I Love Exercise Science

It fascinates me on numerous levels.  Below may explain why to some degree, albeit quite randomly.

It keeps getting less and less expensive to exercise.  You can outfit your house with a pretty good gym for less than $1,000.  I charge less for personal training than I did in 2005.  Consider that.

There’s also more information available about exercise than ever before.  Books, videos, personal demonstrations and lessons can be attained quicker than the snap of a finger in some cases.

Yet orthopedic ailments continue to rise.  Obesity rates continue to rise.

Why is that? 

I’d be lying if I said I knew.  It’s definitely multi-factorial but I think it’s mostly because people believe what they want to believe.  The cognitive dissonance of learning that a personal long standing belief, even if based upon dogma, could be wrong – is just too much to handle for most of us.  We’d rather keep going down a road that doesn’t work rather than deal with it.

Of course that’s not to say any of us know what we’re talking about.  I was told once that we as humans know very little about how we move.  We’re sure that our brain sends messages to our muscles to move.  That’s really it.  I’ve found that not only is that sentiment accurate, but anyone who pretends they know more than that, is by and large, full of shit.

Which is another reason I love exercise science.  No one will ever have it figured out.

There are very smart people who are injured and/or can’t lose weight.  There are imbeciles that are ripped and healthy as horses.  This adds to the intrigue for me.

Another part of the problem, is there is no “normal”.  Everyone is different in an exponential number of ways.  That complicates matters somewhat, which creates even more interest – for me, anyway.

Exercise requires more than anything, patience and persistence.  Learning what works for you takes a lot of trial and error.  This is why hiring someone who’s done decades of trial and error on a large sample size can save you A LOT of time.

But ironically, fitness attracts the impatient.  This creates great people watching opportunities, and a great show.  Have you ever just watched people in the gym or at the park working out?  It’s like a slow motion train wreck.  You see how it’s going to end but you’re helpless to do anything for the poor bastards involved.

The cool thing is you can make decisions today that will make you a better version of you tomorrow and the day after and the day after, etc.  But people will still choose to try a one hour workout today that will somehow cathartically cleanse the decades’ worth of sloth and gluttony that preceded it.

Most people view exercise as a quick path fix to sexiness.

Smart people view it as an investment.

Every day you eat and exercise intelligently, it yields a small dividend.  Do this day after day and eventually all these small dividends add up to a pretty big return on your investment.

Exercise science gives a scary insight into human behavior.  I swear after 15 years of observing people try to get lean and healthy, I think I’m as much an expert in human behavior as I am in exercise science.

I know everyone has an opinion on how to get healthy and lean through exercise.  Almost all are biased, incomplete, uninformed or just plain idiotic.

But for an area that most of us know very little about, we sure do spend a lot of money and time in our area of ignorance.

*Thanks to Morgan Housel for the idea for this rambling piece.