Pain is dis-ease, or un-ease – not feeling good – but pain is not a disease. The disease is what is causing the pain. In the human body, disease is often caused by dysfunctional movement:
poor structural alignment
repetitive movement(s) (in one plane/direction only)
lack of movement generally
lack of progressive or increasing challenge to the body
What causes these things?
Social and cultural upbringing/environment.
Individual “personality” – including individual genetic profile, and personal emotional capacities.
Personal history – motor-development/-use history, trauma(s), recovery(ies) and interventions.
Address these in your exercise program and succeed! Ignore them at your own risk!
“Physical activity” is anything you do with your body. It’s a very vague, broad term.
“Exercise” is more specific. Here let’s define it as the use of the body for a specific result. But let’s be even more specific, let’s talk about “working out.”
“Working out” is exercise to achieve greater strength or endurance, some health benefit, or aesthetic qualities.
While I’ll use the typically understood meaning of those words in this post, I think it’s worth pointing out that we all are “indigenous” to our habitat, whatever that may be at the moment. We are continually produced within and crafted by the environment (in every sense of the word – buildings, nature, people, weather) that we are within.
We also all are “aboriginal” – coming from our own origin. You can track your heritage back all the way to the “origin” if you have the time and gumption.
Source of the Physically Active
If you read my previous post, you know that I disagree with a lot of the arguments made these days in attempts to explain overweight/obesity, lack of physical activity, and associated diseases.
In sum – I think the built/man-made environment has very little real effect on what physical activities people choose to participate in, but that participation in physical activities and use of ones environment is largely a matter of imagination supported by a like-minded community – and examples of this can be found in many places today or throughout history. I think that agriculture is not the downfall of mankind, and that there are many examples of extremely healthy populations that practice agriculture. I think that over-abundance of cheap calories is not the cause of obesity or overweight, but that over-indulgence is.
Most importantly, I think that most of these arguments involve the removal (or subjugation) of self-responsibility from the individual and their free choice to engage or not engage in whatever they choose. Discussions supporting the built environment approach imply that people have no free will to engage in whatever they want, but are determined to behave in certain ways by their surroundings. Parkour would be a counter to this idea. Discussions of agriculture imply that people cannot choose what to plant in what manner. Masanobu Fukuoka would be a counterpoint. Discussions of over-abundant, cheap, and “empty” calories say that a person cannot choose to eat other things. Granted, this one is trickier, as some areas literally have no alternatives within easy grasp. But there still are alternatives – get out of those areas.
Any system, as I’ve mentioned before, is self-sustaining, by definition. Every system must seek to maintain, sustain, and maybe even to further, itself, in order to continue to survive in the presence of/cooperation/competition with other systems. Society is no different. The discussions mentioned above are part of society, so they reflect the values of that society. Mine is as well, so take it with a grain of salt.
How, Kemosabe
So what is it then, Josh? What’s the difference between working out and physical activity, and how does it relate to health?
Indigenous cultures are “physically active” throughout the day/week/month. Usually, in small discrete increments, but sometimes for extended periods of time at a stretch. Usually at relatively low intensities, but sometimes at very high intensities. And almost never at very high intensities for extended periods of time.
Indigenous cultures (except for ours here in the US) largely don’t “work out” to get their physical activity. Even in many places in Europe today the concept of going to a gym and working out is still seen as a secondary and inferior mode of exercise.
Rather, physical activity in indigenous cultures (and in many places in “civilized” Europe) comes from and in daily living. They walk to work. They walk to the store. They push or pull or carry their food, instead of driving it in a car. They may have to do physical activity to get their food. Their days have physical activity “built-in.”
I don’t want you to think that this is true only of “indians” and “aborigines” (as we typically think of those terms). I mentioned that there are places in “civilized” Europe where physical activity comes as part of daily living.
There are also a few agricultural communities that still behave this way, nestled within our own (US) culture.
From the abstract:
“Amish and Mennonite children have higher levels of physical activity than modern-living children, despite less participation in competitive sports. As a result, Amish and Mennonite children tend to be leaner than their counterparts in contemporary society.”
If you can get your hands on it, you should read this paper. It’s very interesting. It says something that seems terribly obvious when you read it – that people who do physical work as part of their daily lives are leaner than those who do not.
