Author: Jonathan Ross, TRX Master Trainer, Discovery Health
Fitness Expert, www.AionFitness.com
The Time
article completely misses the point of
exercise. It promotes some of
the most misguided misconceptions about exercise that keep people from living
their best. Specifically, the
article reiterates the concepts that:
· Exercise
helps you lose weight
· Exercise
decreases risk of heart disease
· Exercise
prevents cognitive decline
· Regular
exercisers have less back pain
· Exercise is a “sweaty, exhausting,
hunger-producing” burst of activity
After
reading this list, even I don’t want to exercise anymore. Boooooring. What a dull list. Given this approach, there is simply
no compelling reason to exercise.
It’s all negative, negative, negative. Many people think like this and it’s the wrong approach. What if I told you that you should go
to college so you don’t have to be ignorant, work a tiring, dreary job for
little pay, don’t have to drive a clunker car and wear old, dingy clothes? Even if it’s true, does all the negative
language in this description sound positive and motivating?
Exercise
isn’t about avoiding things it’s about doing things. It’s about becoming more capable. I
feel this is the one essential mindset shift that is crucial for long-term
health.
Physical activity isn’t supposed to prevent you from having
a horrible life; it allows you to fully participate in your own life!
The article
further points out that exercise – such as the author negatively defines the
experience – may not even be necessary.
A study showing kids who exercised vigorously were just as likely to be
at a normal weight as kids who were active at lower levels more frequently
throughout the day. I’ll concede
to that point, if you can in fact keep kids more active throughout the day.
But what’s
the real problem here, exercise? No, it’s that both the exercising kids and the
daily-activity kids get told to stop fidgeting, sit still, grow-up and get real
jobs and stop playing so much. So
they go out and get journalism degrees, sit still for 23 hours a day, eat
crappy food, then grunt and sweat their way through one hour of grueling
exercise a day to try and balance the scales. That’s asking an awful lot of exercise.
(In the next post, I’ll address points 3 and 4)