Movement, knowledge and culture

May I recommend a crisp little tune to go with your blog reading today?, or maybe a heavier one if that isn't your taste.

I have always been active, it’s just the way I am, and the way that I was encouraged to be. As a child I was able to run around woodland with friends (it’s a generational thing – we may come back to that), and my parents encouraged me to participate in sports. When I was a kid I was in an athletics club (100 – 200m sprints – I considered 400m to be endurance running), a judo club and a fencing club (I wanted to learn kendo, to swipe people with a big stick, but discovered that European blades can be fun too). When I got all academic for exams my Dad advised me to stay active. He may not have realised it, but it’s his fault that I subsequently took up karate, circuit training, cycling, running (further than 400m) and a whole range of other things because I have a short attention span and like playing new games. I’m nearly 50 now (only 651 more sleeps) and I’m still active. In fact, I am more active and more clued up now than I was in my 30’s - stronger, leaner and more healthy, too.

So, with so many sports and activities to pursue, why is there a growing discourse about “movement”, and why aren’t people doing it for themselves already. Frank Forencinch is a progressive force in human health and activity, and he has kind of nailed the issue in a recent blog-post in the Paleo-Magazine. He argues, very compellingly to my mind, that the health and fitness industry is researching and debating the same points, which have already been made, and that the key issues lie within our culture rather than our knowledge of what to do about the rising ill-health and obesity problems. Forencinch is clear that we already know that exercise of various types is important for strength, flexibility and aerobic capacity. We also know that what you eat is crucial for health, energy and fat storage or loss. We know too that despite all this fine knowledge people eat garbage and sit on their backsides so much that for many the idea of being fitter is nothing more than something to think about tomorrow, or never.  

What creates the largest barrier to exercise for most people? Is it lack of knowledge, money or time? It looks suspiciously like it is our cultural norms that are the barrier. “When I feel like exercising I lie down until I feel better” goes the hilarious quotation often misattributed to Mark Twain. It is a real barrier though. In strength and conditioning training there is a principle with the acronym SAID: Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. This means that your body adapts, brilliantly as it goes, to the challenges that you put it under. Most of us in the developed West live in a world where very little physical demands are ever imposed upon us. Consequently most of us are really quite weak. Sorry, but its true. You are adapted to the swivel chair, train, sofa, cake shop life that you live.

We have reduced physical activity to the realms of modern day "heroes" - the emergency services, military services and athletes. These people are 'other' than us and venerated through the media (until it comes to public spending, but that is a different story). Then there are the subcultures, the bodybuilders and gym rats who are pigeon-holed as being obsessives, not like us normal lazy folk. So, this is where the movement culture or movement is trying to come in.To show people that ordinary movement is important for all round body and mind health. Everyone can move, and it can be used to address problems and remove pain as well as developing skill and conditioning. The Silverproject has blogged on the growth of movement, and I think he's right - there is definitely a growth in awareness of movement. Lets hope it becomes a sustainable approach for the wider good that it is meant to be, and not this seasons fad to be abandoned with last year's minimalist shoes.