But if you look deeper, you’ll see that the “agriculture” argument breaks down here as well. Amish and Mennonite groups participate in agriculture. It doesn’t make them fat or stupid.
They also have an abundance of available calories most of the time. But that doesn’t make them fat either.
They construct a built-environment very similar to any you or I might live in. There are buildings with rooms. But they don’t just sit in those rooms all day.
Opposite-Land
Where “traditional” human activity is intermittent, as I stated above (btw, this paper is a fantastic overview of “intermittent” exercise in the animal world), physical activity in our US culture has become limited to “workouts” – half-hour or hour-long blocks of relatively continuous, relatively intense exercise.
Problems of overtraining and burnout in physical activity arise because our exercise has no tempo, other than a factory-based one, a vestige of the early-industrial foundations of our “work culture.” That is, “work” in the United States is based mostly on ideas of labor that came about during the industrial revolution – still. Things like “shift work,” where the employee works a certain shift every day, set daily/weekly schedules, set meeting times every week, etc. – the artificial, machine-based (i.e., machine-rhythm) division of time into measurable increments, with the aim of “maximum production” – where the ability to produce never fades, never waxes and wanes, but is always set at the maximum.
This is even more apparent in the term we use to describe exercise – it’s a “work out.”
This industrial idea of work has little to do with what happens in “natural” living, where work, though it is intense, and regular, happens in waves of exertion and rest, happens with a rhythm that matches the ability of the body to produce energy, and in rhythm with the seasons, the weather, and the habitat.
Our ideas about what constitutes “exercise” have been shaped by this. Just go into any gym and look at all of the machines in there. To use a machine, you must become one. Using one, you are used by it.
The Big But
But, Josh, you might say, we don’t live in a culture where physical activity is demanded of us in our work, throughout the day. So we have to go to the gym to exercise. We have to “work out.”
Here’s where that old argument comes in again – that we are without option. That we have no free will. No choice. We “must” because “that’s how things are.”
I disagree.
In fact, I have to thank one of my clients for proving this point to me. He is a very successful corporate executive. He travels about two weeks out of every month. He’s in fantastic physical shape.
Yes, he does go to the gym to work out, but he also has a stability ball at his desk, that he sits on intermittently throughout the day instead of sitting on his office chair. When he is using the ball, he’ll do crunches, and other exercises whenever he feels like it. He’ll get some intermittent physical activity.
A more extreme version of getting intermittent physical activity in our daily lives, one that I really highly respect, and think that we all could take a cue from, is Herschel Walker.
When he was a boy, according to one article I read, he would do pushups and situps while watching TV and studying (which usually were happening at the same time).
Can you do that as well?
If you feel resistance to doing pushups and situps during commercial breaks while you’re watching TV, why is that? Let’s do some physiology tracking – Where does that resistance come from within you (I mean, physically – your gut, your heart, your mind, your limbs – where do you feel the “pressure”?) and where does it come from outside of you (peer pressure?)?
Why can’t we do pushups and situps at work? Or walk or run up and down the stairs a couple of times? Why can’t we get up from our desks to take walks around the office park whenever we’re feeling stagnant or burnt out?
Physical activity for us, has become a choice, not a necessity. We choose not to.
The answer to the question above is – we can, but we don’t. We choose not to.
First, I want to preface this post by saying that I am currently in the master’s degree program in kinesiology at San Francisco State University, with a concentration in “physical activity: social-scientific perspectives.”
I also want to point out that, even being a student, I’ve only been a student of this particular topic since I started the program. My undergraduate degree is in Classical Greek and Roman History. I’ve studied “sociology” very generally. Most of my learning is just beginning. So this blog is a question, not a statement. If it sounds like a statement, it’s because I’m bad at making discussions…I’m working on it! As a question, as a discussion, I’m asking you please to contribute your thoughts and ideas to this post.
My questions were originally these – what is “culture,” and how does it affect participation in physical activity…and, can we effect/affect it (either culture or physical activity)?
“Culture” could be loosely defined as the behaviors and beliefs of a certain group of people, as evidenced through shared values. Or, as shared values of a certain group of people, as evidenced through their behaviors and beliefs.
“Culture” is different from “society.” “Society” is the set of relationships between people, within a group of people. Things like social standing, class, etc., are what constitute “society.”
If we accept those definitions, we have also to accept that the study of social science is not the study of culture. They’re different. Most studies of culture fall under the banner of “cultural anthropology.”
