Wholistic Fitness

WF Student Mike DeSantis; reflections on persistence and adaptation in WF

Mike DeSantis, another amazing Noble Warrior of the WF Lifestyle with bella and emma.
Student DeSantis says about the Work of WF: “Practicing this stuff is hard, and my practice is
nowhere near perfect. However, it’s practice that MAKES perfect, and your inspiration and guidance has
really helped this humble student practice more and better.”

Namaste Noble Coach,
The amount of yourself that you share through DL and through personal emails is so moving, that I really want to share something of myself with you in return. In that spirit, I offer some observations of my own first faltering steps on the path of WF. (I am now 1/2 way through Frugal Real week 3 from TBT, so I have not yet completed a full cycle).

Your teaching to prioritize quality and posture over quantity and weight in strength training; your frequent reminders that “you have your whole life to become wholistically fit;” your reminder that yoga is adaptation; the amount of time you wrote that it took you to loosen yourself and do a deep malasana; the reminders to attend to breath and posture; all these have been beacons on my initial journey.

You’ve posted some emails to DL from people who claim they don’t have the time for WF, so I wanted to share how these teachings helped me with this very problem.

When I started WF, I had 18 month old twins at home and a job at a high-tech startup. I wasn’t exactly sitting around with time on my hands wondering what to do with myself. I had a real need, however, to begin this work, and TBT came along at the right time in my life. I started by working out at a local gym during lunchtime (and insisting to management that I had to
take a break for lunch). I was on the final week of Green Tara when my company laid everyone off. Such is life at a startup.

In between jobs, there was no gym membership or workouts for three months, while I scrambled to find another job to support my family (my wife stays at home full time to care for our children, especially my son who has special needs, but that’s another story). Three months later, another startup (they seemed to be the only ones hiring at the time), and another gym close to the office. Perfect! Again, I started Green Tara. Again, I practiced for three weeks.

This time, however, management got ugly. They began demanding more hours from me, sending me on frequent business trips. I let the gym membership go, feeling bad all the while that I couldn’t stick with the program.

I might have given up on WF entirely were it not for your words. Instead, I decided to adapt. I decided the only way to make WF work for me would be to invest in a home gym setup, wake up early, and do the workouts before getting to the office. This also meant that I would not have certain machinery at my disposal (e.g., leg press), but I resolved to find alternate exercises for anything I couldn’t do, and simply press on (your earlier book, The Outdoor Althete, was a great help in this regard).

I started again with Green Tara. I completed it. Again, instability at a startup caused a change of jobs; my new routine made my workouts imprevious to this disruption. I completed Cosmic Yang. Now I am in the Frugal Realm.

The main “muscle” I’ve trained, through all of this, is my will and resolve to stick to this program. The more I do, the greater is my capacity to go a little further all the time. Every workout, every practice, fuels my desire to keep going. As my willpower
increases, my practice improves, every day. The Sunrider herbs, especially the ILG SUPREME, are another source of fuel for the will. Being an athlete is a major stretch for me. I’m overcoming a lifetime of a inactivity and injury. I spent my childhood and young adulthood, from age 6 to age 18, working through an injury caused by a cyst I was born with in my left femur. The fragile bone broke when I was 6, and the next 12 years were filled with bone graft surgeries, body casts, wheelchairs, and
crutches.

Imagine what your life might be like if you had never participated in any sport between the ages of 6 and 18. I am so very grateful that I was completely cured! So many people I ran into during those years will never recover from their injuries or diseases; I am extraordinarily lucky.

Early fitness explorations for me didn’t come until I was in my 20s; hiking, camping, canoing, cardio commuting on my bike, and yoga with a wonderful teacher.

I have never completed stuck with any athletic endeavor as strenuous and difficult as WF. You wrote that completing the program may be the most difficult physical challenge someone has ever encountered; that’s certainly true in my case!

I hope to one day compete in an athletic event (I’m planning a century ride in the fall, now that I’ve returned to cardio commuting and with WF training under my belt), and then apply to become a real WF online student.

Thank you for reading
and for your love and encouragement.

Thank you for caring enough to read and reply! It’s an
honor to share the planet with YOU too — your example
is an inspiration!

Love,
Mike DeSantis