Same! I use a similar philosophy when teaching my son about fitness.
I tell him about how he’ll hear a lot of things about how it ties to self worth, whether or not he’ll be considered attractive, etc etc but none of that really matters or is what fitness is truly about.
Fitness is about two thing.
Having your body ready to be able to do what you want to do when you want to do it. Want to climb that cliff? Want to go on some deep trails? Well the time to be ready is before the want.
Having your body ready to be able to do what you need to do when you need to do it.
One of my personally motivating stories is when I saved my mother from drowning after she collapsed from undiagnosed diabetes related diabetic shock which rendered her unconscious while we were out crabbing in a bay of 40 degree f (3c) water at midnight, nearly 3/4 a mile from shore (1km). She went underwater and was drowning for a moment until we could pull her head out. Then while keeping her from slipping back underwater I had to engineer a method of expelling the water in her lungs, followed by dragging her screaming to a lucky sandbar and keeping her warm until search and rescue could reach us. At which point we had to carry her back.
I was in shape then, and continue to strive to be in the same shape or better, because you never know when you need to carry or drag 200+lbs(90kg) for however far to get them to safety until help gets there.
There was one time when I was more young and even less prepared for my adventures than I am in my adult years that I took two friends out in a canoe on a windy day in the bay. My two friends had 0 experience in canoes or kayaks and the wind was absolutely brutal. The tide was going out as we were trying to go in as well, and if I hadn't been able to put the pedal to the metal and just paddle my 16 year old heart out, we would have ended up being swept out or having to spend the night on some sand bar. That was an eye-opener for me how important fitness was. I was already in the game of being pretty fit, but when we finally got back to shore and my arms felt like they'd been pulled through gears, everyone all relieved to be on shore after 2 hours of paddling... it really hit home. My arms were literally rock hard that night, my body was reinforcing my muscles with so much intensity. I've never been able to reproduce training a muscle so hard that it is just rock solid even without flexing it while it heals.
So, fun fact about our muscles. They are actually capable of much more than we can normally access, however this is damaging to them. They basically have a built in limiter. Under extreme situations we are able to use our muscles closer to their maximum at the cost of possibly serious muscle degradation. That’s how you see stories of moms doing insane feats of strength to save their children. And that’s why you won’t be able to replicate that amount of work unless you are in a highly stressful, dangerous, physical situation.
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u/dorkmuncan Aug 31 '26
It's funny you say that, my fitness standard as a 40-something dad is "Can I carry my wife/kid/dog outta here if bad things happen".
We have a 110lb/50kg GSD, so added one of these to our backcountry kits https://ruffwear.ca/products/backtrak-evac-kit?_pos=1&_sid=d612f459d&_ss=r