by Drew Baye
Exercise is not merely important. It is absolutely essential. Most people,
however, do not realize this, because the time factor of the cause-effect
relationship between lack of exercise and the resulting decline in functional
ability is so great. To further elaborate on this point, Arthur Jones once used
the following example during a Nautilus seminar:
"If
I were to grab you by the throat, and choke off your air supply, it would
immediately become apparent to you that oxygen is absolutely essential for life.
If I were to lock you in a room with no water, after several hours, the degree
of thirst you would experience would indicate to you that water is a requirement
for life. If I were to lock you in that room with water, but no food, it would
take a little longer, a matter of a couple of days, before you would be
ravenously hungry, and there would be no question in your mind that food was
absolutely essential for life. However, it often takes years before ones body
begins to show the harm done by a lack of proper exercise."
If nothing is done to prevent it, we gradually lose muscle tissue as we age,
becoming weaker, and less flexible as a result. There are several problems
associated with this, the most obvious being a decrease in metabolism resulting
in increased body fat, which is a primary risk factor for heart disease and
several other serious health conditions such as diabetes. Not so obvious though,
are the effects of a lack of exercise on one's bones.
We often hear about elderly people falling and breaking their hips, an injury
which often turns out to be fatal. It is often assumed that these people break
their hips as a result of having fallen. In a large number of cases, the
opposite is true: they suffer a fall because their hip breaks. Each year, an
average of 80,000 men suffer a hip fracture and one-third of these men die
within a year. The cause: osteoporosis.
Osteoporosis, or porous bone, is a disease characterized by low bone mass and
structural deterioration of bone tissue, leading to bone fragility and an
increased susceptibility to fractures of the hip, spine, and wrist. In the
Keep in mind that by "exercise" I mean high intensity strength
training. Many of the activities that have been recommended as exercise by
so-called "experts" in this field will do little or nothing to help
anyone, and in some cases may even cause serious harm. Jogging, dance aerobics,
and other high-force, high-impact steady-state activities are examples of this.
Even Michael Pollock, PhD, a former member of Kenneth Cooper's Aerobics Clinic,
and past president of the American College of Sports Medicine agreed with
Ellington Darden, PhD when he said "...all the aerobics activity and
interest promoted within the fitness industry since the late 1960's has not
fostered any long-term vascular health. Instead, it has caused an epidemic of
joint and spine injury."
While proper exercise can be of tremendous potential benefit to anyone who
performs it, one would be far worse off performing activities such as jogging,
plyometrics, and various ballistic or "explosive" strength training
protocols, than if they had never exercised at all. Not only are these
activities not relatively effective means of stimulating meaningful improvements
in any factor of functional ability, they can be downright dangerous. Often, the
injuries and degenerative joint conditions which result from such activities
will force a person to become much less active earlier in life, and may even
reduce their ability to perform proper exercise, accelerating their loss of
muscular strength and functional ability. If as a result of such activities
one's mobility begins to decrease earlier in life, then that activity has
effectively shortened that person's life. Loss of mobility is the first step
towards loss of all other factors of functional ability, and eventually death.
There are many people out there who do not exercise either due to
motivational problems or ignorance of what is actually required in terms of time
invested to achieve meaningful results. They rationalize for this by making
excuses about not having enough time or not being able to afford a gym
membership or exercise equipment.
This simply is not true.
The amount of training time necessary to dramatically improve ones physical
condition is far less than what most people have been led to believe; at the
most one hour to an hour and a half per week, and in many cases considerably
less. There are few people, if any, who can not schedule 30 to 90 minutes of
their time each week for something so important.
Can't afford it?
Wrong. You can't afford not to exercise.
The cost of not exercising can be far greater than a lifetime of the most
expensive personal training services. Heart surgeries can cost well over
$200,000, and one must often spend as much as $5,000 per year on medication
afterwards for the rest of their life. If, due to lack of exercise, your
mobility prematurely decreases to the point where you can't care for yourself,
you may end up spending over $3,000 per month for the last 5 to 10 years of your
life wasting away in a nursing home.
So, would you rather spend a few hundred per year on a gym membership or home
exercise equipment or a few thousand a year on personal training and make the
effort to stay fit? Or end up spending upwards of $30,000 per year to stay in a
nursing home and have somebody else dress, feed, and bathe you, because you no
longer possess the necessary level of functional ability to do so yourself?
Like the old saying goes, use it or lose it. If you can't move, you can't do
anything but lie there and wait to die. If you value your life, proper exercise
should be one of your highest priorities.