Lift AND Run AND Walk AND Crawl: Building a Truly Capable Body
When most people think about “fitness,” they picture something narrow. The runner pounding the pavement. The lifter under a barbell. The walker dutifully hitting step counts on a smartwatch. The person sweating buckets in a HIIT class, chasing that burn.
All of those things have their place. But a truly capable body isn’t built by doing just one of them.
Capability is a broader question: can your body handle what life throws at you? Can you carry, climb, haul, hike, crawl, sprint, and recover? Can you keep up with your kids or grandkids, join a last-minute hike, help a friend move house, or get down on the ground and back up again without effort?
If you’ve ever been winded halfway up Sumas Mountain, or felt your lower back seize after lifting a heavy box, or hesitated when someone asked you to join them on a trail run because “that’s not really my thing”… then you know what it feels like when your fitness doesn’t fully support your life.
That gap is what we’re talking about today. Because strength alone isn’t enough. Endurance alone isn’t enough. A daily walk is good, but it won’t prepare you for everything. And endless high-intensity classes don’t cover the gaps either.
A capable body is one that can lift AND run AND walk AND crawl.
This isn’t about becoming an elite athlete. It’s about building the kind of fitness that transfers directly into a better, more confident life, here in Abbotsford, on the trails around Cultus Lake, in your own back garden, and yes, even on the slopes at Whistler or Sasquatch Mountain when winter rolls around.
And this isn’t just true here in Abbotsford. No matter where you live, the foundation of a capable, healthy body is what allows everything else in life to function at its best. As John F. Kennedy once said:
“Intelligence and skill can only function at the peak of their capacity when the body is healthy and strong.”
That’s why building capability through strength, endurance, and resilience isn’t just about sport or aesthetics — it’s about unlocking your best self in every part of life.
The Limits of Specialisation
Specialisation can be impressive. Olympic lifters who can clean and jerk double their bodyweight. Marathoners who hold a pace most of us couldn’t match for 400 metres. Triathletes who string together hours of swimming, biking, and running in one go.
But here’s the thing: if you only ever train in one lane, you end up with blind spots.
Runners who never lift often struggle with injuries, poor bone density, and a lack of upper body strength.
Lifters who never run (or walk further than the distance from the car park to the squat rack) often find themselves gassed walking up a hill or chasing after their kids.
HIIT-only enthusiasts burn hot but fade fast, often stuck in a cycle of fatigue and injury.
Even elite athletes benefit from crossing over. Strength work helps runners build resilience and power. Aerobic training gives lifters and fighters a bigger engine. Mobility and baseline movement help everyone.
As I wrote in Train for the Life You Want, Not Just the Body You Miss:
“Most people are training for the body they used to have — not the life they actually want. They’re trying to ‘undo’ years of aging, desk work, stress and softness with a few bursts of gym intensity per week. And when the scale doesn’t move fast enough, or they miss a workout, or life interrupts their plan, they feel like they’ve failed — again. That approach leads to burnout. Or stagnation. Or both. There’s a better way.”
The message then, and now, is the same: if you’re only training to undo something (lose a few pounds, chase a number on the bar, burn off a cheat meal), you’re missing the bigger picture. True training is about building capability.
A Broader Definition of Capability
So what do I mean by “lift AND run AND walk AND crawl”? Let’s break it down.
Lift
Strength is the foundation. Being able to lift heavy things, whether that’s a barbell, a sandbag, or a stubborn piece of patio stone in your garden, gives you confidence and autonomy. It also protects your joints, bones, and metabolism as you age.
But it’s not just about neat barbell lifts. Real life demands odd shapes, awkward grips, and sometimes ugly mechanics. Training with free weights, medicine balls, kettlebells, and even good old sandbags develops the kind of usable strength that pays off outside the gym.
Run
Running is shorthand here for cardiovascular endurance. You don’t have to be a “runner” (see Running Isn’t Just for Runners — Why Aerobic Capacity Matters for Everyone for a deeper dive), but you do need a decent engine. Steady-state aerobic work builds recovery capacity, resilience, and a lower resting heart rate. Interval work sharpens your ability to push hard and bounce back.
