Dr. Peter Gray‘s blog, “Freedom to Learn,” is a fantastic collection of thoughts, ideas, and great references regarding development, play, learning, and the effects of social structures on all of those.
I highly recommend it!
Not enough time right now to provide a full discussion of these, but here are a couple of interesting stories you should check out:
The history of national fitness efforts in this country:
http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2009/nov/29/president-takes-the-lead-in-encouraging-physical-f/
When people feel incapable, they escalate situations more quickly:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/steve_duin/index.ssf/2009/12/beating_the_police_force_into.html
Enjoy
Not sure if I’ve said this before, but it’s a good idea to take it easy when doing new things.
Kids will “go for broke” a lot of times, but because they’re so small, and still so resilient, the injuries that result from that exuberance are usually relatively minor (scratched knees), and heal relatively quickly.
The bigger and older you get, the harder it is.
I want to relate this to the barefooting experience, but first, a personal anecdote:
Back in 2001, when I was just starting out as a trainer, I decided it was a great time to try skateboarding. That was when I was 28, and weighed a good 200-210 pounds.
I bought all the gear, and started going to the skate park regularly. I also started to appreciate ice.
When a little kid falls, they fall from a distance of one, or maybe two feet. When I was falling, it was from a distance of three or so feet (as the skateboard shot out from under my feet).
What’s the difference? Well, a 90k (roughly 200lbs) mass falling from a height of 1 meter (roughly three feet), will have an impact force of 17640 Newtons. A 23k (roughly 50 pound) kid, falling from a height of .6m (roughly 2 feet), will have an impact force of 1352 Newtons.
I’m hitting the ground with a magnitude greater force than that kid is!
And that hurts.
Probably could’ve spent some more time getting familiar with the board. Acquainting myself with standing on it on a carpet for a couple of weeks. Progressing to using it in a parking lot or someplace very flat, but not very fast. I maybe could’ve spent a few weeks or months in that environment, before moving into the very fast environment of the skate park.
But that’s not what I did!
Barefooters (or anyone doing something new) will experience similar problems in this regard, and it will pay huge dividends to think about this before you start your new exercise program or routine, rather than contemplating it from the recovery room later.
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. If you’ve been predominantly shoe-bound most of your life, your foot and leg musculature are most likely not ready for a full-on barefoot (or Vibram FiveFinger) onslaught.
Keep your shoes!
Cycle the new activity in to your normal routine. Do it in small doses at first. Gradually build up your activity in that new pattern. And by gradually, I mean, consider how long you’ve not been doing that activity. Give yourself at least an equal number of years to be perfectly comfortable in the new activity.
This relates to weight-loss as well. I have people ask me how long it will take them to lose a certain amount of weight. My immediate response always is – How long did it take you to put that weight on, and how long have you been maintaining that weight? Once they answer, they’ve answered their own question.
Plan on it taking you just as long to take off weight as you’ve been carrying it around with you.
While it’s possible to lose weight very quickly, such fast change is rarely permanent. Your body adjusts its levels of (internal or external) activity to the ongoing demand it experiences.
This is like habit. You have to form a new pattern of activity for your body to adjust to. And then you have to maintain that pattern…
Anyway, the point is this – Take it easy. Take it slow. Take your time. Pay attention to the process. Feel the things happening in the moment. Don’t rush by them. Then you’ll be able to appreciate the end-result that much more.
Just read Lynn Margulis’ book “Symbiotic Planet.”
a book cover
After reading my blog posts about the Human Ecosystem, my footcamp playmate loaned the book to me.
It’s really good.
The book is based on Dr. Margulis’ research around the origin of life from the combining of bacteria into larger and larger organisms (symbiosis).
The strengths of this book are in Dr. Margulis’ firsthand (and pioneering) experience in the subject matter, and the incredible depth of knowledge she has in the field. The book is also very very short (around 150 pages, I think), which I like a lot. Sum it up!
The only negative aspect of this book is Dr. Margulis’ constant self-referencing. While I understand that she developed the serial endosymbiotic theory (SET) (for a paper on that, click here), it’s not necessary to constantly refer to oneself throughout a text.
