The famous quotation from Juvenal’s tenth satire, usually translated as “a sound mind in a sound body,” came to my somewhat sound mind this past weekend when I was watching the Oscars.

Though there are countless films made about real-life athletes and their amazing physical feats (Chariots of Fire, Prefontaine, Ali, Without Limits, etc.) I’ve always found the movies that focus equally on the mental and emotional fitness of their subjects to be the most compelling.  Here’s a brief rundown of a few of my recent favorites:

Endurance (1999, dir. Leslie Woodhead).  I’m always a sucker for a movie about a marathoner, but this quiet film about Ethiopian running phenom Haile Gebrselassie is a testament to the power of the human mind.  We are able to see that it was determination alone that propelled Gebrselassie from scrawny, rural farm boy to Olympic champion.

The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (1998, dir. Aviva Kempner).  This story of the handsome, gentlemanly Greenberg, the first major Jewish star in baseball’s major leagues is alternately funny, sad, and inspiring— the latter particularly so in light of the behavior of some of the sport’s recent “stars.”

Touching the Void (2003, dir. Kevin MacDonald).  This documentary about the two mountaineers who had a harrowing, near-disastrous experience while climbing in the Andes is especially interesting because of the incredible mental toughness exhibited by both men and the physical suffering one of them had to endure and overcome after being left for dead by his companion.

Encounters at the End of the World (2007, dir. Werner Herzog).  Encounters deserves its Oscar nomination for best documentary not only for the otherworldly views (both under and above water) of Antarctica captured by Werner Herzog and his team, but also for the fascinating stories of the motley set of men and women who live and work in the South Pole at the McMurdo Research Station, dedicating their lives to science and expanding the boundaries of human knowledge, often at great risk to themselves (like the divers who explore the sea floor under the ice without a tether line, trusting that they will be able to somehow find their way back to the hole they made to enter the water, or the scientists who study Antarctica’s active volcanoes— and by study, I mean climb down inside them).

Man on Wire (2008, dir. James Marsh).  I have actually not yet seen this film about tightrope-walker Philippe Petit’s famous illegal high-wire walk between the twin towers in 1974, but it won the Oscar, and interviews with Petit suggest he sees his accomplishments as being due to mental fortitude as much as physical stamina. As he says,

To me, it’s really so simple, that life should be lived on the edge.  You have to exercise rebellion.  To refuse to tape yourself to the rules, to refuse your own success, to refuse to repeat yourself, to see every day, every year, every idea as a true challenge.  Then you will live your life on the tightrope.

Have any favorite “healthy mind in healthy body” examples of your own?  Please send ‘em along!

Jeanine Casler lives, runs, and writes in Evanston, Illinois.

This has happened many times in my twelve years as a trainer:

A client comes in for a session and is expecting me to give them a hard workout but they look worn out before we even start.  I can see their exhaustion (perhaps brought on by emotional distress, not enough quality food, or too little sleep) in their dull stares.  So we begin with a light warm-up and they huff and grunt as if it were their heavy set.  Nothing about the workout appears to be pleasurable, just painful and torturous.  Within ten minutes I make the call to switch to a much lighter workout, one that requires no weights, just some deep breathing, stretching and laying on a mat.

From what I can tell, there are two reasons people work out when they should be resting instead.  The first is that they simply don’t know why they shouldn’t.  While working out regularly with moderate to high intensity exercise does increase immune function over the long term, exercising actually suppresses your immune system for the short term.  It’s a stressor.  If you work out while you feel run down or sick, you are greatly increasing the likelihood of getting worse.  And that is counter-productive and no fun.

The second reason is guilt. I can’t tell you how many times I have had clients show up for a session terribly sick and when I ask them why they hadn’t cancelled, they replied,

I didn’t want to be lazy.

LAZY?!  These are usually the same people who hold demanding executive level positions, train three to five times a week, take piano and cooking lessons and volunteer with the local Big Brothers Big Sisters.  I doubt being lazy has ever been a problem of theirs.  Clients who don’t take sick days from the gym due to guilt seem to have a much harder time changing their workout habits.  Perhaps this is because guilt can be such a loaded emotion carrying with it a long history.

So what do I do when clients show up not feeling well?  My main focus is to release tension, circulate their blood and lymph, and aid in the body’s elimination of waste and toxins.  The idea is to help their body cope with and release the stress it is under through with a combination of light, flowing movements, deep breathing and stretching, similar to yoga.  I pay attention to how they respond.  If it is clear that even this light stretching proves too much, I tell them to go home and simply rest.

Instead of just continuing with your habitual routine the next time you are not feeling well, take a moment to check in with your body.  What is it saying to you?  Is it begging for a rest?  Is it telling you to head home and go to bed early?  Is it requesting an easy listening playlist?  I personally love reading a good book in my favorite armchair while listening to Cesaria Evora with a mug of herbal tea at my side.

The way to a healthy, strong body is not solely by intense workouts.  Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing at all.

Jamie Dreyer is a co-founder of Blog Further and the President of Further Fitness NYC.

