2D fitness is when you look at someone, working, moving, playing, training at a high level of success and you make assumptions about what’s going on inside their bodies. Life used to be pretty violent and short. Being able to lift heavy things, or being able to run fast, or being able to run for a long time, or being very powerful (a mixture of strong and quick) made your short, violent time on earth demonstrably better for you and yours. So people historically held people who had these traits in higher esteem than the general population. That’s 2D fitness – only looking at certain attributes a person has to make pretty broad assumptions about their success/health/security.
Nowadays, the old 2D fitness ideals can do the opposite of what they intended. I always tell people, “Top level athletes are a little crazy; and not in a good way.” The damage they do to their joints, fascia, muscles in achieving “success” often set them up for terrible pain and immobility in the later decades of their lives. Who wants to emulate that? When you see that athlete on a poster, or an advertisement, or on a screen; our brains are still wired in that old 2D fitness way, and we think, “look how healthy and fit this person is.” When we hear how much money that athlete makes and see how much adulation they receive, it’s easy to see how we forget that how they look in 2D is not necessarily healthy or fit – especially 40 years, 50 years later.
3D fitness a better way to describe what’s going on when your body moves and works in modern times. Humans have been running around the earth in larger clans and living short violent lives for upwards of several hundreds of thousands of years. It’s only in the last 400 years we’d seen life expectancy more than double. It’s obvious that our cultural and historic ideas of what is desirable needs a big rethink. Historically, lifestyle disease really wasn’t that big a thing until very recently. Your cholesterol levels didn’t matter so much; most people never lived long enough for it to be a problem. Your joint and bone health, your blood sugars, your cardiovascular health, you ligament and tendon health; these conditions used to not be as important; most people never lived into their 60’s, 70’s & 80’s. 3D fitness takes a much larger, array of metrics to make assumptions about a person’s long term human successes. Again,they include lifestyle disease metrics, myofascial & joint health, and even mental health metrics give a more complete picture of success outcomes for the many more decades you’ll hopefully have on this earth.
I love weightlifting, but you can’t watch someone squat and make a determination on their vascular health. Well, you could; but you’d probably be wrong. I’m not saying “Don’t be like Mike,” either. I’m not saying don’t enjoy your favorite athlete. I love admiring athletes! Did you watch any of the Olympics?! What I am saying is don’t think emulating or copying their 2D fitness successes will translate into long term positive health/fitness outcomes; they may not. When you’re thinking about YOUR life-long fitness outcomes, think less about your favorite athlete, and more about your own 3D fitness – and hopefully you’ll live lots longer, and be happier with less pain!
I’m just saying….
