Exercise

The E word.  People hate it, don’t they?  I suppose I would too, if my only regular exposure to exercise was under the neon lights of a big box gym, pounding away on a treadmill after a long day at work with nothing but bad TV and crappy music to distract me.  Well, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Let me preface all of this by saying if you have an exercise routine that makes you happy, makes you feel good, and is getting you the results you want, you’re doing it right.  Even if it’s in a big gym and your routine involves treadmills and weight machines.  We are all different.  If, however, you are one of the many who find “traditional” exercise to be boring and ineffective, I think I can help you.

Play, but play seriously:

I believe Bruce Lee first said that.  Exercise should be fun.  It should be something we look forward to.  If you don’t enjoy your exercise then you won’t do it – and maybe you shouldn’t.  This is why I advocate play-based exercise.  Now, when I talk to people about play as exercise they seem to think it means kazoos and clown makeup.  “Play” does not mean “silly.”  I define play as “the exploration of the possible” and it can be serious business.  Exercise should be a path to self discovery and a greater connection to the world around you.  You should learn a little something every time.  If you take this play concept to heart I guarantee you will never be bored by exercise again.

That is broad, heady stuff, I know.  I do have some more specific recommendations to get you going:

Find an activity:

While any truly solid exercise program will include some conditioning, don’t just condition endlessly with no greater purpose.  Find a physical activity that grabs your interest and begin to practice it.  For me, the activities are martial arts and parkour.  Dance is a great choice, as is climbing, skin diving, yoga, street hockey… the list goes on and on.  Practicing your chosen activity is great exercise in-and-of itself, but maybe more important is that it provides strong motivation for supplemental conditioning.  Can’t climb that wall quickly and fluidly? Do some pull-ups and work towards a muscle-up.  Having trouble with some dance footwork?  Find good foot speed and agility drills.  Conditioning becomes a means-to-an-end rather than a means-to-no-end-in-sight.  Much has been written on the importance of goal setting for people who are looking to get in shape.  Finding an activity you love makes setting goals extremely easy and effective.

Make it primal:

In my experience, the most universally effective and fun forms of exercise have one thing in common:  We’ve been doing them for hundreds of thousands of years (millions of years if you count proto-human species).  Put simply, for as long as we have existed we have been running, jumping, lifting, climbing, throwing, exploring, swimming, fighting, and dancing.  Base your exercise around some or all of these activities and you’ll do well.

High touch:

Get your hands dirty.  Eschew man made and smooth surfaces for natural and textured ones.  Blast your brain with sensation.  It makes things much more pleasurable and jump starts neurogenesis.  I also strongly recommend you begin the slow process of learning how to run barefoot.  You won’t believe the difference it makes until you try it.

Train the whole animal:

A lot of physically active people think they can get away without any strength training.  Please do strength training.  It will make your life better.  Do not, however, fall into the rut of only training strength and cardio.  There is more to your body than the musculoskeletal system and the cardio-respiratory system.  Your nervous system needs stimulation and development too.  Practice speed, coordination, agility, and balance regularly.  You will prehabilitate yourself from injury and enjoy increased athletic performance.

Rest:

This should be easy advice to follow, but it trips up a lot of people.  Rest regularly.  Your body needs time to rebuild itself.  You know that acquaintance of yours who’s a total gym rat?  They guy who spends his life working out?  Notice how he always seems to have a sniffle?  Don’t be that guy.

Why are you doing this?

I’ll close with some thoughts on why we should be exercising.  Clearly, the health benefits will improve the quality of your life.  But it doesn’t stop there, does it?  You want to be able to support your family and be there for them.  Now push it out a step further.  You will be a better friend if you are healthy vs. sick.  Push it out further and recognize that we are all members of local and global communities.  I’m sure you’ve noticed that we humans have some pretty big challenges we must confront.  How will we do if we’re too sick to apply ourselves?  My guess is not very well.  We train to be strong, functional, useful members of society.  If you have been lacking the motivation to begin, I hope this gets you moving.  We need you.



Food

You will notice that I have titled this entry “Food” and not “Nutrition” or “Diet.”  This is because I believe that in the current state of confusion about what we should and shouldn’t be eating, we fail to see the forest through the trees.

Be warned that I am not a nutritionist.  I do not have any kind of credentials, stamps, badges, or insignias to justify the broad philosophical guidance I am about to give.  However, because this is going to be broad philosophical guidance and not a step-by-step meal plan, I am reasonably certain that you will not be poisoned by following it. 

I love food.  I love eating.  I love cooking.  If I had to leave you with only one piece of advice, it would be to become engaged with your food.  Cook.  Cooking is actually very easy.  Good cooking is quite easy.  Great cooking is hard, but you’re probably not looking to go pro.  The practice of preparing most or all of your meals can have a profound impact on your health.  There are countless amazing recipes online waiting to be explored – I will be spotlighting some of them on my blog.  If you want to kick it up a notch, I strongly encourage you to become engaged with and mindful of the production of the food you eat.  It’s not all created equal and, unfortunately, the majority is produced in an unsustainable manner.

So what should you eat?  My advice is to keep it simple.  Michael Pollan may have put it best in his book In Defense of Food:  Eat Food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.  The last two are self-explanatory, but what does Eat Food mean?  Food, as opposed to Edible Food-like Substances, (another great Pollan term) is characterized by the fact that it doesn’t come out of a package and it quickly rots.  If it doesn’t rot, don’t eat it.  That’s basically all there is to it…

…but we can go a little deeper.  The closest thing to a hard rule I have is this:  Don’t drink soda.  It is vile, noxious stuff with absolutely no redeeming qualities. 

In my opinion, government guidelines (aka the Food Pyramid) go too far with their grain recommendations.  I’d recommend cutting down on the wheat and starches and replacing them with fruits and leafy green vegetables.  This is in keeping with the Paleo diet, which is catching on fast with athletes.  I think Paleo does a lot of great things, but Paleo practitioners can get overly dogmatic in their approach.  In my opinion, the Paleo diet should be treated like the Pirate’s Code – more like guidelines than a real code. 

In fact, be wary of diets in general.  If you are exercising regularly (which you are, right?) then you need to be eating enough to support your athletic development.  If you need the structure and discipline of a diet to help meet your weight loss goals, try to choose one that offers broad principles that can be followed indefinitely, rather than a gimmick with a timetable. 

I want to leave you with some thoughts that may seem out of place on the website of a health nut.  I postulate that chocolate, blueberry pie, and ice cream sundaes are awesome and good for the soul.  My friend Frank Forencich brings up the concept of dosage in his amazing book Exuberant Animal.  Anything in excess dosage is bad for you but, conversely, nothing can hurt you in moderation.  If you are craving chocolate cake, do not suffer through some “health-food” alternative that tastes like cardboard.  Go find the biggest, richest, most sinfully decadent piece of chocolate cake and revel in it. Coo over it. Share it with your friends.  Exhaust your need for chocolate.  Then be done with it for a few weeks.  If we reduce food to mere fuel then we have lost a part of what makes us human.  Life is for living and good food is for savoring.

I hope I can stay...

My first blog post - a big moment.

I hope that, like Carl, you let me (I'm Dug in this scenario) be a small part of your life.  You can use the links on the right to keep up with my adventures across the internet.  Always feel free to drop a comment.