In the learning and reading I’ve done so far with regard to physical activity, a great deal of emphasis is placed on the social-science aspect of this equation – the emphasis is on the relationships between people within the group, and how those dynamics foster or prevent physical activity. For instance, why certain socioeconomic classes, or certain ethnic groups, participate more or less in physical activity than others.
The Built Environment
Things like the “built environment” (the man-made environment) also come into play in social-scientific studies. Largely, I think, because the built environment can be very clearly related to social constructs like economic status, or class. A great number of researchers specialize in the concept of the built environment, and its effect on physical activity.
But I think that something lies much deeper than the built (or any) environment.
Now, I don’t have a lot of research to back me up on this. I’ll work on finding that. But it seems to me that people find a way to participate in physical activity (or not) regardless of their environment.
In Dan Everett’s book “Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes,” he mentions the physical activity levels of the Piraha tribes as being relatively low, but says that they’re the strongest people he’s ever met. Dr. Everett describes an incident in which one Piraha man takes his bundle of wood (to be used to build a new hut) in addition to the one he is already carrying…each bundle weighing roughly 50-80 pounds (if memory serves…I don’t have the book handy).
I’ve read many accounts of indigenous peoples’ physical activity levels being relatively low (“working” 4 hours a day, perhaps, – and at that, not every day – and resting the rest). Granted, their “work” is entirely physical, but it seems like something else is happening here.
In those cultures, the natural environment provides a place for physical activity. But activity levels can be similar in Amish societies, that do not rely on “modern” technology. The Amish environment is significantly different, however. Does the “built environment” matter?
I feel like the “built environment” approach to increasing physical activity is really an approach coming from a “social control” viewpoint. It seems to me to posit that free-will does not exist. That people will make choices based on what they see around them, rather than what they feel inside of them.
The playground for little kids, where all of the moms go in the morning when I’m hosting play-camp in the enormous open (baseball) field (and trees) right next to it, is one example of this.
While the playground has provided a place for socialization for the children and mothers, and does make it “easier” to “watch” the kids (not sure how much watching actually goes on), it is precisely this that I have issue with. The idea is not that the children can’t get exercise in the large open field, playing freely (and probably supervised just as much, or a little less…which might be beneficial anyway). The idea of the playground is that there is some risk in being in the open. Perhaps.
The final example I’d like to give of why I think built environment methods of changing physical activity participation are misguided is that of physical activity taking place in areas where the environment is actually hostile to physical activity.
In one instance of this, I can remember playing ball often in parking lots or streets. And have seen countless pictures of children in Manhattan playing stick-ball in narrow streets or alleys.
In my day, the kids who would go on to create or inspire the creation of the X-Games would go skate and ride bikes in shopping malls and parking lots. Places typically not considered conducive to physical activity.
It was here! Springfield Mall, VA
An even more modern example of this is found in Parkour runners, who specifically look for environments hostile to physical activity in which to “trace” – to create an art through their running, jumping, and tumbling.
The Role of Technology
I think another social-scientific perspective, that merges with a cultural perspective, has to do with the role of technology in limiting (or encouraging) physical activity.
I have to admit that I take issue with the modern use of the word “technology.” A technology is simply a method for getting something done. It may involve the use of tools, or not, but it is systematic and repeated, and gives certain, predictable results (for this reason, Louis Liebenberg called tracking “the origin of science”).
Most folks nowadays use the word “technology” to mean “computer/electronic technology.” That’s a very limited use of the word, and I think it is misleading. Starting a fire with two sticks is also a technology. Some call those “primitive technologies.” Tracking animals is another technology, involving a systematic method for observation and understanding of what you are observing. Narrowing down further still, meditation/yoga/somatics/qi gong/self-awareness are also a “technology.” Each has their own method for acquiring deeper awareness of what is occurring within the body…basically an internal “tracking.”
People rant and rave about the issue of the effect of modern technology on physical activity levels. There are two rants I’d like to address – the industrial (technology) rant, and the entertainment (technology) rant.
The industrial rant goes something like this – industrialization (first, now “computerization”) led to the loss of physical activity in normal labor, which led to people not moving as much, which has led to decreased physical activity (generally) and diseases associated with that decline.
A similar argument says that industrialization has ruined our food supply, and blames the industry of agriculture for the decline in health in human beings.
