Entertaining Other Possibilities
Many people’s choice of conditioning exercise is walking -- because it is the easiest, cheapest thing they know to do -- and not as some proponents claim, that it is the ideal exercise to do. It’s like pondering the selection of products now available in many prices with different features -- and some bystander will come along and “expertly” pronounce, “Cheapest is best” -- missing the point that the most effective for one’s unique needs is best, and ideally, it would be the most economical as well.
If something doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter how cheap it is -- and often, that it is free. Conversely, if something is a miracle product and drastically changes every aspect of one’s existence, one is a fool not to obtain it however he can -- because that is what life is for, improving the quality of one’s experience and functioning in life, and not how much money is spent or not. That is a better measure of one’s quality of life -- rather than expenditure, income, or wealth -- the more convenient benchmarks of attainment and achievements in life.
It is much more meaningful to ask, what value is one exchanging for greater value -- because all expenditure of time, energy and money is not equal. People living on the same income and the same expenditures, could have widely different quality of lives -- just as people can do different things with just a ball, and even while presumably doing the same thing, one person can soar while the other only fumbles.
So to say that walking is the best exercise, or an ideal exercise, conveys virtually no information at all -- and why it is often the case, that a person in terrible shape and condition will remark, that they walk all day, or substantially -- and thus feel no need to do more, or differently. To such people, a book is a book, a calorie is a calorie, a shirt is a shirt, and every dollar spent/earned, is like every other dollar spent/earned, and so their answer to every question, is only “more” or “less,” thinking that is the only difference in the world, and never that things could be better and entirely different.
It doesn’t matter how much exercise one does that keeps one in poor (sub optimal) shape and condition; the significant question is, what does one do to optimize their shape and condition -- which many do not ask in their lifetime. They think the way things are presently, is the only way they can ever be -- and if one is talking about something else, that is completely impossible. And that is their conditioning -- that anything else but their present reality, as dismal and disempowering as it is -- is all that life can ever be, for themselves surely, but also some will demand, that must also be the reality for everyone too.
Unfortunately, most of the people they will talk to, will have the same kind of conditioning and perspective -- so that the possibilities of an alternate reality, is precluded from their consciousness -- as it is with specialists who have been taught to agree to the same dogma(curriculum). And if they rebel, it is only a rebellion within the prison walls of that accepted deviance -- and not transcending that limited perspective to a much more expansive possibility of existence and functioning. The meaning and purpose of all human activity is to actualize the highest possibility of life for every individual -- and every other discussion is a distraction by people who have no idea what they are talking about -- no matter how brilliant they may think they are.
posted by Mike Hu @ 11:31 AM
7 comments
7 Comments:
The fact that one is walking, or breathing, doesn’t provide much information of how one is doing it -- which many people assume, is as well as any other person is doing it, or that it could be done any other way, because nobody has suggested that possibility to them before -- that walking, breathing, and any number of vital living skills, can be done any other way than they’ve presumed is “normal,” which they also believe to be optimal.
There are actually certain disciplines of exercise and self-improvement, that are just the practice of consciously and deliberately breathing more effectively, walking with a better posture and alignment, sitting thoughtfully, resonating with healing vocalizations, etc. Yet much of what we do and take for granted we are doing properly, can often be the source of many of our problems. The person not breathing properly is likely to have respiratory problems. People not walking properly, may have foot, knee and back problems -- which explains/excuses the rest of their out of shape condition.
Many things that are essential skills in our society, are untaught -- while many things unnecessary to learn, are drilled into us and tested for unmercifully, for the sheer reason that teaching those skills are arduous and time-consuming. Latin would be one of them. Fully 90% of those learning trigonometry in high school will never find one application in their lives in which to use that knowledge -- which they will have forgotten long ago.
It is safe to say that one doesn’t need to learn something until he actually requires it -- because that which can be learned is nearly infinite. That one can learn anything at all - is their base learning skill, that can be transferred to learning anything else. So it is important to have one area of learning expertise -- whatever it is for each individual, which provides the base and learning prototype by which they can learn any other skill.
