What is Upstream Fitness?

- Drew Wallace, Upstream Fitness Founder and Coach

For over six-years my profession was the infantry, most of which was spent in Special Operations, participating in missions overseas of a hazardous and physically demanding nature. My own life, and the lives of my team, depended on our physical fitness. More importantly, our lives depended on our ability to adapt to a variety of situations our environment presented. No wall was too high to climb, no ditch to wide to jump, no comrade to heavy to carry. The success of our mission depended on our ability to overcome these physical obstacles, not to mention the obstacles of hunger, thirst, fatigue, rain, or cold. Our fitness was about survival.

For millions of years the human animal has performed movements out of the need to survive. To climb a tree to evade a predator, to lift stones to build shelter, to sprint to chase prey. Our environment has dramatically changed since then, but the structural and physiological integrity of the human animal has not.

As I exited the military and approached the world of fitness I found it over-complicated with gadgets, trends, and gizmos. Our population was shackled by convention, chained to a desk, yearning to be wild again. No matter what new modality I tried, I always returned to the concept of ‘exercise’ and ‘fitness’ as simply movement, and being prepared for anything our environment throws at us. Picking an injured friend off the ground, jumping out of the way of traffic, climbing out a window.

The Upstream philosophy enables the individual a method to find the root of any problem. What is the modern human predicament? We have become sedentary animals and lack preparation to meet the potential demands imposed by our modern environment. The Upstream approach is to train with function, to be prepared for anything and everything our environment presents. To seize opportunities and escape danger.

At Upstream Fitness we believe that the most important thing we have is our body. To deny it of it’s instinctual capabilities is likeness to keeping an animal in a zoo.