Why the Truth about Fitness is Maddeningly Simple
...and the ancient Greeks knew it
Fitness was one of those areas of life, which for the longest time went under my radar, until one day I realised it just doesn’t make sense (not unlike Santa). The realisation about the fitness industry came pretty late, around 40 when my body no longer accepted neglect or punishment without consequences. It came as an anthropological reflection that… wait a second, something really weird is going on here. Advertising shows unrealistic bodies, gyms promise delivery, shame follows (unavoidable) failure.
The premise of what I do is simple. Before all the advertising, unrealistic body images and guilt, people have been strong, lean and capable in every era throughout history. The ancient Greeks’ thinking on the subject is especially good for cutting through the nonsense of today’s training regimens. They divided the exercise into three categories. The first: gentle movement for everyone. The second: military training for warriors. The third: athletic pursuit for those seeking laurels and admiration. Only the first category was “legitimate” and pro-health while the rest was inherently risky. But the damage was acceptable because there were good reasons to accept it.
Today we get a lot of military and athletic variety trickling down to the unsuspecting public under the label of wellness. That the exercise is good for you, is true, but that more exercise is even better, is only true up to a point.
My own approach lies between the twin death valleys of fitness. One is where you don’t do nearly enough to maintain your body, the other is where you’re tearing it down. Both result in a reduced quality of life, a hastened expiry date, or both.
Yet, the truth about fitness is maddeningly simple. 10-15 minutes a day is all it will take you if you want to get away with the bare minimum. No judgment, that’s how I started too. The point is, I know you have that much time. How? Because it’s less time than you spend each day sitting on the toilet and brushing your teeth. If you’re not doing it, you’re erasing the future in which you’re “living younger” instead of succumbing to many illnesses we associate with age, but are really turbocharged consequences of neglecting your body.
I say that the truth about fitness is maddeningly simple, because on the surface of it, everyone can get it. And yet, hardly anyone does it. Once in a while, I’m able to grab a friend of mine by the hand and explain it to them. And if they listen, it changes their lives. I do this because I worry about my friends: those that don’t do enough and those that do too much. There is a friend I’ve lost because I’ve kept quiet, because I let her get away with the excuses of bad back, bad neck, bad something. We all have bad something. You may even get other people to buy into your excuses, but your body won’t. Our bodies demand action and that action does not need to be heroic. It can be gentle, but it must be consistent.
Radio Taiso (3 minute Japanese stretching routine), Asian squat, animal movements, isometrics, all take a few minutes each and can be incorporated into your day easily. Out of these building blocks, you slowly chunk up and build your routine that lets you “live younger”.
Below the line
You can find more of my thinking on YouTube, my website, and if you’d like to support this work, Buy Me a Coffee members get access to the course beta.
*this is AI-generated, inspired by Mercuriale's work. The real illustrations have already been used in three articles I wrote on the subject:
“Gym Culture” and De Arte Gymnastica
Is CrossFit a Legitimate Exercise?
On Ego and Training for the Wrong War