The Failure of Exercise

While promoting exercise is certainly laudable, every article I've seen also promotes the misinformation and misunderstandings that undermine its credibility.

The expert is quoted as saying that unless one lifts weights, they cannot build bone density -- implying that the work is against gravity, rather than it truly is, against (fluid) pressure.

The bones are not being strengthened (compacted) because of the weight exerted perpendicular to the length of the bone -- but by the compressive forces from the ends of length of the bone -- so that muscle contraction (compression) alone, is what causes the bone compacting (density) effect -- and not the gravitational force on the bones.

For example, one of the archaic ways of thinking about muscle action -- is that muscles act in opposition to one another, rather than collaboratively.  In that premise, in order for the biceps to contract, the triceps has to relax -- or lengthen, rather than the more accurate observation -- that the biceps and the triceps have to contract concurrently, and that action, produces the compressive forces longitudinally -- not requiring any weights (resistance) to effect, but in knowing what position the bones must be in to be in contraction -- which is a product of this proper understanding, and not effort, force or gravity.

I think critical to a wider adoption of movement strategies as a lifelong adjunct to every life, is the movement of exercise in the direction of increased understanding -- rather than simply more force, effort and pain, with the poor understanding usually propagated by the physical educators -- which has traditionally been most people's resistance to that kind of imposed conditioning -- by all the authoritarians in their lives.