Easier and More Effective

In order to get the right answer, one has to ask the right questions, because even the right answer to the wrong questions, will not make the difference one desires.

In the field of health and fitness, the wrong question is obviously how to make exercise harder, more difficult, and less effective -- so that one has to exercise harder, etc. The question is how to make exercise easier, and because it is easier, more effective, and more accessible -- any time, any place, any condition one needs it. Of course, that will be especially true, when one needs to strengthen and increase one's capabilities -- under the worst conditions, even bringing oneself back to life, from lifelessness.

Thus, one doesn't need to be in condition, to get into condition, but rather, needs to have the ability to change themselves instantaneously and momentarily, from suboptimal, to optimal. One asks logically, how would one do that? Would that be sending all the blood supply to the glutes, abs, biceps as one's first priority? Or would there be some more critical path that determines the effectiveness of all the rest, and thus, is the limiting factor that first must be enhanced?

Coaches call that "getting one's head into the game," because it doesn't matter how formidable and well-conditioned an athlete is -- if his head is not in the game, which for the non-professional athletes, is how they live (play) their daily lives. Then, performance is not so widely observed and measured, but everything one does, affects the outcome -- which is the health and well-being we achieve. That is the objective of all our striving and efforts -- to improve our lives, as much as we can -- and from that, everything else flows.

We hear too often, that people can't do this or that, because their health limitations prevent them from even considering doing anything, and there it ends, as they drift hopelessly into greater helplessness -- which they have determined, is the normal course of every life -- and don't want to even hear that there could be another. They don't even have the energy to consider another way of doing things -- except the one provided conveniently for them -- by the schools, the media, the institutions, the powers that be -- who always wish to remain in charge.

The great power of life -- is always having a choice, a real choice, and not just "yes" or "no," about the one choice -- like in many dictatorships in which the leaders receive 95% of the vote, and the rest are persecuted, tortured, imprisoned or killed. But even in so-called "free societies," many are convinced they have no choice but the one offered to them, from one source, who demands that one should offhand, vilify the other so that one never ever listens to what the other has to say.

That is familiarly, the political indoctrination often seen in the mass media -- promoted and perpetuated by the most suppressive. They demand that their one way, be the only way -- and that one way, is what they are the toll collectors for -- whether education, hazing, trade association or union -- to enforce and coerce the one way -- as the only way, it has been, will be, and should be -- and nothing else is possible, and can even be considered.

That is the failing of formerly free societies -- when all the decisions and choices are made for them -- by the experts, who think they should always do the thinking for everybody else. That is a great temptation to resist -- the power to exercise over others. But the even great power, is the power to control one's own life, thoughts, movements -- as the exercise of one's freedom to do so, if they are so empowered to do so.

And so the ultimate conditioning program, must begin with empowering one's brain, which is not unlike exercising any other faculty of the body -- by directing the flow of energy expressly to it. One is not just talking about directing thoughts that way, by the actual flow of circulation (nutrients), in knowing how the muscles effect that greater flow, by acting as the heart does with its characteristic contraction and relaxation, or pumping effect. This understanding and control, is more important than throwing a ball, doing many pushups, and running exhaustively.

Of course, that is never what is taught -- but simply, arbitrarily, to do as one says -- as though it had great importance and significance, and repeating it long enough, would be the answer in itself. By then, one will have long forgotten how to ask any question -- or even if it is possible.

So the question one should ask, "Is there an easier and more effective way?" -- or only endlessly harder, more difficult, less effective, until I give up for good?