keep on repeating that same old shit?

Take Care, 

G$