Other than that, great read, very informative and enlightening. Check it out!
DeKalb County, in Atlanta, GA, has mandated recess for k-5 students.
It’s definitely a step in the right direction! Hopefully this can be extended in duration and scope, from 15 minutes, and 5th grade, up to an hour and all the way through high school.
Keep your fingers crossed. If you’re in Atlanta, sign the petition!
Everyone who comes to see me, who comes to train with me, wants me to record numbers.
They want to record their weight. Their bodyfat level. Their heart rate. Their VO2max.
They want me to record the weights they use. The number of repetitions. Their speed.
And that’s fine. I’m happy to oblige.
But I’m not always happy with what lies beneath those requests.
When I’m unhappy about it, it’s because my clients are looking only at their numbers. They’re succumbing to the externally-focused drive of our culture. They’re looking at magazine cover-models, movie stars, their neighbors and friends, or anything other than their own bodies.
It’s fine to track your progress with different measures. However, the primary concern of anyone engaging in an exercise program should be to become more who they are. To be more in their own body – to learn how to move, to build strength, and to feel the full measure of that strength-in-movement within.
When a month has gone by, and the weight on the scale has gone up, it’s usually because relatively heavier muscle is replacing relatively lighter fat in the body.
But the externally-focused individual just sees the higher number. And that blocks them from feeling themselves what the effects of the exercise have been. Do you feel thinner, more fit, happier? Do your clothes fit more loosely (or more tightly, in new areas, like the shoulders and thighs, perhaps)?
The other thing that happens is that people become fixated on strength goals. “I want to bench press 315.” Ok, great. What happens when you plateau at 285 for a few weeks?
The externally-driven person will tend to want to push past this plateau, instead of allowing what the body actually needs at this point – more time.
There are many methods for getting past plateau’s – focusing on the eccentric (lengthening) portion of the movement, doing partial reps, overspeed/power work, etc.
But usually, what the body needs when it hits a plateau (that is, if you’re still applying the same level of mental intensity to your lifting), is some time to accommodate to that load. The plateau is your body speaking to you. It’s saying “give me eight or ten weeks at this load,” “play with this weight for a while,” or even “back off.”
If all you can hear in your head is a number (315), you won’t be able to hear that voice, telling you what you really need to be doing.
This tendency is cultural. We put the Type A personality on a pedestal in this country. To our own detriment. It is also a choice. You do not have to push things all of the time. You can choose to slow down and listen.
However, that’s extremely difficult, because everything around you says you should push.
The tendency for people to constantly quote scientific research to support their claims, and the equally damaging tendency to believe people who do that, is another example of this external-focus.
Science is based on the law of averages. It is not concerned with the individual. And you are an individual. You are not an average. Nor are you average.
First, listen to yourself.
I think it’s past time that we human animals expanded our concept of ourselves – of what constitutes a “human animal.”
For the past few millenia, we’ve changed our ideas ever so slightly. While we’ve seen religions rise, evolve, and fall (for some), civilizations the same, philosophical ideas, societies – all have come into existence and fallen out. Our recent era in history, for the past sixty years or so, has seemingly been one of increasing stability.
The societies that came up since WWII are largely the same. Some borders have changed, some names. But for the most part, we’ve had a stable go of it. While the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf Wars, and all the other battles since then have not been minor events, they’ve also not represented major shifts in civilization.
So let’s take this time of stability in civilization as an opportunity to shift things on a different level.
The one thing that has remained the same through almost all of the civilizations in the past few thousand years has been the perception of the human animal as a distinct “being,” separate from its environment. While many Eastern (and most American Indian) religions/philosophies believed in the unity of man and nature, they still largely held the two as separate. Distinct.
My previous post was about the external organ of the human body. That is – the environment-as-everything-around-us.
That’s the “macroscopic” view of the “human” part of the organism that represents Life.
Where’s the “microscopic” view?
That’s what this post is about, the planet called “You.”
There are over seven billion human planets on this planet – all supporting life.
