Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Nautilus Revisited

I might have been one of the first persons to embrace the Nautilus Principles after its inventor Arthur Jones described them to me -- as we took smoke breaks together during the congregation of many luminaries of weightlifting and weight-training at the Teenage Nationals and Teen Mr. America at York, Pennsylvania in 1970.  

At least I was the only one who was not hostile to hearing him expound them, and felt I had to have his back when he fearlessly took on a roomful of Mr. Universes and other weight training gurus who countered his observations with threats to knock off his head if he persisted in preaching his heresy against the sacred authority of brute force.

In that arena, Arthur was attempting to inject persuasive scientific plausibilities against the notion that in order to obtain fantastic results, one had to spend all one's time in the gym, lifting as much weight as possible.  The crux of his argument was that in doing so, one was increasingly prone to injury -- because the violent, explosive contractions were capable of tearing the tendon off of their attachments, because the beginning position exposed the structures to unfavorable leverage -- while also noting that the finished position was its position of greatest strength, and so to accommodate those varying differences, the Nautilus cam produced the desirable varying resistance -- over the pulley.


That was the essential problem with the pulley -- increasingly being utilized at the time -- in the Universal machines, which claimed as its major feature, that it was safer than free weights.  The problem with the pulley was its inherent mechanical advantage -- that one had to explode violently to overcome the resistance -- but once it got going, momentum reduced the need for further muscle involvement -- and one could just ride it to the finished position, and then simply resist it going back to the starting position.


The Nautilus cam actually nullified the mechanical advantage (and danger) of the pulley, by providing the appropriate resistance throughout the range of the movement, and in that manner, would work the muscle harder, while also ensuring safety.  But the critical mistake, also became its undoing -- in thinking that the resultant severity of muscle soreness was a positive in the process, rather than the negative that pain indicates.


A few years later, some would profess the new liturgy of training as, "No pain, no gain," which set lifelong exercise back an entire generation -- in the religion that pain and intensity, were the Holy Grail -- and not that that mentality, conditioning and training, would cause premature and unnecessary death and injury to many because of the exorbitant and insatiable demands on an individual's personal resources and reasonable wear and tear.


One would not expect to take one to the edge of their capabilities every day, and not succumb to death or injury -- prematurely.  Nothing else would be possible.  You just can't go there everyday, and not expect to pay the price.  You can't tax the body to the limit, and think that one will always recover stronger for it.  One day, it will kill them.  Long before then, wise men know to draw back from the edge, and save a little more in reserve, for the time they may actually need it.  Doing so will enable them to build up those reserves -- for the later years of life, when most have traditionally reached that age and stage, totally exhausted, and barely hanging on with as little recovery ability as they can still muster -- not knowing how to.


And that is the whole point of one's conditioning -- not to drain all one's energies and resources at every frivolous opportunity, but rather, to conserve and build up one's reserves -- throughout life.  There's no quitting and going home at 5 pm, or at age 65 -- and waiting for one's final demise.  Maybe in an earlier time, that would have been a life expectancy -- but now, who knows what those possibilities are?  That remains to be discovered, and manifested -- in this day and age.


So quite predictably, there is a break from that past -- or better is not possible.  Far more meaningful in this day and age, is the obviousness, of people needing to live better -- longer, and not just win the championship at 25, and then go into irreversible and unrelenting decline thereafter.  Few would call that a life well lived -- for that single moment of fame and glory -- sacrificing it for the greater life of lifelong improvement.  That's a very different story, altogether.  But that is the story being written as we live it -- in this unprecedented time, and not simply a repetition of the past, many are content to defend and perpetuate -- as though nothing else was possible.


The possibilities are being created -- as we speak.  The major defenders and perpetuators of the status quo, are those who fancy themselves as the institutions of their time -- legends of their times, and in their own minds.  They know better than everyone else -- what is best for all, and particularly themselves -- at the top of the socio-political pyramid.  They are the self-appointed, self-designated, self-certified gatekeepers of all that is correct and righteous.  Meanwhile, history, evolution and progress marches on, leaving them to fight the rearguard battles -- until most have passed on to the new era


Traditionally, they have been the old left behind -- too weary to go on, unwilling to embrace the new, even if it is available to all. They've had enough.  "They've seen it all" -- even if they haven't seen anything yet.  Everything they know, they learned in kindergarten -- and then stopped learning anything more -- and could die peacefully and content, knowing they had lived life to its fullest.


