Why We Are All Here

 Most people argue over whether they should use more weight for fewer repetitions, or use a light weight for higher repetitions — when the far more productive way to train, is to increase the range of motion in that movement. The most important part of every movement is the start and ending positions — while most work only the midrange, and then shorten that even further to accommodate more weight or more repetitions.

All movement is cardiovascular AND neuromuscular — and those divisions are simply manmade — because the body cannot operate that way, one exclusive of the other. However, while all movement will raise the heart rate, it is possible to raise the heart rate without engaging any other particular muscular structures — as most cardio machines do. In the most popular version of the treadmill, the upper body is largely immobilized, while the range of foot movement is minimal, emphasizing a limited range of movement at the hips and knees. So limited in fact that one could continue the exercise indefinitely — because there is no muscle fatigue/demand otherwise. That is true for most movements: if you shorten or limit the range of movement, the muscle can go on indefinitely — even jogging a marathon.

However, if one performs a movement to increase the range in both the contraction phase as well as the relaxation phase, that muscle will fatigue — because an extraordinary demand is placed on it — to which it must adapt and accommodate — both in the short term and in the longer term once one has recovered from that challenge. As one gets older, there is a tendency to decrease the range of movement until eventually one is all but immobilized — and then others have to do for them what they previously could easily do for themselves, but over the years, lost that range of movement — more than that they couldn’t lift their own weight or do endless repetitions of a limited movement.

Everybody who has ever lifted weights, knows there is a beginning position in which they rest, as well as an ending position in which they can also rest. However if they try to extend that range of movement beyond those resting points (bone on bone lockouts), any attempt to do so is extremely fatiguing and even perilous because that is uncharted territory that the muscle will fail. In order to avoid injury, one would not attempt to do so with heavy weights, but even light weights will be challenging enough — and even no weights at all would allow that manner of performance with maximum safety.

The key movement would be expressed at the joint furthest from the center of the body — which are the axis of movements at the wrists, ankles, and neck — as the body is naturally designed to move most critically. For millions of years, humans evolved in conditions that required them to have to use those faculties beyond all else — to survive, and then thrive and prosper. Then, it was quite obvious that if one did not turn their head, they had limited information of what was going on around them — because they had to turn their heads to see and hear better — to know what dangers lurked, or where their next meal was coming from. Throwing a stone or spear required that wrist movement, and the feet were a lever against the earth — to run, jump, reach tall branches.

But modern life made a lot of that unnecessary, and so people just stare ahead into their screens now, and may go to a gym to increase their heart rates while moving very little else. And then they wonder why their brains fail, their grip weakens, and their feet cannot hold them up reliably. But they think the answer to all those ailments is just to force the heart to work harder and faster while immobilizing all the other muscles that are doing very little — as the preferred modality of “exercise.”

And so we have the great fear now that people will lose those critical faculties for full responsiveness beyond just having their hearts beating for years and even decades in that condition. Who will be there to take care of them? It would seem that the far better model for life in the future, is for everybody to take better care of themselves in the manner that makes such extension of capabilities more likely as the conditioning paradigm — over the expenditure of calories and heart beats as though there are no limits and no difference.

Once one is clear in understanding how life works and what one is doing, it is easy to design exercise without the need for equipment, supplements, instruction, measuring devices, etc. Everything will make perfectly good sense — and that is the greater question of why we are all here.

Last Man Standing

Having been raised on fairy tales and hype, many come to believe that for anything significant and meaningful to be done, requires heroic effort and struggle, and sacrificing all else to achieve.  That is the thinking that we can have only one thing rather than everything, and so in order to obtain the one thing, we have to sacrifice everything else -- be that war, athletic competitions, wealth or health -- and further thinking that we can have either the appearance of health, or health without the appearance -- when the greater implies the specific, and not that that is all there is.  That is a vision of the world in which nothing is connected to everything else, rather than the realization that everything is connected to everything else -- even if we are not aware of it yet.  

Those are the early stages in the awakening of awareness in anything we choose to learn about -- that that one thing, did not just manifest out of thin air, but has been millions of years in the making, and the accumulation of many previous actions.  Every individual life is merely the continuation of that process.  One thing builds on everything else -- and not that everything is always starting from scratch.

