My Brother, the Athlete

by Jonas Colting

My brother Fredrik, who is three years younger than me, is the best athlete in the Colting family.

Granted, I´m the professional triathlete who spends all day whipping my body around the trails and roads, but my brother also works out at least once, and often twice, per day.

I´m the one with several World Championship medals but my brother is the one that has the ability to work out the smartest and really never needs to push himself across and beyond pain barriers where athletic pursuit can break a person and where the fine line between health and fitness gets blurred.

Fredrik claims he doesn´t see the point of his workout hurting him, which really is a sound take-home message for most people.

I´m the one with the ability to swim, bike and run further and faster than just about anyone, whereas my brother is fit enough to join me on a two hour-trail run or a three-kilometer open water swim. But he is also (as opposed to myself) a yoga expert, has twice my strength in the gym, can walk around on his hands and is trained in both martial arts and boxing.

I´m the one running or racing hard enough to leave me partially crippled and immobile for days after but Fredrik never pushes harder than maintaining the ability to be limber and agile.

Before running together in the morning I´ll be downing a cup o´joe while my brother drinks some wheatgrass juice.

I know where to swim during lay-overs in Amsterdam, London and New York and Fredrik knows where to find places that offer Bikram yoga.

I sport the typical body of an endurance athlete and easily gain a few pounds when not watching my diet, but Fredrik is ripped as a gymnast without even trying.

When I´m relaxing in front of the TV my brother is on the floor spread out on his spikemat.

We can both swim and run together but I look ridiculous when attempting to follow his yoga program and just don´t possess the strength and functionality to walk on my hands.

So it´s quite obvious to me that the idea of being well-rounded includes more than just having three different sports to raise the aerobic threshold and that health and fitness is a wider concept than just having stratospheric Vo2 max or being able to get yourself between point A and B in the fastest possible fashion.

...and that attempting the road to improvement probably means not doing more of what already comes easy but working more on the limiters holding us back.

2010 marks Jonas' 20th season as a triathlete and his 14th year as a professional. Jonas has always considered himself a student of the sport which he believes has been the foundation of his athletic longevity. He is an accomplished writer in Sweden, having written two books on health, food and fitness, as well as writing for the Swedish edition of "Runner's World." In addition to sharing his insights into the sport of triathlon from both a esoteric and practical perspective, Jonas provides regular recipes for EC readers.