Designing Exercise with No Preconceived Notions of What It Should Be

 What distinguishes the human above all the other animals is the large brain, opposable thumb (grip and manipulation), and upright posture (balance) and gait — which is the head, hands and feet. Everything else is supportive to those objectives — including the heart, lungs, digestive tract, etc. Maintaining the optimal health in those areas (organs) is far more important than biceps and six-pack abs — but fortunately, the health of those extremities implies the health and functioning of the underlying health and functioning — rather than vice-versa.

And that is the problem of longer contemporary lives — that the heart and lungs go on functioning long after the brain, hands and feet do — as kind of a living death. So we really want those organs particularly to be the priorities in any fitness (exercise) program — rather than simply making the heart work infinitely harder. In fact, the best understanding of exercise, is to recruit the entirety of the muscular system to aid and enhance the circulatory effect — which it does by contracting and relaxing at the axis of rotation of the extremities — resulting in the maintenance, development and growth of those muscles above all the others — because of their primary importance.

Yet that is not what is exercised conventionally — and because it isn’t, has limited impact on one’s quality of life in longevity. The observation by even the most casual observer, is those are the sites where people reveal their age most — and prematurely — along with the lack of articulation at those joints. Instead, we see the characteristic swelling of the neck and face, bloated hands and feet, indicative of the pooling of those fluids in those areas as edema, lymphedema, lipedema (inflammation) — of which many of the pioneering researchers on longevity and disease, recognize as the universal cause limiting optimal health and functioning.

Most think there is nothing they can do about it except hope for some miracle drug to make them feel better — rather than realizing that those are the axes of rotation that make the most difference and matter — rather than the six-pack abs or biceps — or for that matter, even the heart which is autonomically hardwired to take care of itself. But that is not the case with the voluntary skeletal muscles — that have to willfully be activated and engaged. That’s what active young people do without realizing or thinking about it — and why those who are more active in this way exhibit better health and development.

But as we get older, we tend to make less of these movements — and contemporary popular exercise ignores these movements of the head, hands and feet completely — because one does not need machinery and equipment to exercise them. That is because it does not require resistance but is activated by range of movement alone. That is the provision for ensuring that health — that evolved for millions of years, but has been precluded by the sedentary lives of our times. It is not so much that the sitting is bad, as it is that the head, hands and feet are immobilized while the screens provide that feedback. That is to observe that it is not necessary to turn one’s head to see and hear better, but one merely turns up the volume. Thus people are much less aware of their surroundings and vulnerable to the perils around them — which lowers their fitness for survival.

In that manner, all the senses of touch, feel, balance, awareness — atrophy, because the movements that dictate that optimal circulation, have been disengaged. And that is the characteristic decline and deterioration of most people as they age — most visibly at the neck, hands and feet. But exercise instead, is focused on the heart — which is obviously still beating, and does not need to be directly increased. Rather, it is the movement at the axis of the extremities at the neck/face, hands, and feet that have to be articulated because that action pumps the fluids (inflammation) back towards the heart and other recycling organs. That is how the health is maintained — and can be optimized — but contemporary life thinks is not important, and so we increasingly see the premature failure of the human body beginning at those extremities.

Observing and understanding that, one would create movements that provide those movements explicitly, and in doing so, will realize that the full range contraction (and relaxation) at those axes, require the activation of the underlying supportive muscular structures as well, and as such, is the most efficient and effective way to obtain those health benefits of optimizing the circulatory effect. And that is the greater objective — and not simply making the heart alone work harder — while the head, hands, and feet remain immobilized — as is the case with the treadmill, stationary bike, and style of diverting the flow to less important areas of the anatomy — at the expense of the most critically important organs of the body! At that point, it doesn’t matter how formidable the physique is “at the core” — if the critical functioning at the extremities have ceased to remain viable and vital. That’s how the human body fails — with age.

But that is also how the human being can ensure its health — beginning at those critical areas traditionally renowned for their “poor circulation” — as though nothing can be done about it to alter that fact. Once we properly understand that the most important work done by a muscle contraction is the movement of blood and fluids back towards the heart and central organs, we quickly disabuse ourselves of the notion that all that is required in exercise is just to make the heart work faster and harder — because that is the easiest thing to measure, but not necessarily the most significant. The atrophying of the neck, hand and feet muscles are far more indicative of that individual’s fitness, health and condition to live a quality existence.

The group of people who exhibit these movements best are those whose primary exercise is dance — because as a spatial exercise, they have to turn their heads a lot to orient themselves where they are, while maintaining fine motor expressions of the hands and feet — to a range most people think are simply impossible. But most people, even if the worst of conditions, are capable of moving at the head, hands and feet joints — even if it is not possible or easy to move at any other joint (axis). And that is the key to understanding movement that is productive and restorative no matter what present condition one begins at — to higher states of functioning, development and growth.

That is what is not clearly understood by even all the experts. But understanding, before even exerting any effort, pays off much more highly than applying any amount of brute force attempting to obtain the results one desires. Then the results just come because that is the natural and logical outcome of what one is doing — simply because one demands that it be so. That’s not how the world works. Instead, one has to up the understanding first — and then the results are inevitable, because nothing else is possible.

In this manner, one can sustain exercise all throughout their life — and never have to give it up because it is too hard or dangerous to do — particularly when they need it most.