There are dark undertones to these two sides of the coin though. When most want to look better, they tend to forget that just looking good doesn't take into consideration of how healthy they can really be. You can look like a million bucks and still have a plethora of problems that at times can be damaging whether it's over supplementing and not using real food as fuel, being on drugs such as steroids or HGH, not understanding when to lighten up, going too extreme with your workouts and other stuff.
When it comes to being in shape, it can be subjective and those that say they're in shape like they can run for miles on end or do 1000 squats a day or some arbitrary number when it comes to lifting and being in the gym 2 hours a day or something. Things like those are saying you're in shape but there's one to two important aspects of those that could reference how good of shape you're in such as, more like three:
How often do you injured or is your training making you as injury-proof as possible?
Do you get sick easily?
We are all different and our bodies will react to different things throughout life. Usually when it comes to the being sick part, it's when those who have little kids or are around many people during the day during a job that has that going on but also if you're training like a maniac but your immune system still has trouble keeping up with preventing illness as much as possible, there are factors there you may want to get into. If you get sick more than a few times a year, something may be off, if you only get sick maybe a couple times a year, that's not bad. We can't 100% avoid illness, that's just not how things work, we're not invincible but we can learn how to build a strong immune system as we train throughout our journey.
On the factors of getting injured easily or being injury proof as possible, people will often undermine what they think they're in control of and forget to be mindful about what they're body can handle, being aware of technique and expecting to just act like if they pushed themselves to the limit, it limits their chances of being injured which isn't always the case. The real truth here, is that whatever your goals are, be respectful to what is realistic and getting the most out of it without killing yourself and progressing with intentions and knowing when to go hard and when to lighten up or back off completely to build yourself up.
I love this shit and training is a very important part of my life and wouldn't trade anything for it. I've made mistakes and found myself in bad situations but also found ways to get myself out of them and learn to be aware of things. My style of training is to keep learning what is useful and valuable along with utilizing my reserves so my strength and conditioning is ready to use when they're needed. To a degree, I don't care what I look like, I don't need to be a model or bodybuilder to give anyone an impression that I'm fit or not, I just love doing stuff and putting out demos. In my own workouts, I will test myself but I'm also not going to go so hard it becomes a greater risk of injury, I've learned the hard way not to do that anymore. Some things have changed, others have remained the same but at the end of the day, it's about what can be done moving forward instead of being stuck.
Have a goal that is important to you but also listen to your body and if you feel the need to go extreme, just be careful and not hurt yourself, hell some have pushed themselves so hard that they claim to not have Cartlidge in one of their knees anymore (even though they most likely made it up to get sympathy and if it were true, they wouldn't be able to do what they claim) or make up some physical ailment to bitch about and others pushed so hard in their training and workload that they now have very painful arthritis and won't do much about it or they're too far gone. You can only do so much before it ends up biting you in the ass within the next 10-20 years.
Be amazingly awesome and train with passion and intent. Use those reserves when needed and keep learning what you're capable of that keeps you living like a bad ass well into your later years.
Be amazingly awesome