There's a reason humans stand above all else -- in the ultimate evolution of the feet, hands and brain to control it all.  Those are the most critically advanced evolutions that distinguish the humans from all previous life forms -- and that which has to be maintained and optimized over individual lifespans.    Meanwhile, the heart is shared by many life forms -- and as such, needs very little improvement.  It is the mastery at the head, hands and feet that distinguishes accomplishments among human beings -- and not simply who has the faster or slower heart beat -- which is simply easier to measure.

What is easiest to measure, is not necessarily what is most important to measure -- but is the great equalizer if mass marketing a product -- because everyone has one.  But whether that translates into any real world accomplishment remains to be seen -- as we now witness many living prolonged heartbeats with no other vital signs of responsiveness -- most notably in the dementias.  We notice much less that often such lack of responsiveness may occur first at the hands and feet -- from years of immobility resulting in the accumulation of fluids that have pooled and accumulated over a lifetime we recognize in inactive older people.  But is the solution to get the heart to pump harder and faster, or would it be much more productive to activate the voluntary/skeletal  muscles to perform that task much more expeditiously and effectively -- since in contemporary lives, they are hardly activated at all.

And then when it is called upon in various exercises, it is made difficult, problematical, and even injurious -- rather than the normal process by which the organism maintains its health, functioning, and vitality.  It's really a simple thing -- that doesn't need to be made increasingly more difficult.  Yet that is the prescription of what productive exercise requires -- which seems to work when one is young, but fails spectacularly the older one gets

A famous bodybuilder was advised by his doctor after having heart problems and surgery, that he should no longer lift heavy weights, or to hold his breath when lifting a heavy weight, because they produce undue stress on the internal organs -- but in that prescription, there is no prohibition in lifting light weights -- and breathing naturally with every repetition.  Obviously, that is what that person can do -- quite productively -- rather than continuing to do what they are ill-advised to do.

And that is the conventional wisdom -- which quite frequently, is just totally misguided -- because one has already decided what they will do, before considering whether it is the appropriate or intelligent thing to do.  And that is to lift heavy weights -- as though such defiance will convey immunity from those disastrous effects.

Not that the movements are bad in themselves.  The whole objective of such movements, can be reduced to the simplicity of changing the state of the muscle to produce a flow -- which actually relieves the amount of work the heart muscle has to do -- while increasing the greater circulatory effect -- that produces health, functioning, and growth -- because of the environmental and atmospheric conditions life has evolved in.

The best and obvious example of this is cardiopulmonary resuscitation in which it is noted that the important part is not blowing air into the lungs of a person not breathing -- but compressing the air out of the lungs -- and by that same action (movement), effecting the blood flow.  Ancient exercisers believed that it was the breathing in that was important to cultivate -- rather than the exhalation, and upon relaxation, the atmospheric pressure would cause air to enter a volume that was vacant.

That is the reason one doesn't want to lift a heavy weight holding one's breath -- but rather let a light weight rise on the contraction of the breath, and lower quite naturally as those torso muscles relax.  That is also the argument for not lowering a heavy weight unduly long -- because it requires the body to fail from the lack of air movement in preventing the muscles from elongating as the weight is being lowered.  That is unnecessary as well as counterproductive to doing anything in the real world.  Such a manner of performance is entirely contrived -- with no practical applications in the real world but to increase the stress the body is experiencing -- as though that was a good in itself.

Yet that is the convoluted thinking that produces failure 100% of the time -- because that is not the best way to do anything -- especially if one doesn't absolutely have to.  The peculiarity of older competitive bodybuilders is their disproportionate development produced by the atrophying of the forearms, calves, and neck muscles -- as the heart weakens with age -- and they divert all their remaining resources to the misguided development of the biceps and abdominals -- almost exclusively.  All sense of proportion is simply abandoned -- when the proper maintenance of the extremities at the head, hands, and feet axes would ensure that proportionality -- because that is how the musculature is designed to work productively.

That is acutely true as the heart grows weaker.  At that point, the far wiser course is not to make the heart work even harder, but to make it work less hard while increasing the effectiveness of the circulation by making all the muscles of the body work as the heart does.  That would be killing two birds with one stone -- and all the other accolades.  They can continue to be well-functioning every day of their lives -- rather than succumbing to the pattern of decreasing capabilities -- beginning at their most critical faculties.

The primary function of all the muscles in the body, is to recruit as many muscles as possible to make any task as easy as possible -- and not to make every effort and movement, as difficult as possible.  That should be the simple, obvious truth by now.