From that article:
“Most people’s cardiovascular fitness is underdeveloped, and it holds them back more than they realise. It’s not about training for a marathon — it’s about training your body to move efficiently, to recover faster, and to handle the demands of life without constantly feeling drained.”
Even if you never pin on a race bib, being able to jog the trails at Ledgeview, ruck a heavy pack, or chase your dog without keeling over is a kind of everyday superpower.
Walk
Walking is baseline. It’s how you accumulate volume, recover between harder sessions, and maintain mobility without hammering your joints. The Minimum Effective Dose: The Busy Person’s Guide to Getting Fitter Without Burning Out post covered how purposeful walking is one of the most underrated health practices out there.
As I put it there:
“The foundation of that? Baseline Activity. The simplest and most effective version? Purposeful walking. Not a leisurely dog walk, and not wandering the grocery store aisles. We’re talking brisk, purposeful walking (like you're late for a meeting). Slightly elevated heart rate. Breathing a little harder, but still able to hold a conversation.”
Daily purposeful walks (not casual meandering) keep your system ticking over, regulate mood, and build a foundation for more demanding work.
Crawl
Crawl represents everything awkward, ground-based, and unusual. Bear crawls, get-ups, dragging a sled, carrying a sloshing water jug, crawling under a fence…these are the movements that prepare you for the unpredictable.
Life isn’t neatly packaged into three sets of 10. Sometimes it looks like wrestling a heavy load of firewood through a doorway, getting down on the floor to play with your kids, or scrambling up and over a rock face on a hike.
Events like obstacle course races (OCRs - Spartan being the most well-known) highlight why this matters. They don’t just test crawling; they demand strength, endurance, agility, and grit all at once. One minute you’re carrying a heavy sandbag, the next you’re climbing a rope or running a steep hill. It’s the collision of all these capacities that makes OCRs such a perfect example of real-world capability in action. I’ll come back to that in a moment.
Why This Matters Locally
For readers here in Abbotsford, this isn’t theoretical.
Moving House: Being able to carry awkward furniture without blowing out your back.
Volunteering: Hauling backpacks of food for kids in need at the Starfish Pack program (something that started here in Abbotsford, and where one of our members volunteered for a number of years!)
Yard Projects: Hauling soil, laying pavers, or digging fence posts, all things I got intimately familiar with during my backyard patio rebuild.
Trails: Hiking Sumas Mountain or running the switchbacks on Ledgeview. A body built only for lifting won’t carry you far, and a runner’s-only body will find the steep climbs punishing without strength.
Cultus Lake and Chilliwack River Valley: From paddleboarding to trail running, these places invite adventure if you’re capable enough to enjoy them.
Winter Sports: Skiing and boarding at Whistler, Manning Park, Sasquatch Mountain, or the North Shore hills demand strong legs, stable cores, and the endurance to keep going all day.
Capability in this context isn’t just about gym PRs. It’s about being able to say “yes” when opportunities come up. To join a hike without hesitation. To try a new activity with friends. To enjoy our local landscape fully instead of being limited by your body.
All of these local examples point to the same truth: health is the foundation for everything else we want to experience. Without it, even the best opportunities lose their shine. As the ancient physician Herophilus put it:
“When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied.”
Those words may be thousands of years old, but they still ring true today: your health is the foundation that makes every other pursuit possible.
Case Study: What Spartan Racing Taught Me About Capability
When I first signed up for a Spartan Race, I thought of it as a fitness challenge. What I didn’t realise was how perfectly it would test every domain of capability at once.
Strength mattered when I had to hoist a heavy sandbag up a steep incline. Endurance mattered when the course stretched into hours of effort. Walking and steady pacing mattered between obstacles. Crawling (literally, under barbed wire in the mud) mattered just as much as sprinting.
In What a Backyard Project (And a Decade of Spartan Races) Taught Me About Real Strength, I wrote:
“When you’re knee-deep in mud, trying to drag a sandbag uphill or climb a wall with your grip failing, no one cares how much you can bench press. What matters is whether your training has prepared you for the awkward, the uncomfortable, and the unpredictable. That’s what real strength is.”
