Mr. K asked to guest post on my blog. This is his very first blog post and I am so excited! For those of you just tuning in, Mr. K is my husband of 19 years. We have five children together and we are unequally yoked. 

A New Perspective on Spiritual Fitness—Mr K

Ever thumb through the television dial to see what’s on just to randomly stop at an infomercial for a couch-to-Olympic training program that can literally morph your body in a matter of 60 to 90 days?  Have you noticed how various trends have a knack from migrating from one market or institution to another?  How about how unsettled things have become?  Twenty minute marriages?  The stock market?  The political pendulum?  Are you wondering now what the point of all these seemingly random questions is?  Well if any of this rings a bell in your mind or if you just wanna see what the idiot writer is up to, then by all means read on.

Yes, throughout our modern culture and our history, if you look hard enough, you will notice a great deal of borrowing of ideas from one art-form or even one subculture to another.  For example, ideas in poetry such as impressionism carry over to art and then into music.  Or patterns in government can find their way into economics and vice versa—socialism and communism comes to mind.  You can even consider organizational management and marketing trends—take network marketing.  So you get the idea.  Well it just so happens that (if you look hard enough, listen hard enough, and read enough) you would know that music and religion have had an ongoing exchange of ideas throughout the history of the world.  Well I would like to point out—call me crazy—call me delusional—that there are newly emerging deals being exchanged between our spiritual practices, and you guessed it—the fitness industry.

So think about it, even Biblical texts have been known to compare our spiritual struggles and practices with their physical counterparts.  Paul’s epistle to Timothy states that bodily exercise has little profit, but godliness is valuable to all things.  In Hebrews, the writer allegorizes his spiritual life with the running of a race.  Even the ancient Greeks paid homage to their gods through the performance of physical games.

Well enough of that, let’s go back to one of those questions I asked in the beginning.  One of the infomercials I was particularly impressed with was from a pre-packaged workout called the P-90 series—P90X being the most popular.  This formidable fitness plan has proven to be highly effective because it focuses (in addition to a rigid diet plan) on a central philosophy—muscle confusion.  This concept is fairly simple to understand:  if you’ve ever begun an exercise program and noticed marked improvements over the first several weeks only to hit the proverbial “brick wall” then this should be easy for you.  The reason you’ve hit the brick wall is that your body has become super-efficient at performing the routine of exercises day after day…week after week.  Accordingly, you begin to taper off your weight loss.  Your muscle definition starts to plateau, then your drive begins to taper along with your motivation—you reach sort of a combination of physical and psychological burnout with your fitness routine.  The muscle confusion concept is a switch from the traditional workout plans followed by other health disciplinarians—not that the traditional plans are no good—but the P90X plan constantly puts your muscles in shock.  They never achieve that perfect efficiency because the workout is constantly changing—your body seems to slide past the saddle-point that most workouts give you after 7 to 12 weeks.  You’re probably thinking—ah, this is another sales pitch, but no!  I’ve seen this work with a friend of mine.  He literally went from couch to lean in a matter of 90 days and then to hard-body in the matter of one year—this program really works!  Remember, the concept is muscle confusion.  Lots of fitness programs do it:  CrossFit, SealFit, GymJones, etc.; but P90X is in my opinion the most marketed and most popular.

Now how has this technique permeated other areas of society?  Well, it’s old news for some things:  take crop rotation for instance—farmers have rotated planting of crops so nutrients are preserved rather than depleted from soil.   Some of the most successful musicians and actors have performed in more than one genre to avoid boredom and typecasting.

Ok, enough beating around the burning bush—let’s cut to the chase.  So what is Soul Confusion?  It’s not the practice of listening to Ray Charles one day, James Brown the next, and Taylor Hicks the next.  This practice is a much newer and much more spiritually rooted practice in our modern society—I know people who do this quite effectively.  Here’s how it works?  Let’s say your spirituality is strictly rooted in one religion (say Buddhism) that promotes good will to your fellow man, which is a good thing.  If you’ve not done well at supporting a good center of balance in your life, your efforts to make “good will” for your fellow man could result in people taking advantage of your good nature.  Realizing this, you begin to seek refuge in another spiritual foundation which allows you the liberty of defending your religious beliefs 2 days out of the week while living like hell 5 days of the week—you join the crusade of Southern Baptists—yes, I can say this because I was one of them.  Well after a period of this, you begin to feel guilty of your transgressions, so you decide to walk the straight and narrow—you feel you don’t deserve to be forgiven, but you want others to marvel at your perfection once you achieve your next goal—you end up enrolling in an Orthodox Jewish temple where you practice flawlessly the laws of the Torah.  Well, this has become tiresome so, [wait for it… wait for it…] … notice how some body builders “take the week off” to allow for growth?  Well, there’s a trend for this too—just become an atheist for a while.  That will surely give you a break.

So there’s the general plan.  If you need a personal trainer to help you design and supervise your plan—you can find a local affiliate.  A sample Soul Confusion regimen follows:

In closing, I want to clear up one thing.  The term cross training takes on a connotation depending upon where you live.  In most places, cross training is exactly what we’ve been talking about.  However, one must be careful when in certain regions of the United States (like the southeast).  Here, cross [kras’] training is what it is; however, cross [krawss] training is specifically reserved for Southern Baptists and some fundamentalists indigenous to the southeast.

Anyway, that’s my spill…

The Beloved Mr K.