That was another age.

Monday, June 12, 2017

The Simplicity of Change

People not wanting to change, insist that change is very difficult -- rather than the easiest thing.  Everything in life and living, is change.  The thoughts, memories and illusions, are unchanging -- and that is most people's problems.  If they respond to the present realities, there is never any problem -- but only responding to the exigencies of the moment, as best they can.  It is when instead of responding to the present challenge, that one responds to the past, or the future, that they become detached and lost from the demands of the moment, and out of synch with it.

Then they are solving "problems" that don't exist, while neglecting the simple demands of the present -- that make things better.  So even when people think they are doing everything possible to make things better, if that is not confirmed by their actual results and experience, what they think they are doing, is not making things better, but worse -- and continuing to do so.  That should be obvious.

But only a rare few, will question further -- to all their assumptions, premises and prejudices -- to learn any other than to confirm what they think "right," but obviously isn't working.  This self-righteousness is the same in the most knowledgeable and educated, as it is in the most ignorant, dysfunctional and despairing.  They don't want to know anything but to confirm what they already "know" -- that isn't working.

The fate for those, will undoubtedly be cruel and unrelenting.  They are certain that that is how life must be -- for everyone, and not that a rare few, will find a better way.  That is not the privilege of only a few -- but the quest of any, who choose to live their lives that way.  But it has to be chosen -- and not merely given, and "entitled."  It has to be earned by each -- and there is no other way, although an unscrupulous few, will promise it can be sold to them.

But life is not like that -- only available to the most unwary and gullible -- no matter how much money they have, or can get.  The real value is in the skills learned and mastered -- and not just mimicked, as though one knew -- or claimed to know all there is to know.

Invariably, such masters of the universe, will wake to the realization that what they knew, was not all there was to know, and experience critical failures when the need to know is paramount.  That is glaringly obvious in what we regard as the natural "aging" process -- when everything one thought they knew that worked, suddenly abandons them.  Usually, their response is "too little, too late," and they don't want to have to learn anything new all over again.  They just want to go to their graves knowing everything they already know -- but increasingly, forget.

One quickly forgets, what is no longer useful -- or does not work, because there is no reinforcement of that behavior.  One merely goes through those motions compulsively -- until one even loses that.  But learning something new that really works, is revitalizing and renewing -- and recharges one for the next ten years.

And then something else can be discovered -- giving one another new lease on life.  That means change -- and not just continuing as the same person one has always been.  That is the secret to great vitality -- that one dies to the old, and is reborn in the new.  It is also the great spiritual teaching -- and not just carrying the dust of many generations into the next.

Change is the reason for practice and exercise.  By it, we hope to get better -- and not just stay the same, or get worse a little slower.  Yet that is many people's approach to any practice and exercise -- and not that there can be significant, dramatic and immediate improvement -- as self-evident truth.  Instead, it becomes merely a belief in some distant time in the future -- and even into the life thereafter, if all else fails. 

For the aging bodybuilders, the lesson unheeded over a lifetime is usually lost by then.  That is the grotesque imbalance and priority given to developing the biceps and the "six-pack" abdominals -- to the total neglect of those parts of the human body that becomes glaringly problematical for them as well as for most people with age.  That is their feet, knees, hips and back -- which should be given highest priority, and the way to do that is not by variations of the deep knee-bend -- which is painful for most, but the slight knee bend -- in all its variations, as actually the cure -- from those years of abuse.  That includes even sitting in a chair -- for prolonged periods of time -- or standing with a bone-on-bone lockout.  Either, and both are damaging because it does not engage and lubricate the knee -- preparatory to any movement.  In order for that to happen, the knees have to move forward in front of the toes -- which the self- certified exercise "experts" command must never be done -- thereby ensuring that lifelong problem.

That is the proper positioning of the Horse Stance -- from which every effective movement has to be initiated from -- whether one is aware of it, or not.  That is the slight knee bend -- pulsed for a count of 50 -- as the key movement that must be done to ensure the highest functioning of the supportive structures, as often as one can think to do it.  Then the myriad of other problems don't arise.  That is the simplicity of change.