Posted on 01/10/2005 11:30:16 AM PST by MikeHu
Many people are surprised to learn that any movement that can be done with any apparatus, can also be done without the apparatus -- usually to much greater effect and productivity. So when one sees the apparatus advertised on television as the latest great thing, one merely needs to simulate the movement without the apparatus to see if such a claim is possible and plausible. While the apparatus (machine) does suggest the general idea of the intent and purpose of the exercise, the limitation of most machines is that it loses effectiveness at the very extreme of the movement -- where it is most productive. It is often the case that the machine may actually provide resistance against the proper movement being effected (completed) -- and so despite the many repetitions and calories expended, the desired results in bodily improvement is not forthcoming. All one can claim in such a case is that he possesses a better (more expensive) way to waste his time and energy -- as though somehow, that was the sole purpose of fitness activities -- “a superior way to burn/waste calories.”
Why would such an approach make any sense at all -- in any human activity? Is the purpose of our mental exercise merely to spin our wheels as fast as we can -- or is the purpose of proper conditioning and fitness the learning of ways to be efficient and to conserve our precious resources of time, energy and money? Undoubtedly, there are prescientific types who believe that the more energy expended, the more becomes available. Many also operate under those assumptions with money too -- the more they spend, the more they will have available to them -- never having learned at some point in their lives, that all is not free and unlimited. There is a price, or cost, for everything.
Those who pick up those lessons early in life have a tremendous advantage over those who don't -- particularly in their understanding of the successes in everyday living. Those who never suspect that such lessons need ever be learned, are usually trying people to be around -- because everybody else around them has to adjust/accommodate for their delusions rather than they alone making those adjustments to the realities apparent to most others. And make no mistake about it, most people are sane -- even though the isolated few who aren't, would have us believe everybody in the world is insane and delusional like them. That is the very nature of insanity -- to convince the mostly sane people in the world, that everybody is insane, and therefore, it is futile to make a logical, simple, straightforward appeal -- but that one has to go through some tortuous explanation, some elaborate contrivance, some deception of all witnesses, in order to attain ones objectives in life.
Otherwise, the gods would be very angry that everything could be as simple as they seem, or could be made so. Theirs are very angry gods who demand sacrifices to all reason, logic, simplicity -- so that They might maintain their arbitrary control over all our lives. Thus the exercises are really rituals to appease these arbitrary gods in our lives -- who exist for no other reason than to foil our every attempt at lasting serenity and happiness.
Now fast-forward to the 21st Century in which the vanguard of humanity is beginning to consider that the forces of life and the world are not hostile and antagonistic but merely the way it is. In this, understanding becomes the critical element in determining whether one is set against all others or whether one is in harmony with it. I think the latter approach may be the ultimate achievement and understanding of this present time -- if for no other reason than that is the line of demarcation for which time is an ally -- or a relentless and merciless enemy. “Time” is the essential construct of our conditioning. Some grow up to regard it as their constant foe; a few learn to cherish it as their powerful ally. The former must live in fear, despair and futility -- for there can be no other end, no other conclusion, no other fate but certain death, beginning always with those assumptions that the great forces of nature and time are unyieldingly against us.
Not surprisingly, it is that attitude and predisposition that determines the outlook and prognosis for civilization -- and extinction. That is the advantage in a vision of life everlasting, or eternity -- different from the conviction that life must necessarily be “short, nasty and brutish.” And even those who pride themselves in great intellectual sophistication frequently find themselves expressing such sentiments as though they were proof of their intellectual and moral superiority, when obviously, the darkness that they see is not the light -- but that is all they know, and feel quite smugly, is all there can be known. That is what the “experts”/authorities/priests have said, and that is the boundary of human inquiry as far as they’ve been taught -- that the word is the same as fact. But a few learn somehow in life to look beyond and proceed into the universes that have always been there but could not be seen before because of these prohibitions against inquiries into the forbidden, the unimaginable -- the obviously self-evident.
So let us “go there.” The structure of our overly complicated and demanding contemporary lives is that we never begin with that simplicity each and every day of our lives -- but always drag the weight of the world (thought) over from day to day, as though there was great advantage in doing so. Thoughtful people may meditate for a moment and realize the great insight that it may be the source of all our difficulties. Like the diligent computer programmer knows, the first step in undertaking any task, is first to assure ourselves that all the registers have been cleared to zero -- before the processing of any subsequent information will be meaningful and productive.
