Exercise can be damaging. Activity can be invigorating.
Exercise has become overly complicated and, in many cases, has lost its way. Walk into a gym today, and you’ll see an endless array of machines, gadgets, and technology. Search online, and you’ll find thousands of channels, methods, tools, supplements, and competing opinions. Much of it is thoughtful, and some of it may even be useful — but much of it is unnecessary.
So, the real question is not whether exercise has value. The question is: Is all of this really necessary? And can some of it actually be harmful?
For people who live very sedentary lives, exercise may indeed be necessary. But for those who stay active throughout the day, formal exercise is often redundant. If you walk your dog, mow the lawn, garden, clean your house, wash the car, climb stairs, ride a bike, dance, play sports, dance or move furniture, you are already using your body in the way it was designed to be used. In many ways, life itself is exercise.
Over millions of years, the human body adapted to frequent, moderate movement, not long periods of inactivity followed by a single intense workout. In that sense, steady daily activity is often more natural and more beneficial than one hour of extreme exertion.
Can exercise be harmful? Absolutely. Compared with ordinary daily activity like gardening or walking the dog, formal exercise carries a much higher risk of strain, injury, and burnout. Too often, exercise is framed around goals, progress, pushing harder, and “no pain, no gain.” In many cases, it becomes less about caring for the body and more about trying to conquer it.
Of course walking the dog, washing the car, gardening, playing Chess (for your brain) or dancing to some music while cooking your organic, wild caught, grass fed, locally sourced meal it’s not gonna help you get into your Lululemon outfit two sizes too small and it’s not going to help you grow your bicep bigger than your head so you can crush people with your bare hands. These are valid fitness objectives for some people, even though they really have nothing to do with health. Real health means that we have to be more dominated by our wisdom than our vanity, we have to be guided by common sense instead of a cultural program we have inherited. Oh yeah, one more thing: Weight loss is also a large factor and people’s exercise routines. You will not have to beat the crap out of yourself so you can burn those excess calories if you will just stop eating so much! Overeating and then trying to hide the fact that you overeat by beating the crap out of yourself to burn those calories is a double negative that doesn’t equal a positive!
Ok, some people simply do not have time for enough daily physical activity because they are busy earning money to pay others to do the work for them. But who benefits more: the person paying for the activity, or the person actually living it?
If you can find a way to spend less time being sedentary and more time moving naturally throughout the day, the benefits can be enormous — and not just physical.
That said, if you are currently sedentary and your job keeps you at a desk, exercise may be necessary for you. But start gently. Going from little movement to intense training can be a shock to the system. Warm up well, give yourself time to adapt, and always err on the side of gentleness rather than aggression.
sincerely, bryan
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