Thinking About Fitness Like Choosing a Pokémon

I think fitness is a lot like Pokémon.

Remember the GameBoy version of Pokémon where Professor Oak gives you three Pokémon to choose from at the start? One of the hardest choices, honestly, because there’s no objectively best one among the three. I think the way I approach fitness works the same way.

I think fitness gets made way more complicated and intimidating than it needs to be. Whether you're someone who's never stepped into a gym, you've been training for years, or you're preparing for a specific sport, I think it helps to first understand that there isn't just one version of "fitness."

Someone might want to build a physique. Someone else wants to get ridiculously strong. Someone wants to run a fast 5K. Someone wants to learn a muscle-up. Someone wants to be able to fight or play basketball (or fight during a basketball game lol). And someone else might just want to stay healthy and capable as they get older.

They're all training. They just happen to have chosen a different Pokémon.

I actually stumbled into this idea pretty early. Way back, during a fateful visit to a bookstore, I found myself at a hinge. On one side was Arnold Schwarzenegger's Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding, with a young Arnold on the cover, flexing.

Young me thought, Whoa. I want to look like this dude.

Then there was another book that caught my attention. It was filled with graphs, diagrams, and what looked like some seriously academic and technical shit about how the Soviets had used systematic training to dominate the Olympics.

It was Tudor Bompa's Periodization Training for Sports.

I opted for the latter. I don't remember why.

But that ended up being my starter Pokémon. It has spurred a lifelong interest in training and, more importantly, gave me a framework for understanding what fitness actually is.

One of the most useful concepts I've learned from it was that there are several interconnected spectrum of biomotor abilities we could train for.

Once you look at fitness this way, a lot of different training approaches start making sense.

Our Starter Pokémon

Bodybuilding

Then hypertrophy is going to be a major priority.

If your goal is to build a physique, pose, and eventually compete, you're going to organize your training around building muscle, managing fatigue, nutrition, recovery, and getting lean enough to show it.

That's a completely different problem from training for a marathon.

Strength Training

Then strength becomes the priority. This is where traditional resistance training makes sense. Squat. Bench. Deadlift. Overhead press. Weighted pull-ups. Their variations.

Skill Acquisition

Now things get a little different. Think calisthenics or gymnastics. Maybe you want a muscle-up, handstand, planche, or front lever. Being strong helps, but strength alone doesn't give you the movement. You also need coordination, technique, body awareness, positions, timing, and a lot of practice.

Strength and skill aren't the same thing. You can be very strong and still suck at a particular movement.

Sport-Specific Training

This is where the gym becomes a tool rather than the destination. A boxer needs to box. A basketball player needs to play basketball. A swimmer needs to swim. A fighter needs to fight. Strength and conditioning can prepare you for those things, but they don't replace the actual sport.

And even within team sports, different positions can have different physical demands. So there isn't really one universal "sports training" program either. You have the skill of the sport, plus the physical qualities that support it.

Endurance

Maybe your scoreboard is Strava. You want to run a faster 3K. Then a 5K. Then 10K. Then a half marathon. Or maybe you're into swimming, cycling, triathlon, or eventually an Ironman.

Now endurance becomes a much bigger part of the equation. You're not necessarily training "better" than the person chasing a bigger squat. You're just trying to improve a different physical quality.

Exercise-as-Sport

And sometimes fitness itself is the sport. CrossFit. HYROX. Usually, we think of exercise as something we do to prepare for something else. We lift to get stronger. We run to improve our conditioning. We do strength and conditioning to support a sport. But now there are competitions where the exercise itself is the sport.

You're combining strength, endurance, power, gymnastics, running, and other qualities, then competing in how well you can put them together.

Again, different game.

So what's the "best" way to train?

I don't think there is one.

A lot of fitness advice sounds contradictory because people are often solving different problems. One person wants to get strong. Another wants to run a faster 5K. Another wants to build muscle. Another wants to fight.

They're playing different games.

Specificity matters. If you want to run, run. If you want to get strong, lift. If you want a muscle-up, practice muscle-ups. If you want to box, box.

The goal SHOULD come first. Once you know that, you can figure out which physical qualities matter and how to train them.

Now, what's your starter Pokémon?