In the life and day of every human, that moment is the moment of our awakening. We are as close to zero as we will ever be -- from a functioning standpoint. Despite every other claim on our existence, the essential clearing of the registers and modeling for all other subsequent functioning and functions for the day, can be achieved in literally the first minute immediately upon waking. Once that is achieved, further considerations of whether more is possible and necessary is automatic and autonomic, flowing from that essential level of functioning. That is, the brain and body is functioning well enough, that it can make those determinations without further deliberative thought given to it.
Therefore, the thought for most of “how much exercise should I do or is necessary?” is an indication that the body is not already functioning on this level of automatically making those determinations. And that is how fit one really needs, or wants to be -- is it not? Actually, such an idea is not so strange and peculiar -- because that is how the body functions in every other regard in which there is true health. It does what it has to do -- no more and no less, automatically, reliably, without obsessing and ritualizing these aspect of our lives. It is the essential way we do most things -- properly, efficiently, effectively. Exercise that becomes an obsession is not an indication of good health; it is an indication of another imbalance.
But when there is increasing and endless complications and complexities, that should be our first and last sign that something is going wrong. The problem of “adequate and proper exercise” is an indication of improper functioning in this regard. Properly achieved, it is no longer a problem requiring further programming. The proper programming, or boot-up activity requires one minute-30 seconds -- and should not require thirty minutes of programmed activities daily -- though one’s actual activities may exceed that amount -- or not, “natural” to one‘s unique constitution, needs and individuality. It is of no further consideration than required for the first moment of proper programming. So what should this first moment be -- to which all other is necessary and dependent?
Now we are asking the right question, which is what, or “what quality,” rather than simply,” how much?” The latter is the wrong question, on the wrong track -- and there is no getting on the right track by that route, no matter how much. That is the dead-end that exercise and conditioning activities have taken since at least the mid-70s, when various groups of people decided to professionalize these activities by claiming that area as their exclusive turf of expertise (jurisdiction) -- whether it was merited or not. The selling of these certifications of presumed qualifications were profitable -- as much as selling advanced degrees by correspondence was in any other field but they indicated no such self-achieved and proven expertise. And since the medical establishment really didn’t know much more than the average person about such faddish behaviors (at that time), they became complicit dupes in convincing that they, along with the newly-formed trade associations and scams, were the actual experts on such matters. Neither had anything to lose and everything to gain by asserting their primacy in a field that was beginning to take off as a profitable adjunct to treating the dysfunctional and confused.
And so it was, the dysfunctional model was transferred to the understanding of healthy, optimizing human behaviors. Exercise and conditioning became synonymous with compulsive and obsessive behaviors -- because the advocates were fully convinced, and convinced their clients, that only a morbid preoccupation with health, could ensure it. It was simply unimaginable that the ultimate attainment and achievement of optimal health -- is actually the very cessation of these concerns. One simply is -- healthy. That’s such a revolutionary concept that it takes rereading and reflection to grasp the miracle of that way of being. Rather than that being inappropriate for this age of presumed great sophistication and complexity, it may be the prototypical solution to most of our “problems.”
It’s not about giving up everything and climbing the highest mountains to find the gurus living on the top with all the answers to life’s great problems. It just may be -- that the missing piece is not greater complexity and elaborate explanation, but the simplicity of life and being as it actually and simply is. That is, when all these thoughts, memories, premeditations, theories and explanations cease -- and there is the quietness and direct contact and observation of what is -- without our preconceived prejudices and conditioning of what it is, that these truths are self-evident. Some call that state of mind meditation; others call it contemplation, prayer, whatever is their term for a break from the usual way of seeing things. It is insight, or understanding of our own conditioning, and why we see things the way we do.
The most important objective of exercise is to increase the blood flow to the brain -- the most important part of the body. The heart obviously doesn’t lack for this circulatory participation -- but the brain is another story, and may be the most important story -- as far as the greatest beneficiary of exercise can be. When one enhances the functioning of the brain, the brain then takes care of the rest. It’s as simple as that -- and lacking this essential understanding of the critical path, nothing else will prove as effective and productive. The best mental exercise is the best physical exercise -- and the best physical exercise is this mental exercise, that is, that which best and foremost nourishes the brain -- the regulator of all other functioning in the body, as the controller of the central nervous system.
