Reflection on an essay against exercise
I started reading Against Everything...
really enjoyed the first one on exercise...
funny, witty, hits close enough to home...
luckily for me it narrowly missed my interactions with excersie...
which do more closely resemle the athenian gymnasiums referenced....
I've always been more drawn to MMA gyms where men (and women) struggle to dominate each other through technique and strength...
to learn together how to properly defend and control ones own body...
i relate a lot to the parallel of weight gyms with doctors offices...
and having been muscular enough when i used to go there i enjoyed the erotic nature of grunting and groaning my way through big lifts
i also used to keep an excel of my numbers.. personal records... highest attempts at each exercise etc...
i had a very tense relationship with those excels... using them for motivation...
and sometimes pushing against those numbers in a way that led me to failiure...
to injuries and damage that forced me to retreat from my sculpting efforts... sometimes for a few days.. at worst for a few months
i retreated from public exercise early...
eventually i retired from private exercise too...
now my relationship with exercise (for the sake of maintenance) is that...
when i sit for too long i get up and roll and do some downward dogs or squats to help my blood flow and wake up a bit
every now and then I take a class in yoga because a friend is teaching...
mostly i just find a pickup game of football or beach volleyball
i'll keep enjoying sport and the shared experience of a movement class probably for my whole life
the main point though is that..
exercise for the sake of maintenance was commercially extracted from private life and made into a central piece of public life with huge gyms, joggers, spin, etc
in general people that are obsessed with exercise are not necessarily healthy
people that are obsessed with food are not necessarily healthy
the extreme spirals that health / fitness / nutrition obsession bring are often damaging to the body and consistently create mental stresses or antisocial behaviour...
people have to see through the bullshit of the fitness, nutrition, health industires...
and there's no easy solution to that.