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Modern man faces many challenges in his unfortunate position of being
a dweller of modern age. By the definition of living in modern age, we
are subject to many forces and ideas that may induce such conducts
which compromise out physical well-being, the most obvious being the
abundance of mechanical gadgets to "ease" our daily lives. Moreover,
it's distressing that this physical ailing usually leads to the
ailments of mind, namely depression and the mental paradigm of
procrastination - postponing acts because we are detached from the
world of real labour; instead it's a a common scheme of modernity to
offer chances to be a sloth and often reward acts of mediocrity which
hardly account for any effort.
The purpose of this document is to tell why and how it is reasonable
to take care of one's physical self in order to gain a better
mind-body balance.
Getting in good shape by practical means has two important basic
notions: the physical task must either be (1) integrated in daily
errands, usually by replacing the tasks with manual or laborous
alternatives, or (2) part of something larger, for example, a more
balanced mind/body interoperation. The latter is central part in
various yoga practices, archery, and acrobatics.
Everyday implementations
Human body and mind are interconnected: physical reactions of body
chemistry can easily control our moods and affect our reasoning and a
highly trained mind can pull off such physical feats of which an
untrained mind may only dream.
There are plenty of possibilities to exercise physical shape in modern
world but not all of these are desirable. Some of the reasons are
practical: why should you pump iron to have yourself a hulking stature
of muscle power of which you have no real utility and are wearisome to
keep up; why should you pay a high price for special equipment and
attend special circumstances which take your time to just keep
yourself fit? There are ideological reasons too: aforementioned
practical questions lead to question why do we exercise in the
first hand? "For health", is a proper answer, but I don't think that
health alone should be reason enough that we sacrifice our time and
effort.
In reality health and exercise are questions of function which
is just something that the modern world gravely lacks. Gimmicky health
such as "looking a fine stud" and "being the muscled hunk to have
respect" have a common dysfunction: they try to fill a niche of a
socially accepted world but lack the purpose in reality.
Good shape used to be an indicator of having toiled in meaningful
physical work, ploughing the fields or cutting wood, instead of being
an indicator of excess leisure time and interest to show off. Fitness
without utility is like sex without emotions and empty calories:
vapid, disconnected from reality - the perfect commercial artifice.
Therefore we should look on to more genuine methods and means to gain
fitness without sacrificing our integrity in the process.
The most obvious thing one could do to improve his/her physical vigour
is to stop using cars or public transportation and walk or use bicycle
instead. If your working place is less than 6 miles (9,7 kilometers)
away from your home, you could consider biking the way to work (using
a fairly challenging resistance and keeping a good speed that you
finish the journey in half an hour). If stop using car and do so five
days a week, within month you will see that your thigh and calf
muscles have gotten much more defined and your cardiovascular
endurance has improved dramatically.
Walking in the woods and getting to know nature is also a good idea to
rise physical ableness and make the effort a fun and instructive
experience. Try spotting birds, mammals, and insects by their sound,
trails, or moving so delicately that you won't scare them away. Learn
to be one with forest.
In garden and yard works you could abandon your mechanical
fuel-carousing gadgets and for a change use simple tools to get the
job done. Switch leaf blowers to rakes, motorsaws to axes, motorized
lawnmowers to push mowers, and mowers to scythes. Prefer honest
man-power.
Acrobatics
Ideally, everyone should be able to do the basic abrobatic moves such
as handstand, cartwheel, and somersault. The benefits of acrobatics
are having a better bodily awareness and advanced motorics for pushing
the body as whole to commit demanding feats.
In the beginning, if one hasn't learned doing these basic acrobatic
stunts when they were young, learning acrobatics is quite difficult.
There is no reason to get disheartened for this, because learning
everything takes time and practise and these skills can be handsomely
beneficial for more vigorous expansion of physical stature: the
results are worth the effort.
The best environment to practise is outdoors in soft lawn. If you lack
the initial strength to keep the handstand for a few dozen seconds,
you probably have a flabby muscles and should have more strength -- It
is good guideline in upper body strength to be able to do atleast one
handstand pushup. To correct this, you should exercise your back,
abdominal, chest, and shoulder muscles and biceps and triceps. Doing
pushups is a good manner but you should take special care that you do
them in correct form, having a solid and straight body, keeping the
core (abdomen and back) strained while letting your body weight to
divide for your hands and toes. Keep your hands shoulder-width apart
and in line with shoulders: don't over or underbalance them if your
form is not fit!
Other good variations to the standard pushup are:
Diamond pushup
Make a diamond shape with your thumbs and index fingers. Keep your
hands in this shape and make a pushup. Remember to keep your hands
beneath the chest!
Burpee
Begin in standard pushup position. Do a pushup and quickly shift to
squat position keeping your hands to ground next to your feet. Jump
and stretch your hands up while pulling your feet to your chest.
Return to squat and then back to pushup position.
Dive Bomber pushup
Begin from yoga position downward facing dog with your legs and hands
shoulder-width apart. If this posture is not familiar to you, then
keep your soles and hands to the ground and push your pelvis as high
as you can, thus forming a triangle. Try to keep your head as down and
possible to give a better form to lungs. With an inhale start diving
through your hands: When your head passes in-between your hands, start
diving upwards, while keeping your pelvis coming down next to floor.
When you are finished, only your toes and hands (keep the tights out
of the ground!) should touch the ground. Now you are halfway there.
Next you exhale and go the movement in reverse and complete one round.
The two latter give you a whole body workout and are very taxing, but
the diamond pushup puts extra stress on your triceps and chest.
Now that you have enough strength all that you need is little courage
and enthusiasm to overcome the sensations of failing the movement and
injuring yourself in an embarassing manner.
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