Is 20 Minutes a Day Enough?

 I workout 20 minutes a day — just to recover from the aches and pains of juvenile arthritis/old age, and to lubricate my joints for subsequent movements throughout the day.

However, once a week I go to the YMCA a half-mile uphill and workout for an hour with light weights for 50 repetitions of each exercise — focusing on extending my range of motion in both the contracted position and the relaxed position as the primary objective. There are plenty of older guys “lifting” weights but I noticed with most — including Arnold and these former/older bodybuilders that their range of movement is quite restricted, and they don’t spend any time in the most productive positions — which is the extended ranges of contraction and relaxation, but are merely moving the weights through a limited mid-range, and therefore,  hardly changing muscle states at all.

The importance of this is that in fluid dynamics, the rate of flow is determined by the difference in the pressures created inversely by the volume — which is also how the heart works. Pressure is inversely related to volume, and so as the heart contracts, the pressure increases — and moves into an area where there is less pressure.

This also happens when the skeletal muscles contract and relax — producing the flow from the tissues back towards the heart and recycling organs of the body. Otherwise, the veins conducting the flow relies on the valves to prevent a backflow but no powerful push as when a muscle contracts (volume gets smaller). In most people, and particularly those who never produce these muscle contractions in their inactive and sedentary lives, this can cause fluid buildups in the tissues — as is familiar in edema, lymphedema, lipedema, swollen ankles, swollen hands, sluggish brain functioning. This is a circulatory problem determined by the lack of regular voluntary muscular functioning as most humans have evolved for — causing the most vigorous and productive, to development greater capacities and efficiencies — while the immobile would largely die off because they could not fend well for themselves — just as we see of the runts of the litter in every species.

The more vigorous get most of the food, while the weak and incapacitated are eliminated in this way. Those are the conditions which life evolved — over millions of years — and what each has to work with as the fact of life. Once we see that clearly, we can simulate (exercise) those conditions that favor our survival, while eliminating those actions that are counterproductive and undermine those purposes — including eating as our only activity — which some have taken to the level of constant eating, as with the advice to eat and drink as much as possible — as an end in itself. Instead, one could devote that time to optimizing the circulation and respiration as a better use of one’s time, energy and focus — as even the ancients have recognized for centuries.

So where these people get the idea that 20 minutes of intentional movements (exercise) for this enhancement is a bad idea is a truly remarkable reversal (perversion) of what Nature intended. Nature wishes life to succeed — but one must do so on those terms — and not just eat, drink and be merry — while not taking exceptional care of what has been provided us as what we have to work with. When we have that fundamental understanding of reality, then it doesn’t make sense to do anything less — to ensure the success of everything else we subsequently do in our lives — because it is all dependent on this basic operating conditions.

That is to be functioning on one’s highest levels of possibilities — and not simply mindlessly doing everything equally and arbitrarily. In order to get one’s head into it, one should place as primary importance, the actual movement of the head — otherwise, there is very little difference from a head that cannot move, and eyes, ears, and brain that can no longer function and take in the information the body needs to respond effectively.

As people age and become less capable, the neck muscles are the first to go — resulting in the atrophying of the neck muscles with the characteristic turkey neck. That doesn’t happen with people in the practice of moving their heads (think dancers) — because it follows the same principles of the development and maintenance of every other organs of the body. It is dependent on the blood flow (circulation) to those tissues, and that is what makes them function well and grow — and not by all that mumbo-jumbo trying to sell heart monitors or whatever is the new gimmick of the day.

Some even go further down that path in insisting that one cannot spot-reduce or spot-develop particular bodyparts they wish to — and that the only thing that matters is elevating the heart as high as possible — which is to suggest that all phenomena is random. That’s not the world we live in. People actually become good at what they exercise and practice, and it shows in their development. That should be a well-known fact by now — but we have academics who now rule the roost proclaiming that they are “the science” — and everyone should not trust their own lying eyes, ears, and brains — but listen only to their certified lunacies and propaganda — that don’t work, and if 20 minutes is not enough, then 40 minutes would be better, etc.

It depends on what one does, and how one does it — and not that they will get the same results doing anything — depending on their calorie expenditure and highest heart rate sustained — because life and the world is random in that way. The problem is seldom that the heart is not pumping and one is not eating enough — but the skeletal (voluntary) muscles are not working — which explains how the marathon runners have enlarged hearts with very little muscular development otherwise. One cannot assume that just because the heart is working at its hardest that the circulation through the other muscles (organs) are optimal — and that is the problem of the dementias and neuropathies (arthritis) at the extremities of the hands, feet and head. That is what needs to be exercised for at least 20 minutes every day to achieve and maintain optimal functioning and development throughout life.