Why exercising isn't a health intervention. ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
For today's Sunday with Sisson, I'm going to talk about the problem of thinking about exercising as a "health intervention."
When you think about it, exercise isn't the intervention. Movement isn't an intervention. Playing sports, going for a run, hiking through the mountains, playing games at the park—none of these are interventions.
The real intervention is the experimental condition we've been running for the past 60 years: what happens when you prevent an entire population of animals from moving throughout the day? What happens when you render immobile an animal that for millions of years has walked, run, climbed, lifted, fought, and moved at both a vigorous and leisurely pace throughout the day, every day, for the entirety of its existence?
The real intervention, the experimental condition, is the one in which we find ourselves. We don't move unless we have to, and we almost never have to. We can sit on our asses and have 5000 calories of food delivered to our doorstep. That's the test we're running.
Exercising, going for a walk, squatting and deadlifting, swimming laps, sprinting at the beach or up a hill, playing basketball or going for paddle or grueling 2 hour fat tire ride on the sand are simply returns to normalcy. They are restorations of order. A return to how our organism is supposed to live. Exercise is the control condition.
In other words, movement is obligatory. You can't avoid it and still be healthy. When it's an intervention, you can avoid it. When it's a fundamental constant of human life, you can't. Or you can, but you feel guilty about it and can't wait to rectify the deficit in your life.
That's how you have to think about physical activity: it's the experimental control. It's the baseline. What do you think? Let me know on Instagram. |
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Mark's Daily Apple 1101 Maulhardt Ave. Oxnard, CA 93033 |
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