The entertainment rant is centered largely around electronics, and culturally accepted modes of entertainment. This argument says that the increase in electronic technologies (such as the computer I’m typing on now) has led to a decrease in physical activity. People want to relax, and things like the television, video games, and the internet (via computers), have taken precedence as modes of recreation and relaxation over physical activity.
Both of these rants have something in common, similar to discussions about the built environment. They both imply that human beings cannot make choices about their activities, or about what they do with their time. That is, the industrialization rant implies that people are slaves to the machine. That there is no alternative but to take part in industry as it has come to be, which means sitting for long hours, commuting to work in cars and buses, etc., and not being physically active. The entertainment rant implies that people cannot choose to participate in physical activity due to the presence of more tempting options.
This argument – lack of self-control – is also similar to that made by many diet studies, programs and books. You cannot control what foods are produced, and since that’s what’s largely available, you’ll tend to eat higher-calorie foods, and, combined with your sedentarism, that will lead to overweight and disease.
Paradox
One of the keys to realizing that all of these rants are related, and that they all may be addressing their respective issues in ways that are not consistent with what is actually happening, is the presence of paradox.
Before we go into the pardoxes, I want to mention here, that this is the crux of what I’m saying – the ways that we’re addressing participation in physical activity are related to (and built from) the very problems leading to a decreases in physical activity – a lack of individual self-control, a lack of the teaching of that in our culture(s), and a continuing insistence on the necessity for policing/control measures.
A paradox is a situation that is contradictory to itself. I, personally, think that paradoxes usually signal that the approach to understanding the situation is the source of the paradox. That is, that nothing is “truly” paradoxical…we just perceive it that way.
From the examples above, industrialization was “supposed to” create more time, freeing up the average person’s day to enjoy leisure (which would include physical activity). But all of that free-time meant that you had more time to be “productive,” to try to “get ahead.” And corporations realized that they could be more “productive” and “get ahead.” So no one ever (except Kellogg‘s) had their employees work fewer hours for the same pay. That’s a paradox. Industrial technology was supposed to be “time saving.” We should have more free time when “time is saved.” But we don’t…we have less. How is that possible?
Similarly, the internet age was “supposed” to bring un-told advances in human freedom and communication. But instead, it brought things like YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook…”time-wasters.” Again, a “time saver” turned into a “time waster.”
The availability of plentiful food was the promise of agriculture. But now some say that agriculture has lead to disease, through its overproduction (and subsequent, “inevitable,” overconsumption) of grain products (not to mention the ill effects of pesticides, genetic modifications, and tilling the soil (it kills all of the microorganisms in the topsoil…)). What was supposed to feed us ended up poisoning us?!
Questions of “Pure Culture”
On the other side, the studies I’ve read that have to do purely with culture, with regard to physical activity or sport often focus on things like racial or religious cultures. Sometimes, those papers also considers smaller, individual cultures, participating in a particular type of physical activity (a certain sport, perhaps).
Those studies were very informative, about a particular culture in a particular place, at a particular time. But they weren’t very generalizable (able to be turned into “rules”), and were never (of the ones I read) generalized (i.e., turned into “rules” of culture and then applied to another culture).
I haven’t been able to find a single research paper or article that focuses on “United States culture” in relation to physical activity. Surely there is a “culture” that is the culture of the United States…right?
But maybe that paper is unnecessary. We can look at things like the recent research on Framingham Heart Study data that showed that we have very similar physical qualities (particularly, diseases) to our friends. That is, we’re much more likely to be a smoker if our friends smoke. I think it’s also true that we’re much more likely to exercise if our friends exercise.
But what is the cause here? Is it that “birds of a feather flock together,” so, because I like to exercise (or smoke) I naturally gravitate to others who share my interests? Or is it that, once I start to hang out with a certain group of people, “peer pressure” leads me to start doing as they do? Or is there a balance, where my set of values must match their set by a certain percentage? If that percentage is high, I stay in the group, if it is low, I leave.
But what about groups or cultures where we all come up together at the same time? My childhood friends, for instance. None of us smoked or drank when we were 5. Yet some of us did when we were 16, and many (if not most) of us eventually went down completely different paths in life by the time we were in our early 20′s. What causes us to stay in one culture and leave another, when we all shared such similar beginnings?
