The Key to Healthy Lifelong Exercise

 The key to sustaining healthy lifelong practices is to have the proper understanding of what one is doing. Once one has this understanding that makes perfectly good sense, then it is impossible not to do it — like avoiding touching a hot stove. One understands that perfectly clearly — and not that one feels lazy and so will rest their hands on a hot stove. The human body is a lot smarter than people think it is — innately, and so when they are clear on what they must do, it doesn’t make sense to do anything else.

But unfortunately, a lot of what we are taught to do, doesn’t make any sense, and so the body intelligence tells them to ignore that “instruction,” because it doesn’t make sense and can be confirmed by their own experience — which ultimately overrides what they have been told to do “for their own good.” However, that is not confirmed in anything they do — and so they don’t bother to waste their time — because they know better.

That is particularly true in developing lifelong exercise habits — because they seem so unconnected with immediate feedback — and one will be advised that if they simply keep it up, they’ll have miraculous results in one to three years — rather than immediately and thereafter. If that were the case each and every time, then one would be a fool not to do it — especially when one needs to — like getting up in the morning and recognizing that one can barely move or is experiencing pain in moving. At that, many think the cure is not to move at all — since it causes pain, rather than “exercising” caution in that movement — and getting back to the basics of that movement — which is the articulation of that joint through as full a range as momentarily possible, realizing that every articulation of that range, increases that functioning through circulation and lubrication.

And that is the whole purpose of adopting a lifelong movement strategy to maintain those fullest capabilities — rather than throttling back more and more each day until one is completely disabled and dysfunctional. Obviously, that is not heading in the right direction they want to go — let alone as they get older. Maintaining full range movement is the only thing that makes sense — to enjoy the fullest life possible — but the price one has to pay to maintain those capabilities is not as exorbitant as most instructors make it out to be — infinitely out of reach. That is the training psychology employed by most instructors by promising those results only and always in some distant future — rather than actualizing those capabilities in the present moment — when it is desirable and important to do so.

Contrary to what the popular media would have us believe, most people do not pop out of bed each morning ready to take on the world — beginning with running a marathon and setting a personal best weightlifting — which is daunting rather than encouraging. Instead, most people are at their lowest levels of energy and wish to bump that up incrementally until they’re “ready to go,” and that is particularly important for the weak, sick and disabled — to bump themselves up to that next level of increasing functionality and well-being. Otherwise, nothing happens, and nothing seems possible. Also, nothing makes more sense to do.

But that doesn’t imply or mean doing all the things that don’t make sense — thinking if they simply do it long enough and more — that it will magically transform a pumpkin into a golden carriage. Reality doesn’t work that way. It is not “magical and wishful-thinking” enough that gets one there. It has to have a sound basis in reality and experience — and produce direct and immediate results. One does not turn on a computer and hope to get the proper results a year or three from now. No one would buy one if that is the timeframe of their expectations.

Yet they accept those rationalizations from “instructors” who obviously cannot produce immediate and direct results — because of that disconnect from reality in favor of their theories and explanations. The simplicity of exercise is understanding the basics of vital functions — underlying breathing and circulation. They both operate by the fundamental principle of volume inversely related to pressure — so that as any volume decreases (contracts), the pressure increases and has to move where there is less pressure, and since every muscle contracts by moving the insertion (distal) to the origin (proximal), that action enhances the flow back towards the center of the body (heart) — while the heart pumps blood towards the extremities (but not back towards the heart again). That is what the voluntary muscle action does.

And so those who understand and merely effect those muscular contractions, enhance that obvious health effect — along with producing movement, and the familiar pump, as well as fatigue. All that is incorporated in traditional movements like running, jumping, walking, lifting weights — but also can be done deliberately just for that enhanced pumping effect — when one understands that that is the effect — whether one wants it to be or not.

So whether one is an astronaut or simply lives a largely sedentary life, they no longer have to labor from dawn to dusk to maintain optimal fitness — but can achieve those objectives “scientifically and systematically” by upping their understanding before undertaking more effort — without it. That addresses the great challenge of these times in how to maintain health in greater longevity — even and despite increasingly sedentary lifestyles. The answer is not standing up or walking all day — but simulating the alternating muscular contractions and relaxations that produce that effect — beginning at the known weaknesses of those effects at the extremities of the body — the head, hands and feet — that despite all the myriad of activities undertaken, are ignored in conventional exercise to begin at the biceps, quadriceps, and pecs instead — which is the lack of understanding and observance of how the body fails with age — most disastrously at the head, hands and feet.

The beauty of this is that even the most weakened and aged people, can still move their head, hands and feet — even in they cannot move at every other joint — nor is it necessary to do so to obtain the healthy circulatory (pumping) effect — because the fluids pumped from the extremities has to go through the rest of the body, but not vice-versa if the focus is at a joint closer to the core — as in the case of the biceps, quadriceps, pectoral muscles — while the vital organs of the extremities are left to languish in the familiar pattern of the aged.

An intelligent being would recognize it means little for the heart and lungs to continue functioning while the critical organs have perished for the lack of this vital circulation to maintain them in top (optimal) condition for the remainder of their lives.