Jack LaLanne dies at 96
Norman Walker 92
Paul Bragg 81

Maybe heavy exercise is overrated in its contribution to a long and healthy life, the idea of exercising early in the morning is so unnatural, the body has is not fully up.
Animals in the wild don't do it. They only flex their muscles and remain flexible.
There has to be a new approach to a long and healthy life.

Is sure cant hurt!

Personally,I always have liked to do my working out in the evenings.

Vinny

Well I don't know how exercise crazy Bragg and Walker were. Certainly not in LaLanne's league. But as far as exercise having a practical limit for longevity, if you aren't training for competition, 60 minutes a day, everyday should do ya. [www.ajcn.org]

As far as an alternative to a long and healthy life.. not a mutually exclusive one...

[www.calorierestriction.org]
[www.livingthecrway.com]

I don't know about overrated. Didn't Lalanne live 20 years or so past the average? Is there any reason to believe that his lifestyle didn't contribute to that?

Animals in the wild do exercise. They outrun prey. They climb trees for fruit. They migrate miles following seasonal food patterns. They swim after fish. The young often do play and 'practice' hunting.

Besides longevity alone says nothing about the quality of life.

Good points you made, animals in the wild do exercise but they do it in the course of running their lives not being forced in the early morning to get on the treadmill without a particular purpose. These types of exercises we perform in the morning have no purpose, they create stress, the body is not ready for it and it is forced to perform just to keep a schedule.

madinah Wrote:
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> Jack LaLanne dies at 96
> Norman Walker 92
> Paul Bragg 81
Norman Walker was 99 when he died. Here's his Tombstone.
As for Paul Bragg, he may have been older, but not as old as was
claimed in order to help sell his books.....WY

[img.photobucket.com]

I don't think animals in the wild use cars, washing machines, electric appliances, and other labor saving machines that make us humans nearly sedentary and weak. They need to work for their food and shelter and transportation. Humans, on the other hand, have remote controls for their televisions so they don't have to make the effort to walk from their couch to their TV screens.

lol@another comparison to wild animals.

madinah Wrote:
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> Good points you made, animals in the wild do
> exercise but they do it in the course of running
> their lives not being forced in the early morning
> to get on the treadmill without a particular
> purpose. These types of exercises we perform in
> the morning have no purpose, they create stress,
> the body is not ready for it and it is forced to
> perform just to keep a schedule.


Yes, but like Prana, I think the 'exercise for exercise sake' is supposed to simulate behaviors that we no longer exhibit. Life in the wild is stressful although it's a different kind of stress from office stress. There would be stresses of finding food in the off-season; resource competition from neighboring groups; threats from other animals; illnesses would have to run their full courses without the help of antibiotics or antihistamines; shelter would be primitive and not necessarily keep out all of the elements; and so on. Most animals do exercise in the morning before their first meal as they need to expend some energy getting that first meal of the day.

again, natural selection is a great place to start but unless you are willing to write off science completely including science showing that favors plant based diets in favor of a myth about nature optimizing human health outcome's a dose of healthy scepticism would suggest acknowledging that nature is the beginning, not the end. Much of what you do daily is not "natural" or in keeping with what our primate ancestors did, including eating all of that adulterated fruit. Best.

Paul

When I lived in California I lived in a city in which I didn't need a car. I walked everywhere, and occationally took the bus or street car. I actually turned down a job when the boss said I needed to buy a car to do the job. I found out later that he wasn't supposed to ask about that, or suggest any such thing, that it was actually semi-illegal.

On my days off I found myself walking around town, buying snacks here and there. At one point I thought to myself this seemed awfully familiar to the ancient search for food here and there.

I really enjoy doing that Mislu, taking a walk to go find my daily food, ive been doing that a lot lately, picking fruit from trees in the area and whatnot... i find it fun, if I was more busy im sure it would be a pain in the butt however.

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Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

The key point is that exercise has to be integrated with our normal daily, hourly activities. Setting up an hour or two per week to go to the gym and exercise to exhaustion is counter productive,stressful and unnatural. Isometric contractions can be performed even when one is working, sitting, and walking. Animals periodically contract their muscles. The gym is the enemy. Transform yourself into a natural gym. I personally perform daily 10 sets of 30 squats half of the sets in the men's room at work.

What's the difference between doing that in the can or doing it in the gym though? Or at home for that matter.
I like that Mark Sisson's blog about exercising like a cave man, he's got some interesting ideas about the natural activities that should keep us fit. Not his nutrition plan, obviously.

In Blue Zones around the world, one of the common factors is that people get regular exercise, however this is NOT exercise that is for exercise's sake. People who live to a very old age in these blue zones exercise as part of their every day lives, e.g. gardening, walking or riding a bike to get somewhere, working on the farm, and doing other physical activities that are a natural part of their every day lives.

I think there is something to the idea that there is a difference between incidental exercise as a result of every day activities and deliberate high impact exercise for exercise's sake.

Coincidentally I was recently speaking to a massage friend of mine who's course delves deeply into human anatomy and physiology and he has the argument that gym work often works groups of muscles far different to all round exercise and that it can actually be detrimental to our health (one example is running on a treadmill and then running outside, both seem to use different muscle groups and people can do damage going from the treadmill to outside running).

Could this theory be extended to deliberate exercise outside the gym, i.e. exercise for exercise's sake out in the open a la Jack Lalanne style? Just a thought...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/26/2011 01:42AM by klomasius.

The difference is that I do not have to drive to the gym or wait to go to the gym, I can do it now and then 30 minutes later again, and again, it becomes a lifestyle.