Unfortunately, many are not presented with the opportunity when young to learn anything they really wish to know about -- but are instead, forced to learn what some education “expert” determines that individual “should” learn -- because they know better. Of course there will be tremendous resistance and resentment to that approach to learning -- and cause many to swear off learning for the rest of their lives as soon as they can leave school to do so. And that is the failure of education -- and particularly, public education -- in which the self-serving professional interest determines the curriculum and measurement of success -- rather than the consumer, which is the student. The student must determine the proper extent of learning -- and not the teacher, obviously.
Otherwise, we have the joke of the doctor proclaiming proudly, “The operation was a success! Unfortunately, the patient died.” And that is the familiar response one has upon hearing that the person devoting much time and energy with poor results, thinks that everything he did was perfect, but somehow things didn’t turn out as hoped for, and are outraged at the suggestion that, maybe, the execution was not what it had to be to obtain optimal results.
These kinds of cognitive dissonance (fragmentation of thought and actuality) has been not only permitted but often encouraged -- that wishful thinking is the same as independently verifiable reality (results). For this purpose, some people have created another identity to corroborate that what they said was true was verified by their other identity as true -- as though that was all that was required to make it true.
Actually there is an even easier and more effective exercise than walking -- and that is to articulate the fullest range of foot movement at the ankle -- prior to doing anything else on one’s feet. After a night of rest, many will note upon first awakening that the feet don’t feel right, as fluids tend to accumulate in the tissues at the extremities because the heart rate has slowed and there also is no compression provided by weight and muscle contraction.
So the feet feels “funny,” until a substantial time has passed for the condition of the feet to normalize and obtain better operating condition. One can precondition that possibility by articulating the fullest range of foot movement -- that exceeds whatever ordinary activities of the day may demand. The reason for this is that a load on a joint necessarily limits its movement -- reducing the range, and only by removing the load, does one obtain the fullest range of movement possible.
That’s the reason for the superiority of variable resistance apparatus -- it allow the load to go to zero, while alternately going to maximum. The unfortunate design flaw is that when it does go to maximum, it should be ideally going to zero, and vice versa. But the variability is an improvement over static weight loads.
This can be demonstrated by simply shifting the weight from foot to foot and seeing the range of movement possible at the foot when there is a weight load and when there isn’t. In every case, the foot will move -- and move more, when there is no weight it has to bear, and must remain immobile, when all the weight shifts onto it.
That is the designed function of the body structures -- and no amount of ingenuity will defeat that wisdom of evolution. Understanding this, one can design an even better exercise than walking -- which is limiting because it has to bear all the weight, while simply shifting the weight from foot to foot while standing in place, allows a superior range of foot movement, which is the superior conditioning for the possibilities of all such movements one will normally make in a day.
That’s when conditioning has immense, immediate, practical value. A truly conditioning movment is rather a preconditioning movment ofr all one’s naturally occurring movements -- rather than that one has to create a whole other set of non-naturally occurring activities -- which is conditioning one for what? It serves no purpose other than to create another special activity -- like learning for learning’s sake, as though that had some kind of usefulness in real life. Many people are educated in this way -- thinking that knowing something useless implies knowing something useful -- as though a sufficient amount of useless knowledge becomes useful -- just as I suppose, people think that simply collecting newspapers and books has intrinsic value, suggesting wisdom.
The knowledge of what the capital of ancient Mesopotamia was, is nowhere as superior to knowing where one is presently.
When a person has a "weak" heart, their conditioning activity is not to make the heart stronger -- but to use all the other muscles of their body to aid in the ciruculation process. Some people have strong hearts (efficient cardiovascular systems) and some people have weak hearts, and that's what one has to accept. That's just their essential makeup, modifiable to some degree -- but the usual strategy is to compensate for that weakness by modifying one's behaviors.
If a person has a respiratory limitation, he has to work with that limitation -- rather than thinking overloading it will force it to get stronger. That's the old Lamarckian misconception of evolution -- that giraffes get longer necks by stretching it, rather than that those with longer necks genetically, are favored in the struggle for survival.
Everybody has unique strengths and weaknesses and simply exercising one's weakness, is not going to turn it into his strength, because that's not how he was built. There's nothing wrong with the diversity -- unless one thinks that deviation from the norm is a correctable deficiency.