OCRs became a proving ground for me. They forced me to train differently, not just heavier, not just faster, but more adaptable.
One moment you’re climbing a rope. The next you’re throwing a spear. Then you’re slogging through knee-deep mud, before flipping a tractor tyre or scaling a wall.
That mix is what life is like, in a way. Unpredictable. Demanding. Sometimes unfair. The people who thrive in both races and life aren’t the ones who specialise narrowly, they’re the ones who can handle whatever comes next.
A Fresh Philosophical Twist
This isn’t a new idea. Long before gyms, fitness trackers, or training programs, people recognised the link between physical health and a clear, capable mind. As Buddha taught:
“To keep the body in good health is a duty… otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.”
In other words, keeping the body healthy isn’t only about physical strength. It creates the clarity and confidence we need to face life fully. Capability is more than muscles or endurance – it’s freedom. It’s the ability to say yes without hesitation, knowing your body and mind can carry you through.
When you’re strong, you stop worrying about whether you can carry your luggage or shovel snow without injury. When you’re fit enough to run and hike, you say yes to local adventures instead of sitting them out. When you practise awkward movements, you become the person who handles life’s curveballs instead of being sidelined by them.
This is bigger than abs, bodyweight, or aesthetics. A capable body gives you agency.
It’s a shift we’ve circled in multiple posts already. In Train for the Life You Want, Not Just the Body You Miss, I talked about moving beyond surface goals:
“Surface goals often lead to surface effort. And surface effort leads to surface results. When someone makes the mental shift away from ‘fixing’ their body and toward building real capability, their training changes too. Suddenly, it’s not about calories burned. It’s about what you’re building — and why.”
And in Running Isn’t Just for Runners — Why Aerobic Capacity Matters for Everyone, I emphasised:
“Cardio shouldn’t just be punishment for what you ate or a desperate way to burn calories. It should be a tool to expand your capacity, to recover better, and to experience more of life without being limited by your fitness.”
Today’s message ties those threads together: train for the full spectrum of life, not just a single lane.
Where to Go for the Nuts and Bolts
Now, I know some of you will read this and think, “Okay, but how do I actually put this into practice?”
The good news is, we’ve already covered a lot of those details:
Train for the Life You Want, Not Just the Body You Miss → how to shift from fixing your body to building capability.
Minimum Effective Dose: The Busy Person’s Guide to Getting Fitter Without Burning Out → what matters most when you’re busy and need a practical, sustainable plan.
Running Isn’t Just for Runners — Why Aerobic Capacity Matters for Everyone → why and how to build aerobic capacity even if you don’t see yourself as a runner.
Each of those posts goes deeper into the training strategies and physiology behind the message here. If you haven’t read them yet, they’re worth circling back to.
Local Adventures, Real Capability
Here’s the picture I want you to leave with.
Imagine yourself strong enough to deadlift your bodyweight, but also fit enough to run the trails at Ledgeview. Capable of skiing all day at Sasquatch without your legs giving out, then showing up Monday for a small-group session at The BTG. Confident enough to crawl under, over, or through whatever life (or a Spartan race) throws at you.
That’s what a truly capable body looks like. Not a specialist. Not a fragile version of “fit.” But someone who can lift, run, walk, crawl, and live fully.
If you’re local to Abbotsford and reading this, that’s exactly what we train for at The BTG. Not just muscles or step counts, but capability in all its forms. If you’ve been curious about training with us, get in touch through our Contact Us page.
There are no long-term commitments, and every new member gets a 1-month, risk-free trial period to experience what small-group training at The BTG feels like.
And if you’re further afield? The principle still holds: your training should serve your life, not just your image. Wherever you live, the goal is the same: build a body that says yes.
Yes to adventures, yes to opportunities, yes to a more capable and confident version of yourself. Whether that’s hiking with friends, chasing your kids, or finally signing up for a challenge that’s been sitting on your bucket list, capability is what opens those doors.
Because the life you want isn’t waiting for a perfect body. It’s waiting for a capable one. And you can start building that today.