Priorities. Planning. We’ve heard it before. But I’m not particularly compliant. Being told to do a thing, and then being told how to do it, how to implement it? Where’s the freedom? Where’s the joy in that? If it’s fun, you shouldn’t have to force yourself to do it. If it’s satisfying or rewarding – maybe it’s not always fun, but it shouldn’t have to be forced. However, you do need to bring yourself to it. It’s not like a movie, you can’t just sit back and expect to be entertained by your fitness or mobility training. It’ll be work, but if you’re doing something that’s actually good for you, in one way or another it’ll be worthwhile. It really is important not to overdo it, or shame yourself, because these behaviours consistently will get in the way of you doing stuff you like. And if the activity itself is useful, where’s the need for shame as a motivator? Shame only ever backfires. If it doesn’t work for you in the long term, what’s the point? It’s easy to resent exercise – there’s this thing I have to do, other people don’t have to, why have I got to spend so much damn time working on this thing – strength, fitness, posture, mobility, my funky elbow – that other people don’t need to? It’s easy to resent the exercises that actually free you, that enable you to move better and do cool shit. Like live and have fun. Sometimes, hopefully, with less pain and better function. “Damn, I have to do this stuff, just to be able to function!” Or maybe, “hey – if I do these things, I function better!”
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It amazes me how well coordinated we humans are. Even those of us who think we’re not. If I think about the animal kingdom, our dexterity and agility stands out, maybe because of our brains as well as our structure. Everything from typing to cooking to gymnastics to swimming. Maybe it’s our ability to learn contrived movement patterns. In a world without dance and gymnastics, who would think of doing these things? Who would look at a human being and think – I know, acrobatics! Cartwheels! Walking on our feet is too easy, we should walk on our hands! So I saw on The Project the other night (but you might not want to bother with the link, I don’t like their video player – it has too many ads), a new study has discovered the most healthiest way to exercise. The way they broke it down was this – people who run at a slow or moderate pace for anywhere between 1 and 2.7 hours per week live longer than those who run faster, and those who don’t exercise.
Of course, if you can’t run or running does you damage, this is not a healthy option for you. And there’s nothing magical about jogging or running – it will have you working at a certain degree of intensity for a given time – this is referred to as ‘steady-state cardio’. Maybe you can match that sustained intensity with a power walk, bike riding, swimming, or various moderate-to-medium intensity exercise classes. You might have heard of Tabatas, or the Tabata Protocol. It’s a high-intensity method of cardiovascular conditioning. People talk a lot of shit about it. Essentially it amounts to 20 seconds of all-out super intense exercise followed by a 10 second rest, and you do that for 8 rounds, which is a total of only 4 minutes. It doesn’t take up a lot of time. People misrepresent the protocol frequently – it’s not for strength training, it’s not for biceps curls or crunches, it’s for full-body cardiovascular exercise, but many things are misrepresented these days so that’s nothing new.
Of course people use this protocol in an attempt to lose weight – we use all kinds of exercises to that end – but it might need to be said that Izumi Tabata, the scientist after whom the protocol was named, at no point in the study paid any attention to fat-loss or body composition. Anyway. What interests me is the topic of insulin sensitivity, or to frame it more practically, your body’s ability to assimilate, utilise, or metabolise carbohydrates. Intuition is about the experience itself, in the context of an understanding of consequences. Not consequences in a negative way, but just – when you have an understanding about how a thing effects you. A lived experience of cause and effect. Intuitive eating is different from demand feeding. Intuitive training might or might not be structured, or based around a thing, and it might be either considered or impulsive. Experience teaches us things. If you know you respond badly to a thing that you do enjoy in the moment, wisdom teaches us that it might not be worth it in the long term. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it isn’t. And desire fluctuates. I’ve never written a post before on how to exercise after the holiday period. So here goes: with so much conflicting information out there, how do you train after Christmas? The same way you train the rest of the year. Do what you like, what’s appropriate and useful for you. If you train according to a program, or some sort of periodization scheme, do what is supposed to come next. If it’s the off-season for your favourite sport, train appropriately to your off-season. If you move intuitively, keep moving intuitively. If you dance, dance. If you run, run. It’s yours. And if it’s time to just take a break and not train, do that. Then, do whatever comes next. So pretty much – nothing new here. My same old tune. Even after Christmas. I was playing with our cat. She plays for the sake of the play itself – I love observing animals, they are unburdened by conception. They play when they have energy for play, and they rest when it’s right to rest. They don’t worry about their weight, or about effective movements or programs – when hunting, they naturally do what is most efficient or easy to complete the task, based on their target and their own physical makeup. All this happens intuitively, without conception, and so it is effortless and graceful, and sometimes hilarious. The pug jumps up the stairs because it is the best way for him to climb the stairs – she isn’t trying to be cute. I notice it quite profoundly – it’s easy to mistake simple for easy, and complex for difficult, but it often doesn’t work out that way in the end.
Chin-ups are essentially simple, yet quite difficult. Tai chi is extremely complex but it’s all about the elimination of tension within the body, so once you’ve grasped that physically, your practice becomes effortless. The thing is these days, if it’s effortless we think it won’t help us get into a smaller pair of pants, so why bother? Clearly it isn’t really about health anymore. Learning to move without tension is one of the most useful things in the world, as is learning to maximise tension. The best fitness gadgets you can buy are going to be simple and versatile. But because of their versatility, you’re going to need to educate yourself as to their usage. Ab gizmos that have only one purpose are easy to use, but they don’t give you much bang for your buck, because you’ll spend a lot of money on equipment that really only has a single use, and as much as that makes it simple to use it also makes it kind of useless. You can’t train your legs with a crunch machine, for example. The application is very narrow. A pair of dumbbells, however, is handy and versatile. The equipment itself is simple and cheap, and if you’re going to have exercise equipment laying around that you don’t use, it might as well be cheap stuff. Training is about becoming good at something; that’s why we call it training. It’s not just calorie burning, or random intensity in a bubble, though that can feel satisfying. You can use any word you like, that’s really okay – I don’t often talk about ‘working-out’, because there’s nothing implied about a process of development in the term. But that’s okay too, because it’s fine to just exercise for the sake of exercise, for movement, for fun or to be satisfied. It’s all good for you. And if it’s just working-out that you’re doing, there’s no pressure to perform or to grow, or prove yourself to anyone. But the thing that gets me is this – you don’t need to confuse your muscles, to keep them guessing, or any of that garbage. Your muscles aren’t trying to work against you, you don’t need to distract them. You only need to train them – to work them, to stretch them, to stimulate them. It is easy to over-complicate the process. Sometimes lifting weights fast is good, sometimes slow is appropriate, it all comes down to time under tension. Your muscles are stimulated to develop if you work them enough, but you don’t burn them out. The most effective, killer workout there is, is slaying dragons. Everything else pales in comparison. Move over, boot camp. Fuck off, Les Mills. Zumba? Pah! Dragon slaying. Nothing will get you fit and buff like killing dragons. You will have to negotiate some political opposition. That’s probably a post for another time, but for now we’ll cover prep. You need to commit to some years of solid training before you are even remotely ready for your first hunt. The need for advanced skills with a sword is obvious. But there’s a big difference between lifting a barbell and wielding a heavy sword. It’s not slow and controlled, it’s about momentum and efficiency. A rapier isn’t going to cut it. You need something weighty to be able to get through that scaly hide. You need to be strong, but also efficient and you need to know how to use leverage to your advantage. Heavy broadsword training is not all. If you can perform ten chin-ups in plate armour, and bench press your horse, you’re probably ready for beginning your sword work. |