Not everybody is made to run, jump, or lift weights -- and stubbronly doing so is not the best use of the equipment they were blessed with -- as well as disadvantaged with. But the naive thinking that everybody can modify themselves to be exactly like every other, is political correctness gone berserk -- thinking that if they were not born equal, they can be made to be so with the right conditioning program. That's very dangerous -- as well deluding, causing many of the problems in society, as well as personally.
People were born with an awesome range of diversity -- and so the least gifted, devoting their entire lives to the pursuit of perfection in an activity -- is not going to match the most gifted, totally untrained. The value of diversity is that different traits have value under different conditions -- and conditions change, so when they do, everybody isn't wiped out because everybody is the same.
There are times when conformists are valued -- and other times when only stubbornly independent persons can survive. Usually, it is scarcity that determines the value -- because it is rare.
A lot of pseudoscience is paraded as conventional wisdom -- which usually turns out to be an unquestioned "truth;" that's what assumptions are -- unquestioned truths. Most truths are actually assumptions of the true -- rather than an examined and tested one. There might be some testing further down the line -- but not at the beginning, when all the mischief and error begins.
The old school believed we were all born as blank sheets, "tabula rasa," on which societies could imprint whatever they wanted to upon everyone. Unfortunately, that assumption is still held by many today -- in the very professions that because they don't know better, have insurmountable problems and difficulties, because their premises and assumptions are wrong from the very beginning.
You can't uncorrect them at some later time. You have to go back to the very beginning, and get the understanding right at the basics and essentials -- and then that understanding will be highly productive, instead as most people experience in exercise and conditioning, that it is an exercise in futility and despair. It doesn't have to be that way.
That's why the "target heart rate" calculation is totally arbitrary -- ascribing the differences to age rather than genetic predisposition, which varies by several fold.
All the exercising in the world is not going to get one with a normal heart rate of 80 to have one of 40 -- and that is the presumption of the target heart rate formula, which was proposed as a theoretical maximum and not the theoretical minimum -- so as not to endanger the heart in the first place. That got lost in the translation to the physical education "experts" and became the minimum.
Because the people with abnormally efficient as well as abnormally inefficient cardiovascular systems are treated exactly alike regardless of their age, the most signficant difference is regarded as no difference.
It should not be the central topic of discussion in exercise and conditioning activities. That is the least of one's concerns. It's an autonomic function -- and not a voluntary one, modified by conditioning. It's the only functioning muscle in many out of condition people. The trick is to work the others that aren't working -- especially in improving the ciruclatory process. The heart doesn't do it alone; it's aided by all the other muscles -- or hindered by it.
Back in the '60s, there was a briefly popular system of exercise called "isometrics" -- in which one lifted and held a weight in one position for as long as one could.
It lost popularity in that most of its practitioners quickly developed dangerously high blood pressure because they contracted those muscles for as along as they could without alternating a relaxations phase -- including often, holding their breath.
So while the heart is pumping harder and faster, because the skeletal muscles are contracted (constricted), the heart is pumping into maximum resistance -- similar to a person who is hypertensed by stress, anxieties, pressures, etc., all the precursors for heart trouble. For such people, relaxation techniques work wonders.
The other extreme are those who almost never produce a muscle contraction -- because it is the difference achieved between the two states, that is the circulatory (pumping) effectiveness. The heart is the only muscle that always works by fully contracting and fully relaxing. The rest of the muscles in the body can be trained to do that -- which is obviously the greatest cardiovascular efficiency attainable by any individual.
Not too long ago, muscles were described as antagonistic to one another, rather than as they more accurately are, complementary and supportive to one another. That led to an early version of isometric exercise known as “dynamic tension” -- in which the purpose was to work one muscle, like the bicep, against the tricep, producing no net movement, since they merely cancelled out one another.
The usefulness of such a movement in any practical and meaningful way is …? In what event or occurrence would it ever be advantageous to have one set of muscles cancel the effect of another set of muscles? While it seems pretty obviously undesirable in conditioning the neuromusculature -- people do it in defining many aspects of their psychological being, in opposition to every other. The common struggle is the head against the heart -- as though they were irreconcilable differences, rather than should be in alignment working together for greater productiveness and integration.