The movement to simulate for this purpose, is that currently popular on exercise infomercials as the “ab crunch chair” -- in which one simultaneously pulls the upper portion of the machine down with their arms while simultaneously raising the seat (knees) up to the chest. That movement can as effectively be done lying in bed -- simulating the positions and movement effected by the apparatus. Rather than being a less effective poor man’s compromise, it is actually more effective because it allows for a much greater range of movement -- to the extremes of bodily and muscular contraction. The most effective and productive part of this exercise begins, like so many others, when the apparatus ends and allows for no further movement -- because the range of human movement is far beyond which any apparatus will allow!
That includes free weights or anything else marketed/promoted as an exercise aid. To access the really productive part of movement, one has to access the range that any mechanical aid will make difficult or impossible. Yet properly done without such resistance/obstruction, the body provides its own resistance as the angle induced becomes extreme -- and the muscle is more fully contracted. That is, a muscle properly contracted, provides its own resistance to further contraction. That is simply the design of musculature and how it works. So to obtain a greater muscular contraction does not require greater resistance; the resistance is inevitable by design, and nullified by making it impossible -- as the design limitation of any apparatus will be.
A good example of this phenomenon is the bending of the arm to illustrate the contraction of the bicep. In the bending of the arm from the beginning straightened position with the arm hanging straight down, one notices a slight muscle contraction as the arm is bent so that the hand is nearly touching the face. Virtually all popular machines that develop the bicep are designed with that consideration -- in the belief that that is what produces maximal contraction for the biceps. However, once the arm remains bent in that completed position -- and then proceeds to hold that bend, rotating the upper arm from its elbow downward position to that in which the elbow is pointing towards the ceiling -- in that movement one will note a sensation of contraction much stronger than is possible moving only the lower arm while keeping the upper fixed in the elbow down position. The reason for this is that in conventional thinking of the functioning of muscles, it is thought that maximal contraction is achieved by moving the insertion (far end) of that muscle towards its origin (closer to the heart) -- while ignoring the much greater effect of moving the origin of one muscle towards the insertion of its adjoining, supporting muscle into which it flows. That is to note, that the contraction of any muscle is greatest when recruiting the participation of the adjoining and supporting muscle, taking advantage in the inherent strength in integrated muscle action. That is how the muscles are predisposed to act -- with its greatest effectiveness. Working muscles in isolation deliberately attempts to override this design wisdom that has evolved in all animals over millions of years. That is not progress; it is putting corners on the wheel.
Why is this understanding critically important? It means that the farther out one begins a muscular contraction -- is the ultimate determiner of its thoroughness of contraction. A very powerful muscular contraction, which most people don’t know how to effect, even among well-trained athletes, produces a powerful pulsing effect that by controlling the fluid flow and retention, shapes a body into its desired form -- or not, among other functions. That is the bodybuilding effect. That skill, once mastered, can be used to direct the flow to wherever in the body requires it most. It stimulates growth and/or recovery to that designated area -- in some more obviously and dramatically than in others.
The atrophying of the neck muscles is the single most disturbing sign that can easily be seen in people of declining robustness. Of people with mental dysfunctions and decline, what is most noticeable to the attentive is the obvious lack of head movement, dynamism and expression, as well as the decline in mental acuity. It is also characteristic of dysfunctional states such as fear and paralysis; people are afraid to look around, pay attention to their surroundings, take in all the information, receive and give signals, in short, interact vigorously with their environment and input. In this manner, it’s almost as though one is conditioning themselves to the ultimate failure of this critical functioning. Certainly it can’t hurt to have a physical mastery of one’s head in such a powerful way as being able to influence the flow to it, with its most powerful senses.
Well fine, one might say, but what does all this have to do with normal people trying to get/stay in shape. They can see where the bodybuilder might covet such insight. For those who have traditionally started a lifelong decline in health at a certain age, the only hope but a very real one, is to become a bodybuilder of this sort. It is the most appropriate health maintaining ability to cultivate and master. But this is not the same fanaticism one sees in documentaries on competitive bodybuilders -- which is an obsession/compulsion like many other addictions. We don’t want to go there, though a few probably might get intrigued by its single-mindedness of purpose and “glamour“ surrounding such events and participation. Such extremism usually exhausts and extinguishes itself in due time because its not sustainable over a lifetime -- and the lifetime is our finish line and context of discussion.
