Why "work out"

Photo taken by Tina Khoo

The word training or working-out may, for many, have a negative connotation.

Working out recalls fatigue/something hard/tedious, especially if then connected with a potential result that culminates into mere vanity.

So how do we successfully convey the idea that working-out should be part of our everyday life, not something we do for the unique purpose of looking good? Working out is movement. And movement is life, as without it we cease to function, we cease what makes us human. Even typing on a computer while sitting on a chair requires movement.

We can open a whole discussion on how mental abilities are a higher form of human expression, but I would be ready to dispute with a thesis on how the mental and the physical are part of one reality and inevitably necessary to each one’s function. (does not exist without the physical, or on actually how the duality is not even existent as reality is one, mental/physical, abstract/concrete….)

In our generation, we can definitely deduce how people are spending lots of time in their thoughts, but would that be a direct cause of how many twenty-year-olds are suffering from back pain?

We could stay here all week trying to investigate on the metaphysics of human behaviour towards physical training, but I would like to start from an already agreed conclusion of “consistent periodic challenging physical movement is a necessity for human health”.

How do we agree that consistent periodic challenging physical movement is a necessity for human health?

Training is not simply singing up to a specific pilates class or to a gym and attending to them on specific hours and dates of the week, as if it was a corporate job agenda, yet for many is seen as such, although they may agree with the previous statement.

Many again would say that sticking to a constant and structured training schedule would make wonders to achieve specific results pertaining the sports world and they may as well be correct, after following empirical data that supports such argument.

But not everyone is on the path of becoming an elite athlete. Individuals are diving into different fields, may you be a historian, an anthropologist, video gamer, a medical doctor, an architecture professor… we understand that many of us don’t make sports the centre of their life, nevertheless we will still agree that a healthy and resilient physique will perfectly accompany a highly functioning mind.

So how do we assist people on this? Training might save countless hours spent eventually on therapies aimed to put a patch to symptoms which origins can be related years of neglecting human nature. Aaah human nature, another of the most discussed terms ever.

Movement is present in the most basic function as important as breathing, eating, sleeping… yet somehow it rarely is categorised as such, as vital? How does it not belong to a transparent and fundamental element of human nature for greatest part of the crowd. We will agree but not act on it.

But also, why challenging movement is a must?

The majority of us go through life having a simple routine conducted through repetitive familiar steps through work, personal hobbies and so on.

But can this argument be applied to those who have hard physical jobs, every day carrying heavy weight or being under difficult environments (see hyperbaric welders, miners, constructions workers…). These people are definitely check marking the daily challenging physical movement.

And yet many of these kind of workers end up with arguably hard injuries.

Is there something missing?

Intention or intentionality?

The movement has to be * and challenging. One with the body and mind. Focus. Injury is a risk factor that cannot be removed from the equation. At any point in life you could get injured even through external uncontrollable factors. Yet, that should be even more reason to build a resilient body that can carry us through life. Injury can sometimes be seen as a development step too, but I would not suggest to actively seek for injury, at least not a heavily debilitating one.

What is the thought around dancers? Can we consider them “elite movers”?

This other element is still open for discussion: intention.

What does it mean to have intentionality behind our trainings? Or rather movements?

How many times we see people at the gym, on a machine, seemingly busy, but at the same time on their phone or worried about who is checking them out.

There is a connection there, not even a forced one.

We witness the highest number of injuries in moments of disconnect, distraction.

Obviously, there are differences based on environments: a sports athlete during an intense face-off may enter a higher injury risk rate. Can this be applicable to a lawyer who does lift weights three times a week at his firm’s gym and develops chronic shoulder pain? The injury does not come from an uncontrollable environment.

Knowledge is the third element, but this can very much be acquired through self exploration and countless material out there.