Yet one hears it said often in the investing world that one should do the opposite of what his senses are telling him, what he feels is right. Think of the implications of such advice -- that one should go against everything his senses are telling him is right. A person has made his own senses and judgment his greatest enemy. If that isn’t a prescription for a great crisis, I don’t know what is. One is taught to ignore and distrust his own head and/or heart -- as some kind of great wisdom.
Such people obviously never feel right about themselves or with themselves. Those people are therefore prime targets for financial “experts” who supposedly can do all those things one can’t do -- because they’ve been advised not to. In addition to the financial experts, there are experts in every facet of one’s existence -- telling him how he should act because he shouldn’t be making these decisions for himself, thinking for himself. Is this necessary or an actual requirement -- or can one manage their own lives?
Certainly the overspecialized, compartmentalized, fragmented personality of contemporary life -- is such a person in hopeless confusion and perpetual conflict, totally incapable of thinking through anything for himself. He does what the ”experts” tell him to do -- about education, law, dating, writing, job hunting, exercise, therapy, politics, etc. Or one can go back to a very simple understanding of life -- which is just awareness -- without the confusion of thought. Awareness can see things only as they are -- and not be swayed by the arguments and sophistication (sophistry) of thought.
The deception of thought is that it is not reality -- but only an image (shadow) of it. The word is not the thing itself. Some people only know words -- and think that is reality, and the extent of the knowable and the known.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-marathon20mar20,0,4363354.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Exuberance of L.A. Marathon Tempered by Runners' Deaths
Two men suffer fatal heart attacks along the 26.2-mile route. Another who collapsed is hospitalized in critical condition.
By Cynthia H. Cho and Sandy Banks, Times Staff Writers
March 20, 2006
The weather was perfect, the field enthusiastic, the times respectable, but Los Angeles' annual street party masquerading as street race was marred Sunday by the deaths of two runners and the collapse of an elderly man who was hospitalized in critical condition.
Two retired law enforcement officers died after collapsing on the route. Det. Raul Reyna, 53, suffered a heart attack at mile 24 near Olympic Boulevard and Westmoreland Avenue, two miles short of the finish line. He died at Good Samaritan Hospital. The 28-year Los Angeles Police Department veteran had worked on the use of force investigation team at Parker Center, officials said.
Retired Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy James Leone, 60, collapsed at mile 3, near Exposition Boulevard and Figueroa Street. "He just dropped … keeled over and hit his face on the pavement," said David Lawson, who interrupted his own run to administer CPR to the fallen runner.
"His face was covered with blood and his eyes were open, but we never really got a pulse," said Lawson, a private pilot who volunteers part time on a ski patrol team. He and another runner, a physician, spent several minutes trying to revive Leone before paramedics arrived, said Lawson, who then resumed his run. Leone was pronounced dead upon arrival at California Hospital Medical Center.
Sheriff's officials said Leone was participating in his 11th L.A. marathon. He was a 26-year member of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and had retired in July 2000.
Lt. Fred Corral of the Los Angeles County's coroner's investigation division said Leone, who lived in St. George, Utah, had been under a doctor's care and may have suffered from cardiovascular disease.
He was accompanied to the marathon by his wife and daughter. Marathon officials said this was the second time in the 21-year history of the race that there had been a fatality along the course.
The only other known death during the Los Angeles Marathon came in 1990, when a 59-year-old Altadena man under a doctor's care for hypertension suffered a fatal heart attack while running in the fifth annual race. William McKinney, who had trained for the contest under a physician's care, suffered heart failure at the 21-mile mark near Crenshaw and Pico boulevards.
Just nine blocks into the race Sunday, a third runner, believed to be in his 70s, suffered a heart attack near the intersection of Figueroa and 15th streets. The man, whose name was not released, was taken by paramedics to California Hospital Medical Center, where he was in critical but stable condition Sunday night.
The tragedies unfolded unnoticed by most runners.
More than 25,000 competed in the marathon, and 20,000 participated in the wheelchair race, bicycle run or companion 5-kilometer race. Open to all comers, the marathon has no qualifying requirements.
