Will We Need to Change?

 To be successful throughout life, a person has to be changing and evolving with the times and circumstances — and not thinking if they keep doing the same thing for time immemorial, it will be right for any time and all circumstances. That is the essence of life — and not having a fixed idea of perfection and never deviating and evolving a better response to the present challenges — then wondering what went wrong, and how one got so detached from reality and proper functioning. Then every day after that, their situation seems to get more dire and hopeless. Change is the way of life.

As people grow older, they can also grow wiser — but many will stay the same all their lives, and fare poorly because of that mindset and approach. Those who remain viable all their days are quicker to recognize what they thought worked, no longer does — if it ever did, and make the proper adjustments. It is the same with all aspects and activities in life.

In the case of the bodybuilders and weightlifters, they eventually come to realize that simply doing what they did when young, may be impossible when they are old — which doesn’t preclude everything else one has not tried before — including and especially, that exercise can be made easier and more productive, rather than continuing to beat themselves up the hard way, with less results, and more possibilities of injury — and reduced recovery ability until finally, they just give up entirely. Of course that is the worst case outcome leading to total disability.

One gets better at doing what one actually does — but when one is resistant to trying, nothing will be done. So rather than increasing the resistance, the proper course is to lower the resistance — or maintain the same level as one ages so that movement looks and becomes easier, and not more labored. That is obviously the reversal of what one has been taught to believe that one should be constantly adding as much resistance as possible at every opportunity to do so — infinitely. It doesn’t work in older people, and neither does it work in younger people. Because it was never that the resistance was so important but that the full-range movement itself produced the fullest contraction and the fullest relaxation of the muscle — which optimizes the circulatory flow that is health.

All the mumbo-jumbo, hocus-pocus, jargon, pharmaceuticals aside, that is the simple process ensuring health. Most bodybuilders and weightlifters condition themselves to the wrong things — and that becomes unsustainable in time and age, and is the primary reason they die prematurely at younger ages than their cohorts — usually from heart problems because they are overworking their hearts — thinking the harder the better. The primary value of exercise is not for the heart — but for all the other skeletal muscles that are not working unless one deliberately programs them to. The heart is always the hardest, most dedicated muscle of the body — and doesn’t need to be stressed harder or exclusively while the rest of the skeletal muscles continue to do little or nothing at all. And worse, some think it desirable to work the muscles against the heart to make it work even harder — endlessly until it fails. Of course, that is the ultimate failure.

Instead, one desires to learn to use the body and muscles so that it can sustain its functioning and activity as long as necessary — all of one’s life if possible. That requires a very different approach and mindset. That probably is the great challenge of conditioning activities of these times — not just for bodybuilders and weightlifters, but for everybody aspiring to achieve their best lives, for the rest of their lives.