Not How Much, But How

By now, many people have exhausted themselves and been demoralized by the realization that their best laid plans for the coming year (and beyond), have already gone awry -- and so-called "experts" merely advise them to keep on doing what is obviously not working -- in the misguided notion that if one merely continues doing what one has been doing with disastrous or no favorable results, the results will miraculously turn out differently the next time -- or some future time, as though that was how anything actually worked.

When something actually "works," that truth is self-evident, and not some preconception of what one would like the results to be -- despite the obvious self-evident truth of it that every individual can see for themselves -- instead of what the experts tell them they must believe despite all evidence to the contrary. "Studies" they proclaim, have proved it so -- and they are the self-appointed and self-certified experts on such matters, and nobody else must be allowed to question what they say -- because that is what they say.

That mentality is reminiscent of the "dark" or medieval (middle) ages, when one person determined the truth as told to them by God Himself -- and they further sanctioned the designated propagators of the "truth," on punishment of death and torture for non-believers. So it is not like it hasn't been done before -- to enforce the conformity (socio-political correctness) of everybody -- because it follows this singular hierarchy of authority that allows no other alternatives to be considered, rather than the strength that such knowledge can withstand all challenges from anybody, at anytime, under all conditions -- and not just the special case of their one (secret) laboratory conditions, usually to prove what somebody has already paid and told them to "find."

Nowhere is such "findings" more common and plentiful than the field of exercise and "conditioning" -- to believe the correctness of the day that somebody has already paid for -- in the various media outlets whereby an oft-repeated untruth, develops the ring of truth because it has been repeated so often -- as some catchy jargon or buzzword. The most famous of course, is "No pain, no gain," -- as though pain was a reliable guide of what to do, rather than the built-in safeguard of what not to do.

Thus many people can be fully convinced that everything that isn't true, is true, and everything that isn't false, is false -- and they have no way of knowing and determining for themselves, the truth of any matter -- because their entire education (socialization), has been not how to think for oneself, but what to think because the duly-self-appointed experts tell them it is so -- because they too, have merely learned the jargon and buzzwords they mistake for actual insight into the investigation of any phenomena.

Among those who did poorly in every subject but physical education -- often because they were allowed to beat up all the other competitors, a particularly intriguing word they believe implies knowing anything, if not everything, is that their exercise is superior because it is "cardio" -- as though any exercise or movement could not involve the cardiovascular system -- at all times, in everybody, under all conditions if they are alive -- as the basic precondition of life. That is, one could not design an exercise that does not involve and engage the cardiovascular system -- since such people boasting of such expertise, think nothing is related to anything else -- and they alone, are the experts in getting anyone's heart pumping -- because they do not think that is what hearts do and have evolved perfectly for -- without their instruction.

The self-evident obvious truth of the matter is that the best and only way to get into the shape one wants to be -- is to articulate (express) that shape as one's focused effort and objective -- while effecting the full range of expression from fullest relaxation to fullest contraction -- by those muscles expressly. In other words, one cannot make the biceps peak, just by making the heart beat faster. The bicep actually has to articulate the fullest range of its capacity to lengthen and shorten -- or change its appearance directly and momentarily -- just as competitive bodybuilders do in maintaining their constantly contracted state.

What they have to learn is achieving the opposite effect of relaxation -- that allows them to effect the appropriate muscular state as a task requires, because it is the appropriate response to the varying challenges of change and conditions, which conveys their greatest fitness, and not simply doing one thing, maintaining one state of contraction or effort, more and longer -- as in a pose or posture. Like the heart, it is the changing from one muscular state to the other, that gives every muscle its value and usefulness -- and not simply more of one without the other -- which results in death, and the inability to change anymore.