We Don't Need to Exercise

Categories: Uncategorized Jan 02, 2014

My dad hung drywall for almost 30 years. We called it sheetrock. If you don't know, drywall is gypsum board. It is used to cover the studs in your house, or office. It gives them that nice flat surface that you hang your pictures on. It measures 4' x 8', and it is 1/2" thick. It weighs about 100 pounds per board. It is awkward to carry and manipulate at best. Anyway, my dad hung drywall for about nine hours a day, 5 days a week.

Dad was strong. I don't know if I ever knew anyone stronger than my dad when I was growing up. I know, all kids think this. But as an adult, I still think this. I watched dad do things I still cannot do today. When I was in high school, during the summers, dad would take me to "work" with him. I hated it. It was 100 degrees in North Carolina and we would spend 9 hours inside of a hot house without ventilation hanging sheetrock all day. Well, that's what dad did. I tried to find things I could do to survive the time. Anyway, I would watch my dad hold 100 pound boards of sheetrock over his head with one arm while he nailed it to the ceiling with his other arm. Sometimes he would hold it up with his head so he could manipulate nails, hammers and saws with his hands. He would do this ALL day long, day after day.

Dad would probably still be hanging sheetrock, or drywall, today if he hadn't fallen off a bench, through a wall, while holding onto a piece of sheetrock.  He injured his shoulder pretty bad when he fell through the wall. He still has superhuman strength, though. It is really kind of freaky.

The point to all of this is that my dad didn't need to exercise. (He actually did, but he didn't need too. I also remember my dad doing pushups, sit-ups, and isometric holds when I was a kid. He didn't lift weights, he lifted walls all day.) Dad worked. Dad moved, all day long. He picked up and carried heavy, awkward objects all day long. He developed a work capacity and a strength that few people in today's world will ever know. Exercise was the last thing he needed to do.

None of us need to exercise. We were not created to exercise. We were made to move. Exercise is something we invented because we were not using our bodies to their intended design. We use exercise to keep us "healthy." But the truth is, exercise is just a band-aide, or a courtesy nod to movement. Exercise, itself, cannot yield the health we seek with it because it is an artificial answer to what we are seeking.

If we want to be healthy and resilient, if we want to be able to live physically adventurous lives, we simply need to move in all the wonderful ways we were designed to move. We need to move often, throughout the day, throughout the week. No, we don't have to perform extreme manual labor like lifting drywall all day, but we could keep active. We could "play" with deliberate movement breaks throughout our busy schedules. We could set aside 10 minutes here or there to just move, using our whole bodies, like we were created to do.

We could take a 10 minute walk, a hike, a job, a crawl, or a roll. We could find awkward things to pick up and carry around. We could practice all kinds of different ways to lift objects, set them down, or walk with them. Seriously, just 10 minutes here and there throughout the day, moving how are bodies were intended to move, can yield the health and resiliency that many of us dream about.

Again, we don't need to exercise - unless of course we are simply not going to move often. In that case, exercise is better than not moving. Even then though, traditional exercise is a short fall to what true movement can do for the body. It will always leave us lacking because "exercise" as most people do it, doesn't focus on the body's original movement design. It focuses on man's idea of compartmentalizing the body. In other words, traditional exercise doesn't reinforce our developmental movement template that integrates the whole body, it actually seeks to disintegrate the body in most instances. That is really a topic for another discussion, however.

We simply need to move, or play, frequently and deliberately. It doesn't have to be a day of labor like my dad lived, it just has to be. We don't even have to break a sweat. We just have to feed our bodies movement regularly. Because the body can make a lot out of a little, simple 10 minute movement breaks throughout the day can keep you mentally sharp and physically capable for a "lifetime". At best, exercise may only keep you around longer for an "existence time."

You were not created to exist. You were meant to live. Move.

If you want to know more about these developmental movements that yield the ability to live your life, check out our book, Original Strength.

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