Saturday Afternoon Workout: Reflections on Fitness

Look at how Allah created you in the womb of your mother and how he describes you in the Quran, how he put you together from the and grew you stage by stage with so much care and so much attention. And then what happens? When you get out, you don't take care of yourself. Allah took such care of you to grow you, to develop you. And then after that, you're not gonna take care of yourself.

How is this taqwa? How is this iman? Rasulullah was 53 years old when he made Hijra. That's older than I am now. And he was 55 at the battle of Badr.

He didn't fight in a single battle, in a single ghazwa until he was in his mid and late fifties. Now, there's no way that he could have done that except by being fit his whole life. From his youth until his death, Rasulullah was physically fit. And this is the case for all of the Sahara, partly because of just the climate that they were in. And when you're in a harsh climate, the body builds muscle faster and is conditioned faster to difficulty and challenge.

I was never good at doing diamond push ups, you know, close hand grip push ups until I was in solitary confinement and I was doing push ups with handcuffs on. When you're in difficult circumstances, your body kicks into survival mode. Your your mind kicks into survival mode and your body physiologically reacts. And you build muscle faster, you condition faster because it's not just the fitness of your body, it's the fitness of your mind and the toughness of your mind. It's your mental ability to block out the difficulty.

Now, know most of the people who watch my channel are young men, half my age. If you're young, get out and train. You don't need a gym. I don't even recommend a gym, to be honest. Go to a parking lot.

Go to a park. Go to a basketball court. Go wherever you can. Sun, rain, wind, sleet, hail, snow, whatever. Get out and train.

Build up your strength mentally and physically and spiritually and psychologically and emotionally and you'll be able to maintain that for your whole life. For me personally, in my opinion, it's important to expose yourself to harsh conditions. Physically harsh conditions. This is why I like to train on concrete. I run barefoot.

I train barefoot. Don't take unnecessary risks with your body, with your joints. But, the tougher you can get physically, the more of an advantage you'll have in any conflict situation because you won't have the inhibition, the natural instinctive inhibition that's the fear of getting hurt. Because something that will hurt another man won't hurt you. So you'll always have an advantage over another man who's more afraid of getting hurt than you are because you can take the hurt.

The the only way that I know is not really by the calorie burn, by the heart rate, by the length of time, by which how many reps I did, or any of that. This is me personally. The way that I know that I had a good workout is that the next day, I feel like I've been in a fight. One of the companions of was so physically fit that he could literally run faster than a horse in the sand, in the heat in Arabia. Now I don't think there's anybody of any of us today who could run faster than a horse, and I think that there's a lot of brothers today who are not even fit enough to ride on the back of a horse.

I think there's a few of us who probably are too big and too overweight to even lift our weight onto the back of a horse. So look, brothers, ancestors, if we're talking about following the example of Rasulullah and the Sahaba a major part of that is physical fitness. The Sahaba will fit people. They were very strong. They were very physically fit.

They had great stamina, great endurance. So this is a really essential part of our following the sunnah and following the way of the salafa salih. For anybody who's been involved in combat sports, I can speak from boxing. You know that there's many lessons from fighting that spill over into many other areas of your life. One example, in boxing you have to be light on your feet.

I can't emphasize enough how important it is, how important cardio is, so you can go longer, you can fight longer, you don't get gassed out, you don't get tired, you can bounce, and you can move. This is very often the difference between the winner and the loser. Whoever is the lightest on their feet and can move the fastest and is the most flexible in the ring. This spills over into other areas of your life. If you're very rigid and you're not able to move, you're not able to respond quickly, you can be defeated in your life.

You have to be able to move quick. You have to be able to move fast. And just as this is important in fighting, it's important in life. Mass slows you down. It slows down your punches.

It slows down your movement, and it makes you tired faster. It's easier for your body if you're fat than it is for you to be muscle bound. If you've ever been a fighter, if you've ever been a boxer, we look at the opponent's feet almost as much as we look at their hands because if you look at their feet then you can know where they are and what they're doing and what's coming next. But if they are moving quickly it is even more difficult to tell.