Thursday, October 22, 2009

Like Brushing One's Teeth

One frequently reads about people like Jack Lalanne who works out for two hours every day to keep and maintain his fitness levels -- as though that is going to inspire people doing nothing to want to do it also. But if it took only five minutes a day, most people would conceivably do it -- or at least give it serious consideration, because even the busiest person in the world, must have a five minute block of downtime to spare.

The most obvious times are preparing breakfast or warming food or beverage in the microwave -- usually requiring 3-5 minutes -- plenty of time for a full body inventory of preparedness for optimal functioning. In any sporting activity, or preparation for an event, a person will usually go through a routine, preparatory to making an attempt, or even before "working out," when if done properly, it can be all of the above.

In the warmup, one could have completed a workout in those movements. For any athlete, a warmup has to be what will be able to access their full range of movement and potential, while not unduly exhausting them. There is that fine line not usually understood by novice participants -- so, many exhaust themselves prior to their event, which is a catastrophe. One desires to perform their best at the peak moment -- and not prematurely.

All this does not require lengthy programs of activities and movement in itself, before getting down to the serious business of what they think is so productive. The warmup can be this complete movement and workout in itself -- but people have these myths and fallacies they believe to be the truth -- because that is what they are conditioned to believe, and that is the function of most people's conditioning program -- to believe what is not true, and hope by the constant affirmation of this, to overcome reality. But it doesn't do them any good, because the truth is still there -- waiting to be addressed.

Much of conditioning in the past, was of these beliefs, rather than the actualities -- and so the harder one believed, the more likely they were to see it come true -- when the reality of the matter, is that a better understanding of the process, immediately makes it so. It is important to distinguish this difference -- between belief and wishful thinking, versus doing what is self-evidently true.

Obviously, if one is articulating the full range of movement at the extremities of the body, it requires the engagement and activation of everything in between the origin of all the muscles (which has been noted in ancient observations to be the point below the sternum next to the heart and diaphragm) and those distant (distal) points. Every individual muscle has its own distal and proximal point -- but in every case, the distal (insertion), always moves towards the origin (proximal) closest to the center of the body.

If one "fires" a muscle from its most distant point of the body, it has to set off a chain reaction back to the origin of the musculature system. Nothing else is possible -- except one can learn all kinds of movements and position that defeat that hardwired wisdom -- which many conditioning practices unknowingly or knowingly do, depending on the premises of their belief systems.

Many people's belief systems is that the harder, the better, when in reality, the intelligence is in making the difficult easy and eventually, the impossible, doable. That won't happen if one always makes the easy, harder, and eventually, even the simple, impossible -- yet that is the underlying belief of many so-called conditioning programs that of course, people abandon as soon as there is no authority forcing them to do them.

That's why the authority is so necessary to such conditioning programs -- to convince one to persist in their beliefs against what is true, as though by doing that, they can overcome any reality -- rather than simply, going more each day into denial, and being battered by realities which are a large part of the aging process -- of struggling eternally, against an environment that should be one's ultimate support system.

So rather than designing exercise programs to be as difficult as possible and requiring extraordinary efforts to continue, it would rightfully be designed to be as easy and simple as brushing one's teeth and combing one's hair each day. Most people will do at least that.

1 Comments:

At October 22, 2009 11:27 AM, Blogger Mike Hu said...

The next question would be: "Can such a workout be effective and productive?"

It can be but only with the right understanding, such as I've previously described, and not great effort with the improper understanding, as most conditioning programs promote -- which then requires one to hire a coach and trainer to FORCE them to do what doesn't make intuitive sense for them to do, which is the reason most people don't do them.

With the proper understanding, the right movements are unavoidable because that is the reality of them -- and not trying to superimpose one's belief, theories and knowledge, as though that was an intelligent thing to do.

That is a primitive understanding of life that still prevails in the traditional curriculum of education that is medieval in this tradition -- that if one simply believes it strongly enough, that makes it so.

That predates the scientific revolution and study of phenomena, with no preconceived ideas of what the outcome must be. A significant break and advance occurred when it was realized that it was no longer enough to select champion athletes because they wanted to be -- but select those who had a genetic profile that made them born and bred for that event, as an insurmountable advantage.

Yet many still persist in their beliefs over observing the obvious -- and so they experience great difficulties, and think they need to increase their effort rather than improve their understanding, and even, change their understanding.

But in every case, one has to understand and work with their own reality -- and distinguish them from conjectures that they believe are the truth of the matter.

 

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