Race purists were captivated by the to-the-wire competition between elite men and women runners for a $100,000 bonus given to whoever crossed the finish line first. Russian Lidiya Grigoryeva won that distinction though her time was 17 minutes slower than the men's winner, Benson Cherono of Kenya, because women were given a head start intended to equalize their chances in the novel challenge competition.
Thousands of other runners considered themselves winners just because they finished.
Sixteen months ago, Liz Roark weighed 323 pounds. A nurse, she got winded just walking down a hospital corridor. Gastric bypass surgery enabled her to lose 100 pounds, and eight months of training for the marathon helped her drop 65 pounds.
She ran Sunday's marathon with two friends, fellow gastric bypass patients Keri Zwerner and Luana Ball. The trio has lost a combined 500 pounds in the last five years. They had to skip the typical pre-race, carbo-loading routine; the gastric bypass process rules out big pasta meals. But the women filled their fanny packs with bite-sized snacks, along with such essentials as water and cellphones.
Perseverance meant more to Roark than speed, as evidenced by her mascot — a green turtle emblazoned on her white cap. It took her more than seven hours to run the 26.2-mile course.
Many of the runners were accompanied by friends. At the 15-mile marker, 30 men, women and children from Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in El Monte gathered beneath a cabana-style tent to cheer on 57 parishioners running in glowing lime-colored shirts.
Among the runners was their diminutive 64-year-old priest, Father Francisco Vitela, participating in his sixth marathon. Each year, the church's runners line their sneakers up along the altar and Vitela blesses them with holy water.
Vitela, who says he "hates running," listens to classical music on a headset as he runs and prays that more people will join the ministry. During a stop in the tent, parishioners fed him, massaged his legs, removed his shoes and changed his orthopedic socks. A few minutes later, he was back on the course. A few hours later, he would be celebrating evening Mass at the church.
The race route was designed to showcase the city's architectural and cultural glory. It begins in the shadow of downtown high-rises and winds through neighborhoods in Koreatown, Little Ethiopia, the Crenshaw District and Hancock Park, passes along Museum Row and ends at the venerable Central Library.
Along the route, hundreds of volunteers pass out drinks, snacks and encouragement. At the start, they are charged with clearing away piles of banana peels, paper cups, granola bar wrappers and garbage bags donned to ward off the early morning chill. Discarded sweatshirts are collected and swept into giant trash bags, then donated to charities. At the finish line, volunteers pass out medals, escort exhausted runners from the course and even massage aching legs and feet.
For many runners, the race was a chance to enjoy a Los Angeles they never see. "The city is just beautiful," said Joan Frieden, 60, of Pasadena, who finished in 5 hours and 35 minutes. "You really see the different ethnicities of the city because everyone comes out. It shows you what this town is all about."
But one teenage runner got another view of this town — one that shook her up but didn't throw her off course. Seventeen-year-old Erika Stern was parking her car at the Universal City Red Line station shortly after dawn so she and a friend could take the subway to the marathon's start when a gun-wielding man approached them and demanded her car. She gave him the keys and he drove off.
She called her parents, but wouldn't let them come and get her. "She was crying, really frantic," said her father, Mark Stern. "But all she could think of was that she had to get to the race on time." She even asked the police officers who took her crime report if they could ferry her to the starting point. They weren't able to, so she hopped onto the subway and made it in time for the race's start.
Her parents had planned to drive down and meet her at the 10-mile mark. "It never occurred to us that something like this could happen," Mark Stern said. "We're just glad she was so brave, and so smart."
A cross-country runner and student body president at El Camino High in Woodland Hills, Erika — who is only 4 feet 9 — took the interruption in stride. In fact, she bettered her marathon time from two years ago by almost 40 minutes, finishing in 4 1/2 hours. Credit the adrenaline rush.
Running the marathon almost made her forget her fright, she said. "Running makes me feel so good. There's nothing I'd rather do. And the marathon is such an amazing experience, I didn't want to miss it for anything. Now, I just hope they find my car."
Times staff writers Hemmy So, Jonathan Abrams, Kelly-Anne Suarez, Jason Felch and Julie Cart contributed to this report.
Post a Comment
<< Home