You are an ecosystem.
The “Your Body Is A Planet” article on Discover.com says that 90% of the cells in your body are not yours, but belong to microbes that live in, on, and off of you.
1 Athlete’s foot fungus
2 Vaginal flora
3 Firmicutes and Bacteroides
4 Human papillomavirus
5 Head lice
6 Dental streptococcus
7 Demodex mites
8 Shingles
9 Fossil viruses
10 Staphylococcus
The above image and list are from Discover.com – http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/your-body-is-a-planet
To boot, the National Institutes of Health has a Human Microbiome Project, which is attempting to understand the microbes that live on the human body.
To quote, “The HMP will address some of the most inspiring, vexing and fundamental scientific questions today. Importantly, it also has the potential to break down the artificial barriers between medical microbiology and environmental microbiology. It is hoped that the HMP will not only identify new ways to determine health and predisposition to diseases but also define the parameters needed to design, implement and monitor strategies for intentionally manipulating the human microbiota, to optimize its performance in the context of an individual’s physiology.”
While I love the concept behind the project, the stupid human’s constant desire to mess with things scares me. So, while we should get more in touch with the planet “You,” we also need to watch out for people telling us what to do with our inhabitants.
Keep your science off my microbes!
At dinner last night, I made a comment similar to this. And it has stuck with me, so here it is!
Once you’ve broken something, it’s never the same again.
It may not necessarily be “worse.” Sometimes things need to break down in order to build up in a way that is more appropriate, or “better.” Bones do this in response stress. I put “worse” and “better” in quotes, because there’s really no qualitatively “better” state – only more appropriate or less appropriate, and even then, only more-/less-appropriate-for-the-given-demand.
For instance, bone reforms along lines of stress in people with bad posture as much as (if not more than) it does for people with good posture. Over time, the person develops the “dowager’s hump.” The situation is essentially permanent at some point. And, physiologically, they are “broken,” and, like Humpty Dumpty, cannot be fixed.
So watch out for what you break. You won’t be able to fix it.
All of the myths of our culture must be related to one another. How? You tell me. But if they’re all visible in our culture, they’re tied together somehow.
The “quick fix” myth is diabolical. I think it arose out of the need for the “producers” of the country to create more consumers. The more extreme your claims are (says Goebbels), the more likely you’ll be to get people to buy it.
5-Minute Abs! Lose 100 Pounds! Tone Your Buns With Shoes!
Take a pill and cure your ill!
Snake oil!
It’s a bad way to look at things. It takes away personal responsibility for having gotten to the state you’re in. It can be fixed with a pill.
But it never is. The pill, the DVD, the shoes – they never fix anything.
Hard work does.
There are a few myths our culture upholds that are fundamental, and damaging. One is the myth of “production.” That is, that “production” is the key to “success” (our cultural definition of success).
Where does the myth come from? Seems like a combination of sources. First, our Puritan heritage stressed work-as-suffering as a (religiously) necessary part of life. Self-denial, even in the Stoic sense, was a popular attitude in that culture.
I’d say that carries us through the 18th Century. In the 19th, the Industrial Revolution took hold. Then, that Puritan ethic drove a new idea of “work.” I think it was here that production took hold as king. Make more, faster…do more work in less time. More production. People realized that if they did this, they’d make more money. Money takes over.
In the 20th Century we had a bunch of wars. Production served us well (seemingly), because we could respond quickly to the demands of the world at that time (need tanks, planes, bombs? We can do it, fast!).
Now, in the 21st Century, we’re still trying to push this production. But there’s no direction to it. Any production is equally meaningful. What is that? Postmodernism?
Anyway, it has led to things like “clean” energy, “green” products, etc. Which, on the surface, seem like really good ideas. Many modern pundits for the environmental movement want to see more production in “green” areas.
The only problem with that, is that those methods all are still PRODUCTION, which BY DEFINITION takes energy and creates waste.
Creating the types of waste we create is antithetical to any truly “green” initiative.
What’s the solution? STOP producing so much. Stop consuming so much. And when you do produce/consume, stay close to nature…