The Anatomy of Effort: Fitness Racing, Philosophy, and the Future of Training

Fitness is a word we use often but rarely stop to define. For some, it’s the echo of barbells hitting the floor or the glow of a treadmill display flashing red with effort. For others, it’s muscle tone, visible abs, a resting heart rate in the fifties. But real fitness—durable, versatile, honest fitness—is something else entirely. It’s not about how you look when the lighting’s good. It’s about what you can do. It’s about readiness. For life, for pressure, for whatever shows up on your doorstep tomorrow.

At its essence, fitness is the capacity to meet demands—physical, mental, environmental. Whether that’s chasing down a toddler, hauling a heavy bag through an airport, or grinding through the final round of a fitness race with your lungs on fire. Fitness isn’t about a singular achievement. It’s about capability across the board. Not “how do you look,” but “how do you hold up under pressure?”

Survival First, Then Sport

To understand what fitness is, it helps to look back. Not decades. Millennia. Before we ever trained for sport or aesthetics, we moved to survive. Our earliest ancestors didn’t count steps or program their training cycles. They moved because movement meant food, safety, survival. They tracked animals for hours across the savannah, their bodies built not for brute speed, but for endurance and heat tolerance. They ran upright, cooled efficiently through sweat, and wore their resilience in bone and sinew. Fitness wasn’t optional. It was survival. Those who could endure lived. Those who couldn’t didn’t pass on their genes.

Over time, as survival became more stable and society more structured, fitness found a new arena: the arena. In places like ancient Greece, physical ability became a symbol of human excellence. The gymnasium wasn’t just a place to train—it was a place to sharpen the body and the mind. Physical skill wasn’t about vanity—it was about virtue.

The Olympic Games weren’t a fitness trend. They were a philosophical expression of human potential. One event in particular captured this idea: the pentathlon. Five disciplines—running, jumping, throwing (discus and javelin), wrestling—combined to reward the athlete who wasn’t the best at any one thing, but who could do everything well. It was balance that was honoured. Capability in all directions.

The Greeks knew something we’re just beginning to rediscover: that specialization has limits. The most complete athlete isn’t the fastest or strongest in isolation—it’s the one who holds up best across all demands. The one who adapts. The one who endures.

Fitness as Readiness

This broader idea of fitness—readiness, generalism, capability—isn’t unique to Greece. In ancient Sparta, boys were trained from early childhood not to look strong, but to be unbreakable. Strength, speed, endurance, grit—it was all baked into the culture. You didn’t train for aesthetics. You trained for war.

Across the world in feudal Japan, the samurai pursued a similar ideal. Their training wasn’t just in swordplay. It included archery, swimming, grappling, and horseback riding. Their fitness was functional and varied. They knew that survival in combat depended on adaptability, not mastery of a single skill.

Even in tribal societies, rites of passage were physical tests. They didn’t just measure pain tolerance—they measured readiness. Could you endure? Could you move well under pressure? Could you transition from boy to man, not in theory, but in action?

These examples aren’t relics. They’re reminders. That real fitness has always been more than a performance on a platform or a number on a wearable. It’s about function. Versatility. The ability to meet effort with integrity—whether in battle, in a race, or in daily life.

Today, we train in controlled environments. The threats are mostly gone. But the need for capacity hasn’t disappeared. And that’s what fitness still gives us—capacity. To show up, to keep up, to go again.

Defining Fitness: From Evolution to Modern Health

Fitness is one of those words that changes depending on context. We have established it refers to physical condition—how strong, fast, or capable someone is. But dig a little deeper, and the word starts to reveal its layers. At its root, fitness has always meant one thing: effectiveness in context. And that context could be as broad as surviving on the African savannah or as specific as navigating a busy Tuesday without burning out.

In evolutionary biology, fitness has almost nothing to do with biceps or burpees. It’s about adaptability—whether an organism survives long enough to pass on its genes. That might seem disconnected from how we train today, but the link is clear. In both cases, fitness is about how well you respond to the demands of your environment. For early humans, that meant hunting, gathering, enduring harsh climates, and defending territory. For modern humans, it might mean keeping up with your kids, staying sharp at work, or recovering quickly from illness or injury. The context has changed. The principle hasn’t.

If we shift to how public health experts define fitness, we start to see a more practical version emerge—one that sits between the raw evolutionary view and the gym-floor understanding. Physical fitness, in this context, is the ability to function well in daily life. To move, to work, to play, to recover. It’s about having energy—not just to survive, but to enjoy life. It’s being able to climb stairs without gasping. To lift your shopping without strain. To play with your children or grandchildren without pulling something. In other words: to live with freedom, not limitation.

This is what real fitness is. It’s not a body shape or a mile time. It’s capability. It’s control. It’s having options. A fit person can meet life with more ease, more resilience, and more adaptability. They can respond—not just react.

That readiness is what ancient thinkers respected most. Even in times when physical labour was a given, the idea of preparing the body to face hardship—voluntarily—was considered noble. Strength wasn’t about dominance. It was about durability. It meant being less fragile, more self-sufficient. And while our modern version of hardship may look different—desk jobs, traffic, long hours, information overload—the antidote is the same: movement, strength, stamina, discipline.

Because fitness, at its core, is preparation. It’s training for the known and building capacity for the unknown. And that kind of fitness doesn’t just strengthen the body—it steadies the mind.

Stoicus Esto

Jason Curtis