The 5 Factors of Health

The Building Blocks of Health.

At Mossy Creek Fitness, we have adopted the mindset that being healthy involves significantly more than just getting to the gym a few days a week. In fact, we believe that there are elements to your health that even come before exercise and fitness. ​

Pursuing health in a holistic way involves 5 primary factors. Eating, Sleeping, Training, Thinking, and Connecting.
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In the gym, we are going to do a couple of things to focus intentionally on total and holistic health. 

ONE
We are going to be hosting seminars that touch on these different factors. We'll bring in qualified people to provide education and insight on one of these 5 areas. The goal of these seminars is to empower you with education and tools so that  you can continue to take steps to being the healthiest version of yourself possible.
 
TWO
Our weekly challenge is always going to be focused on one of these 5 factors of health. Each week we'll be challenging our entire gym community to pursue health in a really particular way.

We don't want to overwhelm anyone with massive amounts of information here; so, we'll just touch very briefly on all five below. 

Eat: You've heard it before - you can't out-train a bad diet. It's cliché, but it's also true. Your nutrition is the base of your health pyramid, and we encourage you to become educated on the types of food you're eating and how they're affecting your health systems long-term. Nutrition is a really daunting subject, and it takes understanding a lot of different parts to be able to wrap your mind around the complexities of food and how our bodies respond to it. My encouragement is that you simplify it as much as possible. Don't worry about all the complicated stuff, and start by eating real food and not too much of it. Avoid all the processed fast food. Avoid the food that won't go bad if you leave it on a shelf for 5 years. An easy switch for your grocery list is simply to trade your canned vegetables for frozen vegetables. After you focus on the quality of your food, focus on the quantity. Don't eat too much, and control your intake to a responsible level. 

Sleep: In our culture it's almost become a badge of honor to be the person that can operate on very little sleep. You'll hear of people who work 2nd and 3rd shifts take pride in how they can function on only a few hours of sleep each day. You can observe the majority of college students pretend like they're still emotionally stable after going two days with no sleep just so they can get their homework done AND still have time to watch Netflix. I was, and in many ways still am, the kind of person who does this. It's bad, and it's something we have to take control of if we truly want to be healthy. Among the many health benefits of good sleeping habits, it's one of the primary things that will help you get the results you're wanting from exercise. If you want to look lean and fit, sleep more and find 8 hours to sleep between 10:00pm and 8:00am. 

Train: By training, we mean exercise. By exercise we mean actual exercise aimed at burning fat, building lean muscle, and developing functional abilities that help you move well late into your life. Exercise should always involve some element of intensity, and that intensity must be relative (or scaled) to the individual. All the good stuff you want out of exercise is on the other side of intensity. If you want to feel better, breathe better, look better, and live better - then get off the cable resistance machines, get off the treadmills, step away from the bicep curl station, and start an exercise program that's focused on functional intensity. 

Think: Our health is much more than just physical. We should be sharpening our minds as well as training our bodies. We all learn in different ways, our emphasis on "thinking" is simply us encouraging you to learn something new in whatever way works for you. Whether it's reading biographies of people who inspire you, listening to podcasts, studying articles, or even determining to continue your education in some capacity - thinking is something we are always doing, so find ways to make it productive. 

Connect: ​This is one I'm particularly passionate about. In life, we are created to engage with each other. If we were meant to be alone, we wouldn't be surrounded by literally billions of people. Connecting with people who are like you and with people who are nothing like you is a way to become a more holistically healthy person. I don't mean surface level interactions that involve a "How are you?" followed by some mumbling and a thumbs up. I mean connecting in a true, authentic sense. The healthiest and happiest people are those who truly know others and are known by others. A true measure of health is that you're able to share that health with other people. 


Our aim is to coach people to becoming the most effective and thriving versions of themselves. These are the ways we believe that happens and we're here to help you focus on all these factors. ​