“Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being, while movement and methodical physical exercise save it and preserve it.”

— Plato

A Celebration of Movement

Vigorous physical activity is a joyous celebration of movement. It can be a form of art, a means of release, a source of fun, or an inner exploration. To be active is a privilege, and it is high time that we experience regular activity in our lives. Children aren’t the only ones to thrive when they move about a lot; we do too. Without exercise, we grow tired and our attitude becomes stale. Moving is a source of pleasure, and the temporary “high” we obtain from it is a natural and constructive means of enhancing our mood.

The ancient Greeks built the first gymnasiums outdoors, in which the men trained daily, in the nude (gymnos means “naked”; gymnazo means “to train naked”). They prided themselves on their physical strength and stamina. All the while, Greece churned out more philosophers and scholars than any other culture in recorded history. The message to learn from them is: exercise benefits not only our physical and emotional well-being, but our ability to think clearly, too.

Developing Our Fitness

Our bodies develop through use, and they waste away through disuse. These happen in both a generalized and localized manner. When we supply the resistance necessary to enhance our strength, speed, and endurance, we give our bodies permission to improve in these areas. Our bodies cannot improve in something they are never trained to do. World-class athletes began at levels similar to those of you and me in their youth, but instead of ignoring their capacity to perform, they enhanced it, consistently, for years. They nurtured their fitness and, encouraged by their progress, they nurtured it even more.

Generalized wasting results in the functional decline of our entire bodies, such as would happen from prolonged bed rest or sedentary living. An example of localized wasting is when we stop using a particular muscle for a period of several days or longer, until this muscle loses its strength, endurance, and size. When we do not use a muscle for an extended period, its functionality decreases as a result of the lack of demand placed upon it. Exercising the muscle once again induces the stress it requires to grow, and with consistency its original power and bulk can be regained.

Playing Safe—Knowing Our Limits

The stress we place upon our bodies during activities both physical and mental in nature is good stress, as long as we supply it in moderate amounts. The key to this moderation is in the degree to which the activity remains within our capacity to do it, and in the amount of recovery we allow in between activity sessions.

If we perform an activity that our bodies are not conditioned for (for any of a great variety of possible reasons), then we will most likely experience an injury, or exacerbate an existing one. Overworking our bodies is as important to avoid as underworking them, because we cannot make up the time we lose if we hurt ourselves trying to do something we are not ready for. Exercise needs always to be within our personal limits.

More rest than we need causes our physical or mental faculties to lose their vigor. Less rest than we need results in exhaustion. More people nowadays are in poor physical and mental shape from continual disuse and misuse than ever before. Our legs are made for walking, running, and jumping, not for sitting in cars while the balls of our feet control our forward motion. Our arms are made for pulling, lifting, and pushing, not for sitting stationary while our fingers type, text, or write. Our minds are powerhouses for learning, adapting, and developing, whereas most people today do not use their minds to anywhere near their fullest capacity. We are becoming a society of degenerating people who are less able to do and think for ourselves than ever before.

“It is exercise alone that supports the spirits, and keeps the mind in vigor.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

The Need for Regular Activity

Although vigorous activity includes that both physical and mental in nature, the focus of this section will be on the physical aspect. Vigorous, physical activity is essential for many physiological reasons aside from pure fitness gains. Our digestion functions ideally when we expend enough energy before meals for our bodies to effectively utilize the nutrients coming in. Without exercise, our digestion becomes sluggish, and food ceases to move through as well as it should. Our bodies’ ability to absorb the nutrients in food is impaired without vigorous activity. Moreover, our hunger and caloric needs diminish when we are not active, which can lead us to eat fewer nutrients overall than our bodies may actually need. We can attain true nutritional sufficiency only when we participate in vigorous, physical activity on a more-or-less daily basis.

Our lymphatic system supports the flow of a clear, watery substance called lymph through our bodies. The health of this system requires the changes in pressure that accompany the movements and heavy breathing that occurs during vigorous activity. Lymph transports excess fluid from within the tissues to the blood, removes and destroys unwanted bacteria in us, and also removes waste proteins from our cells and tissues. In addition, lymph plays a role in transporting certain dietary fats from the small intestine to the blood, and in breaking them down so they can travel effectively through the blood. By maintaining a moderate to high degree of physical activity in our lifestyles, we assist our lymphatic systems in working properly.

In addition to making our lymphatic and digestive systems work in an orderly manner, the health of our heart and blood vessels, our lungs and respiratory passages, our joints and bones, our brains and nerves, and even our reproductive systems, hinges upon being fit. This is delineated in excellent depth in Prof. Rozalind Graham’s book, Staying Fit After Fifty. If you have any doubt as to the importance of exercise in your regimen, or want to know how to go about doing it, I am sure you will receive wonderful value from this read (even if you are still relatively young like myself!)

Building robust health requires having the fitness to back it up. It is impossible to be healthy without also being fit, as fitness is integral to the proper functioning of our entire bodies. If you are in a rut with your fitness regimen and want to be inspired to reach new heights, come over to Sedro Woolley in Washington State this September and meet the family at Health and Fitness Week. Classes are choreographed by Dr. Graham and his team of outstanding fitness instructors. The activities are designed to be challenging, albeit suitable for participants at every level. Whether or not fitness is a strength of yours (excuse the pun), your experience there will leave you changed, for the better, for life.

Written by a student in Dr. Graham’s 80/10/10 Certified Lifestyle Coach mentoring program.