Creating a Conditioning Program for the Life You Actually Live

There seems to be innumerable articles written lately in the fitness magazines asserting that contemporary lifestyles should not be the way they are -- but instead, everyone would be healthier if they returned to work 8 hours in the fields or the coal mines -- as though that would be a life worth living, or even bearable for most. Maybe people ought to just pound their heads against the wall -- in their thinking that it would make their brains stronger.

It seems that once a discussion is proclaimed as "fitness," the most ludicrous regimens become plausible -- as though wishful thinking, will fill any unforeseen realities along the way.

The usual limit to a life of unlimited exercise -- if such a thing were possible -- is the very real fact that the body suffers from "wear and tear," and beyond a very brief period of accelerated exertion and effort, begins to exceed its recovery ability -- and that is when people actually begin a momentum of deterioration from which they do not recover, let alone progress.

That is to say, that if one exercises rigorously one hour on the first day and maintains that rigor each day, he begins to wear down and is unlikely to be maintaining that program after a month -- or certainly a year, and for many, they will give up exercising permanently because of it -- thinking that if they cannot maintain that pace, their continued efforts are futile.

And if contemporary lifestyles is largely sedentary and cerebral, does one have to resort back to a hunter/gatherer or even agrarian lifestyle to maintain one's fitness -- for what purpose? -- if not to negate entirely one's actual lifestyle?

So obviously, the intelligent approach would be to create and design movements that complement and enhance one's actual uses and activities -- rather than having to reserve an hour each day to go to a specially designed environment and apparatus to do movements and activities one would never do otherwise -- thinking somehow, some way, that would enhance their abilities to do what they actually do.

The whole approach is preposterous on its face -- that one should expect to become good at what one does without practicing it, while practicing to perfection, what has no practical or useful application otherwise. That is what is known as opposite-thinking -- or if one wants to do something, they instead, dysfunctionally always do the opposite, which most people would see the absurdity of immediately. But some people, including many fitness advocates, do think beating up their spouse and kids, is the magic path to winning their love and affection. And that is why they believe abusing their own bodies unmercifully, is treating themselves "right," and healthfully.

There is no rhyme or reason, one cannot or should not design, exercise movements, that enhance one's ability to sit longer -- rather than the admonition, never to sit at all. Instead, while in one's usual posture, many movements are actually possible -- beginning with the position one is usually in -- which is always a good excuse to begin one's exercising, from any position, and always from where one already is. Which then makes exercise possible, anytime and anywhere, under any condition one is already in -- and not that one has to overcome at least an hour's worth of reservations and resistance, and then allow for another hour of recovery and disruption afterwards. Thus one is down two hours, before one even does one's hour of conditioning activities -- of bouncing off the walls or whatever.

The effect of all that kind of high maintenance conditioning programs -- to say nothing of the expense and scheduling of personal trainers and other professional experts one is advised to consult and retain, makes it pretty nearly certain, such a program of conditioning, will never be adopted by any person in their right mind, who does anything but obsessing compulsively and constantly about their health and what they have been brainwashed into thinking requires extraordinary amounts of efforts and expense to maintain -- rather than that it is easily achievable at every opportunity.

The most obvious example, is turning one's head all the way to the left and then all the way to the right, or alternatively, raising the head as high and back as possible and then back down and in -- while standing, sitting or lying. That would be the beginning essential enhancement (fitness conditioning) activity (practice). Then, in that heightened state of brain functioning, it will figure out the rest -- as what the brain is primarily designed to do.