The shift in cultural perspective and focus (maturity) comes about because of the changing concerns of an aging population. We know people can live to a hundred, and many more are doing so but now the question is, can people live to advanced ages with little sign of deterioration and decline -- as we are used to associating with age? In asking, can this aging be arrested, the answer may make that point moot as people entertain the fantastic notion that health might actually improve with age because of understanding these life processes better. It is this understanding that has virtually unlimited potential -- but has up to now been regarded as an inviolable constant. Did this “knowledge” or conventional wisdom enable and empower -- or was it the arbitrary limitation we placed on its possibilities? Of course, we never were aware of them -- until we were!
The hardest thing to see is that which is all around us -- the things we take for granted. They are the unquestioned facts of our existence. In this age, much of that environment is the conditioning we receive that tells us what is so. This programming takes place earlier with each subsequent generation; little is left to chance and personal discoveries. We accept deterioration as the natural effect of aging rather than the more healthful growth prognosis. That is, the eventual result of maturity is health and not dysfunction, deterioration and decline. The present or previous conditioning, accepts that outcome as its ultimate, inevitable conclusion. At what point is this decline irrevocable and irreversible? That is the question on the cutting edge of life in cultures and societies all around the world at the present. It really is the silent, critical issue underlying all other considerations. When must one accept and go into this decline?
A lot of the epidemiological studies that seem conclusive and authoritative, suffer from the weakness that the subjects are then not cross-tested to see whether the explanation for the results work when the subjects are reversed. Instead, they value the fact that their study was “blind,“ in that nobody knew who was being tested for what. The results are more convincing when the same person is tested in two ways than two people tested in one and compared to one another, even though ostensibly, they may be well-matched. That presumes one knows what is significant to match, which obviously means the experimenter has preconceived conclusions of what is significant. So if it possibly could be done, it would be preferable to conduct an experiment on the same individual -- using the two different variables but the same individual as the constant. Otherwise, the testimonial that a certain nutrient or practice was productive is inconclusive -- compared to what? Yet a lot of these studies past muster with the reporting publications and become the conventional wisdom of the times with repetition as though they were more than conjecture and wishful-thinking.
Human variability is so great that the fastest heart rate of the constitutionally slowest, would not approach the resting heart rate of the constitutionally fastest. How preposterous therefore to use age as the arbitrary coefficient for all as the base measure of fitness. It is like asking, “Which is more fit? The tortoise or the shrew?” The tortoise has the slowest heart rate and the shrew the fastest -- and all that has been noted from that observation, is that all animals seem to have roughly the same number of ultimate heart beats in a lifetime, which some call total life energy.
Even the proponents of the inviolable “target heart rate” explanation have beaten a retreat as they themselves find such levels of demanding fitness regimes personally unsustainable -- or as productive as they maintained thirty years ago, when anything might have worked. At sixty, what seemed to work at thirty, no longer does -- nor does one even want to attempt that rigorous program anymore. The extraordinary willpower to do so, is found maybe in one in a hundred. The other ninety-nine do not feel such efforts are worthwhile. And that is the end of the discussion and inquiry for most -- up to now.
When a minute of attentiveness is all that is required to make a meaningful and significant change in health and well-being -- for anyone, it’s a different consideration and very compelling one. Undoubtedly one could do more, and probably will. But one’s concern need only be to that initial one minute -- that changes the operational environment and capacities. If one does not do that, the how much of the others is not an adequate substitute or relevant/productive further discussion.
Stop the tape and try it right now. Lying on one’s back, lift the knees up to the chest allowing the legs to bend and cross at the ankles. The hands are in the position one would assume in a request to put one’s “hands up” -- while lying down. Lifting one’s head, place the hands on one’s knees and continue to compact (contract) the torso as far as possible. Return to starting position, and repeat for 10 repetitions. Upon the 10th repetition, modify the movement by turning the head left or right as far as possible with each lift, for another 10 repetitions. Time elapsed should be under a minute.
If one does nothing else, this is what should be done, each day immediately upon waking. And then you let your brain take over. If I can’t get you to do the one -- the most important one, there’s no sense my continuing to plead the case for all the others. But if I can get you to do the one, and that one makes so much sense that one realizes he would be a fool not to do it, further encouragement from me is not necessary. The greatest difference is the difference between one and zero, not one to a hundred or even one to a thousand. The greatest difference is always the difference between zero and one. A thousand times zero is still zero, while a thousand times one is one thousand. The difference is the one. Then you find out for yourself whether what I’ve communicated to you is true or not.
