Is Walking the Best Exercise?

Actually, the best exercise one can do, is just after getting out of bed, or even while still in bed -- trying to get up and started.

A considerable number of people have this problem of achieving optimal operating functioning -- including those with fibro-fog, stress, anxieties, depression, dementias, and other "hopeless" conditions, because of inadequate (constricted) blood flow to the brain, for which there is the simple remedy/movement, of just turning the head all the way to the left and right, to produce the full muscle contractions that dictate the flow.

These same movements can be done with the other extremities of the body -- at the hands and feet, as the essential movements that have to be maintained but are ignored in most fitness/conditioning programs, resulting in the well-known deterioration that invariably begins at the extremities of the head (face, neck), hands and feet, typically called "normal aging," but should make sense as the most important areas to keep vital and optimize fullest capabilities -- throughout one's life.

One doesn't need to exercise to get the heart pumping -- because the heart is always pumping. But the voluntary muscles of the body are frequently ignored and unexercised, yet the curious thing is that the primary function of the smallest muscles, is to get the larger supporting muscle to aid it -- often called "cheating" by exercise instructors because they don't isolate the movement to one large muscle -- instead of the more proper and natural integrative movement, that begins at the furthest extremity (insertion).

So while it is advised that people should walk, often as the "best" exercise because it is cheap and doesn't require equipment, it does require one to walk in adverse conditions, or drive to a mall -- even in a fibro-fog and suboptimal condition, while again ignoring the exercise and fullest articulation at the extremities, that imply, ensure and express the fulfillment and health of the body and mind that is the greater objective of all one's activities.

Meanwhile, most people's idea of walking, is to merely shuffle their feet along without much foot articulation -- either going up on their toes as high as possible, and alternately, rolling back on their heels as far as possible to lift their toes as high as possible off the ground -- which action alone, far exceeds the range of motion normally achieved in every other daily activity -- and so just a few movements of each (25 repetitions), is enough to attain results far superior to any amount of what is usually regarded as the conventional prescriptions for that development.

Then that being done, one can proceed to walk, run, bike without the apprehensions and risk of injury from not preconditioning those vulnerable areas preparatory to their normal, or extraordinary use. That should be the meaning and function of a truly useful conditioning program -- to precondition and predispose one for doing all the things one cannot foresee doing, and not only as an end in itself.