Welcome to Fly Fisher Fitness

Welcome to Fly Fisher Fitness! Fly fishing demands a high level of stamina, power and coordination. Too often we develop enough wisdom and skill to be masterful or just when we have the time to fish longer and harder, our health wanes and we begin to deteriorate. We are here to help you think about approaching the aging process in new ways and learning to do things differently.

Aging is a natural part of life. But the script we have been given around aging—what we call “normal aging” is not normal. It’s what we have accepted as normal because the bar is set so low. As we age slowing down is natural, rotting in place is not .... Aging is part of our biological lineage. But it is driven and shaped by mass culture, stereotypes and stories. We are out of touch with the only thing that is real about aging, Nature.

The High Cost of Coasting

Getting older is not the enemy a sedentary lifestyle is. Your body will age and slowing down is natural but deterioration is not. A lack of activity sends the biological message that conditions are such that the body needs to shut down, conserve and shrink. The sedentary lifestyle is a dangerous choice. It turns simple and natural aging into decline and prolonged decline advances into decay. The longer our body decays, the more effort it will be to come back or rebuild what we have lost.

 

If we decay past the tipping point and get injured or sick, we may not be able to come back.
 
Modern life feels good but this marshmallow soft existence is a silent, steady slow downward crawl that can suddenly become a downhill plunge. Human biology, your lineage can keep you young. But it’s misdirected by the messages of modernism—Lazy Boys, excessive nutrition, fast food, retirement and TV send signals that slow human growth pathways to an idle. You could say, a lifestyle of idleness literally gets into your bones……..

Click here to download a Quick Guide to Strength, Stamina and Sturdiness.

Reconnect With Your Lineage

Modern humans are descendants of hunter-gatherers who were evolutionarily optimized for endurance, lifting and carrying over thousands of years. To earn a living as a hunter-gatherer you ran, walked and foraged, carrying babies, tools and food every day. You were curious where to find food. You were optimistic that the next day you would have better success and continuously sharpening your skills toward that end. That means we are all those things too. We can’t just suddenly stop and sit idle in our cushy, temperature-controlled modern world. We have to exercise, body mind and spirit every day because it’s who we are. Human biology is older and deeper than anything we know and it’s in our best interest to re-connect with our roots.

Back to Nature

What keeps your body strong, lean and functioning younger is activity. That used to mean foraging, hunting and gathering. We replace that today with exercise. Activity initiates the human biology and chemical pathways of growth. But not just any activity. The casual activity of modern daily life is not enough to engage the biological and chemical pathways of growth.

Your hindbrain, sometimes called lizard brain runs your body with ruthless efficiency. Think fly casting, bike riding, diving into a pool. It also runs your metabolism but knows nothing of happiness, thought or speech. It communicates through cellular pathways involving primitive biology, chemical impulses and hormones. When you exercise, your muscles send complex and multi-system signals that gear your cells, organs and tissues to the immediate energy demands of the moment. Think about going up a set of stairs. Your steps automatically engaged the hindbrain and thus, increase your heart rate. The hindbrain will continue to monitor your body’s every movement and need in perfect harmony just like all of Nature.

Once you start and reconnect with your hindbrain, you’ll go beyond the fly-fishing weekend connection to Nature. You will align with your biology, your Nature, your lineage—the billions of years of biology that have been covered up by modern life.

Consistent Effort

With consistent training you will develop new networks of capillaries which will bring more fuel (fat & glucose) to your muscles. Your metabolism will improve and you will more fully metabolize the nutrients from your food and supplements. All your organs, joints, ligaments, nervous system and even your brain will marinade in the juices of growth, repair and rebuild.

After months and years of exercise, you have effected change on the cellular level. You’ll feel your body transform. That’s because extended effort turns on the slow, deep constant currents of growth that sustain and rebuild your human infrastructure for the long-term. Reconnecting with your hindbrain over the long term rewires pathways of curiosity, energy and optimism. You become more flexible and open-minded. This is well documented in depression patients who choose the natural medicine of exercise over synthetic drugs.

You were designed to be lean, aerobically fit, strong and resilient with good bones, a good immune system, optimistic and open-minded. Whether you are already here or working to get here, you are on track to get back to Nature on a deeper level than you ever thought possible.