a blog by lucas, human person

Exercise should be good for you. It should be fun. 

We have a lot of data that suggests regular engagement in physical activity really is good for you. It’s undeniably good for your heart health, your mental health, your digestion, relationships, everything, both physical and mental health. 

If we, as public health professionals, want people to regularly engage in physical activity, willingly, long term, then it should be fun. It should be something people want and look forward to engaging in. It should be something that we are excited about and in anticipation of every few days. We should look forward to it. That should be the goal. Not preparation to serve in the military, but health and enjoyment. 

Even if just because you don’t draft nationally for the military anymore because why would you? Warfare is conducted via drone. That’s a sit in a chair job. Modern warfare tactics are big fancy expensive pieces of equipment that operate remotely. What are you training for? And again, you don’t even draft us. Let the people who want to be in the military prepare to do so by your weird regiments.

Let us do what we want to do. 

And then, one must ask, if we did, what would exercise and fitness culture look like in the US? What would health look like in the US? What about heart health? Chronic disease rates? Gone? No, certainly not. That’s too simplistic. Other issues cause chronic disease. But significantly lower? Yeah, I have to imagine, yes. 

We started basing exercise recommendations in scientific spaces around militaristic exercise routines (running for cardiovascular fitness and weight lifting and high intensity circuit style training) because that was what was in vogue when we started doing this research in the first place. So, original recommendations came from here and then everything iterated and we derived from it. We didn’t try new radically different things because “the evidence based wasn’t there.”

We base our research on something that came before. Our current recommendations don’t stem from us making recommendations after knowing everything long term regarding every type of exercise and physical activity pattern. They stem from us investing a lot of money into researching one or two types of exercise (that were commonly performed in schools (because of military preparations)).

Lets research some new stuff.