One OR the Other

 One OR the Other 

Both. I go to the gym and exercise with light weights once a week — as my heavy workout. But every day when I wake up, I exercise those same movements without weights by simulating those contractions by flexing/extending at the extremities of the wrist, ankles and neck — to aid in the recovery from those once a week higher intensity workouts. If you only work out at the gym once a week and do nothing else for the rest of the weeks, muscle soreness will increase for several days due to the inflammation not being pumped out of the muscles with those light contractions.

As most people are familiar with, when muscles contract, they release energy as well as break down into waste products — that remain in the tissues until the body slowly dissipates it — which can be sped up by effecting muscle contractions of lesser intensities. Those lighter contractions and relaxations are not nothing — but serve the primary purpose of enhancing the circulation to pump the waste products out — and in that manner, producing the space for new nutrients to enter — which is the principle of fluid dynamics, or how fluids flow. If the fluids are stagnant because of the accumulated waste products, and no pumping action of the local muscles, then the heart, which is only a one pound organ, is not strong enough to force the blood into that stagnation or resistance — but simply returns to the heart because that is the path of less resistance. It does not have to go to and through the most distant and smallest capillaries at the most distal ends of the body — and that is why people have that bloat and inflammation accumulating at their extremities — and then backing up towards the center of the body more obviously.

A trained eye can also see that happening throughout the body — as well as realizing the simple remedy of producing the muscle contractions at the wrist, ankles and neck, as the most productive movements one can do. However, most people have been told that the reason for their exercise is to work the heart harder and faster — and are dumbfounded with people exercising in that manner all die of some manner of heart failure — because you’re not going to get a one pound organ to power a 600 pound deadlift, squat or bench press! — and if you do it often enough, the failure of that organ is predictable and inevitable.

Meanwhile, the voluntary muscles of the body — and particularly at the extremities, remain unexercised or underexercised so that the bloat and inflammation builds up — destroying the nerves at these sites of poor circulation (neuropathies). If these muscles at the extremities are simply articulated to maximize the contraction alternated with the relaxation from these extremities of the wrists, ankles, neck, that will optimize the flow through those tissues — and that is the process by which one maintains its health, functioning, and allows for growth beyond present capabilities. It’s not that wanting bigger arms makes one grow bigger arms — but that one does all the right things that makes that growth possible — and inevitable.

It’s preposterous to think that one can exercise once a week at a gym and then do absolutely nothing else for an entire week — or just as likely, to do the same workload unvaryingly each day — without at some point placing/facing a greater demand requiring the body to adapt by providing a margin of reserve for those irregular extra-ordinary challenges. That’s what makes one fit right? Being able to do what one normally does regularly, but also having that extra gear and reserve for facing the extra-ordinary — because life is unpredictable in that way. Failing to meet that challenge, is frequently the way many go.

Because of the teaching that one thing is unrelated to any and every other thing — rather than in seeing the connection between things, they think all 600–800 muscles of the human body act unrelated to any other — than that the skeletal muscles of the body all connect to the center — starting at the extremities which are only three — the hands, feet and head — and so instead of developing these grossly disproportionate muscularities one sees so often in gyms — working them properly from those extremities back towards the center (heart), ensures the proper proportional development by exercising them in the way they were designed to work — and not just having a much of over- and under-developed body parts pasted together. That was the ideal the old-time bodybuilders strove for — and not today’s grossly disproportional developments that would be unrecognizable and offensive to the classical sculptors renowned for those figures of great proportions, symmetry, and integrity.

That was the point.

The Intelligent Exercise of the Human Body

  The Intelligent Exercise of the Human Body

The distinctive features that make the human being the ultimate achievement of evolution, is the large brain, tool-using hands, and feet that make upright posture and locomotion possible. So it would make a lot of sense that the most practical and productive development of those faculties would be the preferred conditioning program — rather than the development of what is common to all life forms, which is the heart similar to most other species.

Thus, that is not the distinguishing feature, nor does it have to be worked any harder and faster — because its value is that it works reliably as its greatest function — automatically. That’s why the heart is only a one pound organ in humans, rather than 30% of the body weight — as in the well-muscled human. The heart can only do one thing — while the skeletal (voluntary) muscles of the human body can do whatever one wants it to do. That may include nothing at all — which is the problem for many. On the other hand, the heart as a muscle, does not have that option, but must always work until the day one dies — unfailingly.

Realizing that, the thoughtful person wishing to maximize their effectiveness, would choose to do what is not automatic but lacking, as their greatest contribution to increasing their productivity, functioning, overall health and proficiency. That is what is sorely lacking — and not what has been provided for in all living beings — no matter what. That is to note that we do not need to create “gravity” because it is simply a fact of life in our environment — whether we realize this or not. Many people don’t, and can live healthy and productive lives — just like the air we breathe.

We don’t first have to create the right mixture of gases that compose the air we breathe. We just have to access it as best we can — but a few will try to perfect the science of that functioning to gain an advantage — if it makes a difference. In most things, if a tool does the job, it doesn’t have to be a precision instrument made of the best materials. And often, the cheapest thing that can do the job, is the best money can buy — and beyond that, the rest may be impressive to others, but conveys no further advantage — for all practical purposes.

That is the first law of survival — if it works — regardless of the fancy explanations of why it does, or worse, why it is not working — but they are the “experts” in the field. They know all the things that do not work. Thus they claim, they need more funding to maintain that status quo — of them in charge, and to keep all others out of it. That kind of thinking is endemic to all activity and spheres of influence — but the trick is to distinguish that and not get caught up in those distractions that can consume a lifetime. And so many will conclude that it doesn’t make a difference — because they faithfully did all the things that did not work.

That is usually evident from the very start — but many insist one has to give it time — like a few years to exhibit those results, because it does not work. It is like asking a class of grade schoolers if they know how to “make a muscle,” and every arm in class will bend In the appropriate manner to make their biceps contract. That’s how easy it is — to make a muscle — and that simplicity and directness should not be complicated by elaborate explanations paraphrasing what researchers far away know exclusively — but have yet to prove in their own lives and being.

It is not because of age or lack of equipment and space that are the barriers — but simply the lack of the awareness of their own doing — or lack of it. The simple exercise that always works, is simply to turn one’s head as far to the left or right as one can go — and find out what is possible and the limit of that range of movement. In that very movement, the muscle of the neck will contract to enable that movement — as surely and demonstratively as the grade schoolers contracting their biceps. But for all intents and purposes, turning their heads is much more valuable as that movement affects the circulation to the head and brain — which most exercise practitioners just ignore as not being very important — because they think the head, hands and feet should be immobilized to enable their exercise. That kind of exercise is the wrong kind of exercise specifically for that reason — in that it precludes the movement where it is most important to move — and make a muscle because the circulation has been enabled by that movement.

That is the very reason the human body deteriorates prematurely and very visibly — at the sites of the neck, hands and feet — before all else, but is also the easiest thing to rectify — because it is simply a rotation around the furthest axis of the human body — which implies all else, but not vice-versa. The “core” muscles don’t need to be moved because their major function is stability and support — for the fine movements that occur at the extremities — whether that it shooting a basketball, hitting a ball with a bat or racket, painting a picture, playing an instrument, running, jumping, walking, etc.

As such, only enough room to move the head, the hands, the feet, is all that is required to optimize the circulatory flow throughout the body — rather than move or jump over mountains — to achieve the beneficial effects of exercise in any environment one feels most comfortable in, and has the inspiration and opportunity to do. That’s how easy, convenient, and accessible it can be — unless one insists that it has to be otherwise. Then it becomes an excuse not to do it.