Why health and longevity is the fundamental goal of exercise.

For the better part of history, most of humanity has obsessed over immortality, to indefinitely increase their life span. How not to die.

But in the past decade that I’ve been working in the fitness industry, I find that our current actions and lifestyle seem to favor the contrary.

We are undernourished yet overfed, under-slept yet overworked – factors that compromise the very thing we’re hard-wired to desire – longevity. Moving en masse from the jungles to the city, from bounding in large fields to being desk-bound, has reduced our physical activity far below the baseline.

Enter exercise – the solution to all our woes.

What was initially intended as an initiative to encourage our population to move more has gone a bit astray. In the decades that exercise culture has proliferated, we’ve forgotten the reasons why we began in the first place.

Today we are instead being persuaded to either tone, tuck, flatten, reduce yet grow targeted body parts for the sake of delusional beauty standards. Or go harder and faster, to mindlessly push, push, push until our bodies are left soul-less on the gym floor of all places.

Is that really what exercise is about?

Because it just feels like we’re ineffectively trying to survive here.

And that’s not enough.

If we want to spend our lives THRIVING rather than just surviving, I want to propose a different approach.

An approach to exercise that keeps the long game in mind. A training program that helps to reboot and reset our human body to its factory settings so that we can go about reclaiming our health and longevity.

That encourages us to nourish, sleep, and recover. To use exercise as a means to elevate our physical and mental fitness.

We are in our bodies for a lifetime.

Taking care of it is the ultimate priority.

Our long-term goal is to maintain the body’s condition and keep it disease and injury-free. We want to sleep and move pain-free so that our daily living is full of energy and life!

And that’s precisely what do at RISE Shanghai since 2019.

We are mission-driven and very much value-driven. Staying true to our values means taking a stand for everything we believe in, as well as against things that are at odds with our values.

We are against our culture’s obsession over irrational weight loss, quick-fix solutions, primitive ideas of hourglass figures, unrealistic standards of body proportions, as well as over-exercising, and burnout – all the things that do the opposite of health-promoting.

We are for

• strength training to gain muscle
• nurturing joints to produce good movement, and
• developing a cardiovascular system that allows us to live life large!

Health and longevity is the fundamental goal of exercise.

Everything. Else. Comes. After.

On the occasion of our upcoming 3rd year anniversary, I wanted to take this opportunity to reiterate our values and mission. I am making it loud & clear and you can hold me accountable when I slip up.

Happy birthday month to RISE Shanghai!

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