De-Railed - Intro

My next series of posts will be based on some excellent wisdom from a book by Tim Irwin, Ph.D. called DE-RAILED – Five Lessons Learned from Catastrophic Failures of Leadership from Thomas Nelson Publishing.
He defines derailment through the analogy of a true train wreck – "When a huge machine intended to pull great loads gets outside the crucial limits of two parallel steel rails, there are always certain and disastrous consequences." This book highlights six different top executives in Fortune 500 companies that started with amazing potential and had an intended direction for their company, but due to getting outside the lines they eventually headed themselves and their companies to a derailment. This is the same for many when it comes to our health and fitness. Hopefully we can apply these principles to our health as well.
We all have strengths and weaknesses, while I am a big believer in focusing on your strengths we have to be aware of our weaknesses. He pointed out some great points:

1. We need to be humble and remind ourselves of our vulnerability because of our weaknesses.
2. While we should build on our strengths, so that our weaknesses become irrelevant. But some weaknesses can be so disabling that they can disqualify us.
3. A strength can quickly and easily become a weakness, when overused too much.
4. Excessive stress can compromise even the strongest and resilient of strengths.

I think these are important things to consider with our exercise programs. We need to be humble and realize that even if we are exercising we may have a weakness in our fitness program that may lead to injury. We all probably have exercises that we enjoy the most, but we need to spend some time with ones we may not enjoy as much to make sure we keep balance in our body, mind and spirit. If we have a weakness that we don't address it will lead to an injury that will affect our performance and movement. If we overdo our exercise program without proper control that to can also lead to injury. We need to make sure we are stressing our system to improve it, but we cannot put it into distress.
I think many people have seen their or someone else's health and fitness go outside the lines. Derailment occurs over time and is a process, a self chosen path. It actually begins before the crash. There are stages they go through this process. The first stage is a lack of self awareness; they begin down a path that has a predictable progression to derailment. They seem to be oblivious to the impact their choices and behaviors have on themselves. Next will often be early warning signs that are ignored (increase weight gain, a little shortness of breath with climbing stairs, pre-hypertension, increased blood sugars, etc.). The last stage usually before derailment is the attempt to rationalize their choices and path. They will twist info and deny responsibility and accuse others and outside situations as the cause and not their own choices. They take on the roll of the victim.
Over the next few posts I will discuss some ways to stay on the rails and avoid derailment and help those maybe on the path to derailment become aware it and begin the process of getting back on track.