This is a very essential component of any real learning but absent in much of contemporary learning environments and experiences -- that may be a major factor in the failure of these instructions to achieve the promised outcomes. They seem to work in theory but not in practice and the practical world. It’s one thing to say healthy people have certain qualities but something else to claim that unhealthier ones can be changed by adopting the attributes possessed by others. That might not be possible -- to make a tortoise into a shrew, or vice versa -- and think we have improved the individual.
What really makes more sense is in discovering what the best functioning of one individual’s unique potential actually is -- not the theoretical model of what is the ideal for all -- as if that really was understood. Most assuredly, that is not understood -- and never was, but that didn’t prevent those from claiming that knowledge. That was presumptuous to the max -- but few could recognize that usurpation of omniscience precisely because they weren’t competent to see through it. Is it true that merely increasing the heart rate and burning more calories are desirable ends in themselves -- denoting worthy achievements and attainments? Nobody seemed to question that they were -- as long as some doctor or some institute of pretentious standing said it were so. Aerobic and metabolic capacities are largely inherited traits -- and not the most malleable. In fact, what is characteristic of the aerobic approach to conditioning is the belief that those traits least variable should be modified -- while overlooking the fact that momentary and spontaneous changes are entirely possible -- as the function of the voluntary muscular design. Those realities are still largely ignored, and dismissed when they should be the obvious area of modification and change; it is designed for change!
That’s been precisely my observation and claim over these past several decades -- that people possess the immediate capacity to be in shape. They just have to realize that it is entirely possible -- and to know how. That is what the voluntary muscular system can do -- put one into the shape they desire, when knowing how to do so. The idea seems revolutionary because we have been conditioned to think that change is only possible over time -- and not momentarily. We’ve been taught to reject such notions -- that learning, understanding, changing, can be instantaneous. Instead, arithmetic must be a four-year curriculum -- because it suits the instructors to make it so. Likewise, personal training is a four-year program because it suits the instructor’s desire to maintain that long-term client relationship/dependency for as long as possible.
The client doesn’t want that obviously -- but is given no choice. “It’ll take a year or two of constant work and appointments,” they will insist, “and to miss any will be disastrous,” they warn, ”undoing all the good achieved.” That is the out -- and thus it seems like one is always starting from the beginning on the treadmill of life and progress. With the understanding conditioning approach, one is always starting from where one left off, not going back to the beginning each time. Understanding is transformative, and so one cannot go back as though nothing has changed but the passing of time and calories.
An article that touts simplicity shouldn't be so complex and hard to understand.
Thoreau: "Simplify, simplify, simplify."
Duude...too much caffeine...
I don't like to talk politics, but occasionally I'll correct a factual mistake, just to be helpful. The speaker will never alter their opinion, never say "Oh, let me rethink that." They just keep the same opinion and shift the factual medium on which it's expressed.
There's a similar effect in health in fitness. If people are not meeting their goals, it's probably because their goals aren't what they are claimed to be.
That's the conditioning -- the brainwashing into a belief system that is not verified by actuality. Politicians are as susceptible as any ambitious, competitive types. They develop a real problem separating the fantasy from the reality, the wishful-thinking from the actual results, the image from the sordid reality of their existence. I'd say this inability to distinguish fact from fiction, fantasy and propaganda, is the great affliction of these times.
I don't try to convince anybody about these things before they are ready to recognize it when they see it. Every now and then, somebody will recognize the truth -- and that's a wondrous thing. The health crisis of people being in poor condition is largely this ignorance of what it means to be in condition. The solution is a whole new way of looking at the problem -- and not more time, energy and money into the old problem -- merely perpetuating by that perception of it. It is not a lack of time, energy or money that is the problem; it is the lack of understanding of the problem.
Most of what we read about in the media is of this faulty understanding of the problem because the writer/reporter's own lack of understanding; that is the problem, the limitation. One can keep pointing this out and they don't seem to hear you and insist more vehemently that you have to see their problem. But the same situation, with a better understanding, might not see it as a problem; he may see it as a faulty solution. Some people can only see problems, no matter what; a few can only see solutions, no matter what. There are far too many who can only see problems, who work in the media; that is the problem -- that distortion of reality and possibilities to the lowest common denominator of popular culture that they themselves have created. But that's not all there is; that's just all they know -- and forget that distinction.
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