Easy Does It

Most people who think that exercise has to be hard and difficult, end up not doing any -- because just the thought alone, is enough to discourage them. Eventually, it is not even a consideration, or an impossibility -- for some trivial reason. They just never "go there" anymore.  What do they do instead?

Exercise is what one actually does -- and not just the thought of doing something, that one doesn't. The human capacity is expressed in this manner -- or loses that capability for the lack of its actualization and expression (exercise).  One tends to keep and improve those capabilities they actually express -- as the requirement to keep them intact, fully functioning, and improving as long as one does so

Those faculties not exercised, naturally atrophy and are extinguished as unnecessary baggage particularly with diminishing resources.  That is just the way it has to be.  So at all times, one has to be choosing to do this or that, and not that by doing neither, all capacities remain in top form -- just because they ought to.

People become good at what they practice (exercise), whether it is beneficial to do so or not. That is their conditioning - and far from doing just one thing, an obviously better approach is to determine what range of movements and actions one wishes to become good at -- even if at first, they don't start off doing it perfectly.  A large part of any practice, is to simply become better and more efficient at it -- to make it easier and more disposed to moving in that way.  Those variations are not unlimited. -- but they are varied -- and not just one motion, repeated as the entirety of one's repertoire of movements -- enabling all whenever one has to.

The superior performer, has a greater range of movements than just the one done repetitiously and unvaryingly -- as many people's choice of the one capacity they wish to maintain, while the rest are neglected, and predictably atrophy. In this perspective, running alone would be a very poor choice of an adequate response to most real life demands  In fact, it is distinctly useless in contemporary life -- when the speed of transmission, is the speed of light and electricity.

The obvious and most visible places people deteriorate, are the extremities of the head, hands and feet, that even athletes who should know better, regard merely as stumps -- which they often become -- because those parts are never moved.  That has a catastrophic effect on doing those things most important and critical to do -- and not merely speeding up the autonomic functions of breathing and heart beat.  Autonomic means simply that -- that they don't require conscious thought and effort to effect or optimize, and as we often see, many can go on breathing and beating, for many years beyond any other willful motions of intent and expression -- which is the bane of lengthy lives -- with no other meaningful and willful capacities.

Fine motor coordination and capacities is the first thing lost, and is the most reliable predictor of declining health -- rather than breathing and heart beat, that can distressingly continue way beyond most resources to support in that state.  The appearance and functioning at those extremities, are the indicators (whether people realize it or not), of vitality and responsiveness -- that most people consciously ignore, and are never taught (or learn), as the highest expressions of human capacity and life.

That is what needs to be exercised -- no matter how much one runs, jumps, bicycles, walks -- without attention to those extremities of expression -- as in writing, drawing, playing an instrument, taking care of oneself as deftly and skillfully as possible.  It is a very serious disability not to be able to feed oneself.  Those abilities don't just disappear easily -- but have to be maintained, as well as perfected just as children are taught to do, as their basic conditioning (education) in life.  But as people get older, all that is taken for granted, and when there is serious dysfunction and disability, few think there is anything they can do about it -- like making that development the focus of their activities (exercise), rather than all the other things that are doing fine without that need for attention and attentiveness.

One has to address those needs and weakness -- and not simply divert all one's time and energies to doing what doesn't need to be done -- thinking that is all one can do.