So my weight loss has now progressed to the point (20 lbs) that people are starting to notice and in so much as most of the people I come into contact with on a daily basis are pretty nice they’re mentioning my ever shrinking mid-section.  Now for any normal person this would be a godsend, a validation that all one’s hard work and self control has started yielding dividends.  As I’m sure you’ve all deduced from my weekly ramblings, I’m not normal.  I, being the snarky but (hopefully) lovable curmudgeon that I am, can’t help but receive every compliment (no matter how well-intentioned) as a statement unfinished.  And of course the voice in my head must complete it.

Looking good…

Not like you usually do.

You’ve lost weight…

And not a minute too soon.

You’re looking skinny…

Not at all like the great lumbering land beast we’ve come to love.

When complimented by co-workers or casual acquaintances I manage a sincere, “Yeah? Thanks,” and head out of the room before they can see me blush.  With close friends I’m not so cordial.  After being told by a friend that my weight loss was really starting to show, I replied with a courteous,

Shut the fuck up.

Emily Post (and my mother) would be ever so proud.  One probably wouldn’t have to delve too deeply into my Protestant-American-work-ethic upbringing to understand why I can’t to this day take a compliment.  We don’t want to get too full of ourselves now do we?  Truth be told, I need and like ego strokes as much as the next guy and hope that my inability to take ‘em like a man doesn’t stop their flow in my direction.

Should you encounter me any time soon, please feel free to tell me how good I look and I promise I’ll do my very best not to swear at you.  I also promise not to have a tearful Lifetime Television for Women…and gay men breakdown declaring through sobs,

I’m pretty, Mamma.

I’m saving that for when I reach my goal weight.

Bob Speck lives and writes in Los Angeles.  He has no idea why.

At >6 months and counting, I’m getting to the stage that some of you mothers out there may remember;  my run is now more accurately described as a plod, and walkers and runners leap out of my way when they hear me coming because my labored breathing seems to suggest either that 1) I’m about to keel over on top of them, or 2) I am a homicidal maniac on a rampage.

Given the fact that my increased weight and unwieldiness have recently made it much more difficult to run regularly, I decided to cut back on my (already negligible) “mileage” and reserve a few days a week for swimming instead.  After all, it’s probably THE most recommended exercise for pregnant women, due to factors like allowing you to raise your heart rate in a healthy way that should not cause overheating and not adding increased weight or stress to your (already-stressed) joints.

Squeezing my burgeoning body into an old, stretched-out, 2-piece bathing suit, I literally took the plunge into Northwestern University’s impressive, Olympic-size swimming pool.  Rather than being daunted by all the trophies and pennants lining the high walls, or the slender, dolphin-esque lap-swimmers in the lanes bordering mine, I was able to lose myself in the views of frigid Lake Michigan out of the floor-to-ceiling windows; it was bliss to glide gently along, feeling so grateful— for once— not to be fighting against gravity.

When I finally got out of the pool and made the walk back to the locker room, what other people thought about how I looked was the furthest thing from my mind.  To my surprise, the woman in the shower next to mine started a conversation, mentioning that she’d competed in a swim meet 10 days before delivering her second child (!)

It’s the best thing you can do for yourself.

She said of swimming during pregnancy, adding,

You look beautiful!

Ok, so maybe that last bit was a slight bending of the truth designed to make me feel less like a baby beluga, but all in all, my visit to the pool provided a great literal and figurative lift that many women should seek out, especially later in pregnancy when they might feel like the weight of the world (or at least roughly 15-20 pounds of it) is settled around their midsection.

Jeanine Casler lives, runs, and writes in Evanston, Illinois.

I’ve been in pain for several months, courtesy of my back.  So I visited my doctor, and after she defined the problem, I gritted my teeth:

No biking or running?

“Not for a while,” she replied.

But you can still walk.

So now I’m walking.  Not that it’s bad, mind you.  I’ve done it all my life.  In elementary school, I would run home, ditch my books, and wander out the back door of our rented house, traipsing toward the overgrown river bank with its brambles, red-winged blackbirds, snakes, and toads.  I was walking, but it was a subcategory of ambling.  I explored— stopping, running, observing.  Could I really cross that fallen tree, the one that spanned the streamlet?  It looked a little mossy, but if I just kept my balance…

In my 20s, newly married, newly fathered, newly graduated, and completely unemployed sans car, I walked the two miles from our apartment to my wife’s college, our daughter strapped to my back.  Sometimes, to surprise the toddler, I would skip for a few steps, her giggles bubbling behind me, the pressure from her legs pushing into my shoulders.  My daughter’s giggles protected me from the yawning monster behind me, the one that whispered about family support, about failure.  The creature couldn’t drown out my daughter’s giggles on our treks.

Eight years later, I was walking again, this time to combat the nausea from radiation.  Those walks, shambling movements down the street, up the hill, around the cracked sidewalk, and back down the potholed macadam— those walks were an assertion.  The cancer wouldn’t keep me inside.

Now, my bike and running shoes forbidden, I pad along the sidewalks one more time.  My back still hurts, but I’ve returned to those half-understood lessons from the past four decades: walking, that most pedestrian of exercises, is about exploration, protection, assertion.

Plus, it gives me more quality time with my dog.

Robin Follet lives, writes, and cartoons in North Carolina.