The Fear of the “Individual”
That brings me to my final point. (Thank god, you say…yes, sorry, this is a long one!). I think that there is something deeper than culture (which I think is deeper than society, if you couldn’t tell).
That “thing” is the individual‘s internal “motivation.” Not strictly their “psychology,” but, rather, the full sum of that individual – their personal history, their thoughts and beliefs, their mindset, their resiliency, their physical constitution.
It’s the reason we see kids who couldn’t get a grade above a C in high school become straight-A students in college, or college dropouts start their own businesses and have a high degree of success, or people who’ve never exercised a day in the past ten years get up and start running ultra-marathons.
I think we like to make broad sweeping generalizations (hahaha). It is the aim of science to do so – to “figure out” the “rules.” But lost in that mix is what is really happening. Lost in the averages of many individuals is the single individual.
Not only that, but the other things that are lost when we deny the validity, the existence, and the sanctity, of the individual. We lose concepts like self-control, or self-motivation, self-responsibility, self-actualization. We also lose concepts related to real teaching, real communication, and real equality.
And instead of using our wonderful massive brains to create a technology, or a “science” of the individual, we use it to explain why any single “individual” who stands out from the “average” is a fluke…an exception…
Another great article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, this one by Bryan McCullick, called Obesity won’t improve without reforming PE, sums up the thoughts of a lot of my classmates (and professors) from one class this past semester.
The article points out that PE is a wonderful method for preventing obesity, for informing young minds, and for creating healthy lifestyles. It also points out that PE is conspicuously missing from President Obama’s healthcare reform package.
“PE is at the core of promoting healthy choices. A comprehensive school program includes PE, health education, healthy food options, recess for elementary school students, intramural sport programs and physical activity clubs, and interscholastic sports for high school students. Ideally, schools would also include physical activity breaks, walk/bike to school programs, appropriate physical activity in after-school child care programs, and staff wellness programs.”
The above is, in fact, the definition of “physical educator” that my classmates and I arrived at this semester. And is the definition the physicians had in mind who created the field of kinesiology back in the early 1900′s.
Bryan gives us some good financial data:
“A 2009 report from the California Center for Public Health Advocacy on the annual economic costs of physical inactivity, obesity and being overweight in California estimated that in 2006 physical inactivity cost $20.19 billion, being overweight and obesity $20.98 billion. That’s more than $41 billion in economic costs for Californians alone.”
I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts the costs of “Non-Communicable Diseases.” When you consider that NCD’s include obesity, heart disease, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, you have to wonder why more attention isn’t being given to physical activity on a national level.
Then Bryan gets to the point that really stuck with me this past semester…the one that I think is the major hurdle to all of this:
“The quality [my italics] of PE students’ need is glaringly omitted in anyone’s talking points in the health care debate. Overcrowded gymnasiums, insufficient or outdated resources, and sometimes inhumane working conditions (no air conditioning in gyms when school begins in August) are archetypal for many PE programs…Further, 33 percent of states reacting, again, to federal mandates for “highly qualified” teachers have relaxed licensure requirements for PE teachers. To help young people develop into physically educated individuals, a specialist with a body of knowledge and skills is needed in every school. The days of the ball-rolling, coffee-swilling, game-prepping PE “coach” have contributed to the current obesity rate increase.”
One of the things that happened to the field of kinesiology, the field of physical education, in the 1970′s, was that the academic began to split from the professional. That is, the people doing research and teaching academic classes were no longer the same people providing exercise advice, or dealing with human beings’ physical state as their daily work.
Soon thereafter, “physical educator” was a worthless term – and the profession went with the job. Schools figured, heck, anyone can teach a PE class. It’s just having the kids play around or something.
No more tying their Biology lessons into their own biology, or their Chemistry lessons into their own Physiology. No more education on the proper technique for performing certain movements, and the reasons behind that technique. Nor for the ways the body responds to various types of exercise.
The fact that I can work as a personal trainer has a lot to do with the terrible state of physical education in this country. Most of my clients are more than able and happy to exercise without paying another person to show them how – they just don’t know what to do or how to do it without potentially hurting themselves!
They always say that the best employee seeks to put him/herself out of a job, by making the connections needed across the organization to make themselves unnecessary. They create efficiency.
I hope to do the same thing with my training. It’s my new goal.
