Basic fit system

I haven’t really finished this, but it’s here for now.

Think of this as an intellectual exercise for now. I haven’t engaged in testing and stuff, but I could perhaps make something of it. It is like an extended brainstorming session, but with a few Easter eggs. But I assure you, there is some method to my madness.

You can quite happily ignore it. Think of it as the extended brainstorming session of an eccentric. A fairly well read, and fairly well educated, and highly creative, and often self taught eccentric. But it’s just a brain storming session. As with most things, you do need to be able to use your own judgement.

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Basic fit system

It is basic health and fitness through moderate casual sports and plenty of walking, and a few other things.

The diagram^ (also expressed in the five elements)

Basic fit baseline maintenance routine: body weight

For sport, just play easy, relaxed casual sports like. Table tennis, tennis. Or soccer with friends, or touch rugby. Or beach cricket with your family. Normal stuff? Sometimes a fitness class or dance class can count towards the required 4-6 hours, but mostly just find fun, easy casual sports. You stay fit, and maintain good coordination. And you get hurt less! And you’re more resilient long term. And you do it alongside your friends and family. Easy.

What are the movement primers? Answer: just pick one thing from that list that you like. One thing, and do it seven days a week. You don’t need variety, just consistency. You’ve got to do something every day after all, or else your body and nervous system gets lazy. You just “prime it” but you don’t need a full workout.

And movement education: always be learning new things. That vital. Always be learning new movement patterns, new skills. And always be honing and improving old ones. Even if it’s nothing more than improving your tennis serve, a kata, or your one two punch. Even if it is nothing but getting better at throwing darts or learning to juggle for the first time. If it is something like taking a twelve week ballroom dancing class, learning roller blading for the first time, or learning a tai chi or qigong sequence, never stop learning.

Five elements:

Walk 45 daily, like it’s a religion

Play a sport (preferably a moderate or casual sport) or similar activity

Do some resistance training thrice weekly, focus on fundamentals and basics, do less than you think you need. It’s about health, vigour and long term wellbeing. Also, it should do wonders for your posture. Keep it light to moderate: “pain is no gain. The basic fit strength maintenance routine is ideal for this, but the gym is an acceptable alternative.

Do a quick “movement primer” once a day

Always be learning new things

Those are the five elements.

The five elements are actually really good.

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One additional thing: learn how to “modulate your nervous system” with things like shinrin yoku, progressive relaxation, meditation etc and other active measures, but don’t get too bogged down in those! A little goes a long way. And don’t buy into the theory, don’t swallow the hype, or blindly follow the dogma on that stuff. Some of that weird fruity stuff is useful in small doses, every so often, but can be unhelpful long term. Also, a dose of yoga for a couple of months is cool, but maybe not for life. Or a 6-12 month dose of Mr Joseph Pilates’ Contrology (that’s what he called it) could be just what the doctor ordered for “mind-body woo”, but maybe don’t do it for life! Note: that’s the reformer stuff, small class sizes are a must. The main stuff are the five elements.

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It’s just kind of: “play sports to stay fit, but you’ve also got to do a bit of maintenance.” And then also walk, because walking is amazing for relaxation and overall wellbeing.

The page gets messy for a bit, it’s really disorganised. Like a scrap book. The whole thing is chaotic.

Ps: Google “Pareto principle”

FYI, I’d want to scientifically test the system (multi year trials) before marketing it (after finishing it). But I don’t if that is possible at the moment.

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That’s it for now! That’s the basic fit approach. Just above! That’s it for now. I should actually figure out how to test it (and then rework it a bit) before I can recommend it to anyone. As part of that, I’d have to test it myself for an extended period of time.

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Pareto Principle and Diminishing Returns

The approach, especially for strength is kind of a Pareto approach. You do minimal effort, but try to get good results. Do the bare minimum plus 20%, and get the most bang for your buck. That’s the first part. The routine isn’t set in stone, but it’s a really good starting point. You can use your own judgement. It’s just moderation and following the principle of passing it out with extra rest.

The second part is that it economises on energy, but it takes up additional time. You trade time for avoiding burnout. More time, but less effort, less burnout. You’re padding it out with tons and tons of rest. Modern fitness culture tries to burn you out, with stuff like HIIT, metcons, excessive training and high intensity being keywords. But you don’t have to do it. People have time, but their energy levels aren’t unlimited. And they’re stressed out, burnt out, they’re surviving on coffee, caffeine or (I hope not, they’re taking pre-workout). They don’t sleep well, and they are exhausted.

I also use the principle from economics known as “diminishing returns”. You should google that, along with the Pareto principle.

Also, if you play sports, it forces you to socialise!

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A few ideas

Here are a few ideas for getting started, think of them as ideas and suggestions rather than them being “set in stone”.

Maybe when you start out, just do 45 minutes daily walking, 3 hours of something like casual table tennis per week, cumulatively, one session of soccer and/or non-stop cricket with your friends per week, and do 3 sets 10 air squats, 2 sets of 10 lunges (5 each side) (step back lunges more than acceptable), 2 sets ten calf raises, one sixty second plank, practise jump rope for little bit (treat jumping rope as something that is more about coordination and learning the skill than as something that is “burning fat”). Do those five moves immediately after then daily walking. It’s just for the first six months.

Maybe for the first 6 weeks of those six months, just do the walking, table tennis, and the weekly soccer/non-stop cricket game. Then add in those five moves (squats, lunges, calf raises, planks and jump rope) and keep it up for six months. Honestly, those five moves are almost a token amount of fitness, and the real “gold” is to be found in walking consistently while building coordination and fitness through sports.

After that, drop those five moves and add in the “maintenance routine” from basic fit. You do that three times per week. It’s okay if it takes you 2-3 months to get used to “the maintenance routine”. After you’re used to the maintenance routine, just spend six months where you are walking, playing table tennis and soccer, and doing the thrice weekly “maintenance routine”.

Next, start learning new things. Here are a few simple examples. Go to a dance class for twelve weeks and quit, do a karate class for 3-6 months and then quit, learn a new skill like playing darts or juggling for 6 weeks, and quit. Learn the Yang Style Tai Chi 24 forms from a DVD or a class for twelve weeks, and then quit. Learn several new table tennis serves and practise them ad nauseam, learn how to bowl in cricket and practise both your spin bowls and speed bowling for a decent length of time, practise shooting goals in soccer or hockey. Or go to a yoga class twice weekly for eight weeks. Anything at all! But never stop learning.

Lastly, take something you’ve learned and turn it into a “movement primer”. So that while you’re in the kitchen waiting for something to heat up in the microwave or you’ve got five minutes in the stock room out the back of your job, you can do something to remind your body that it’s still alive and can move (the movement primer isn’t supposed to be tough enough to make you break a sweat though!). The best thing is a kata, 30 seconds shadow boxing, and springing on your feet lightly. Or maybe do a few qi gong moves, and a few squats and pushups. Or you do a few dance steps that you learned in dance class. Or 2-3 yoga poses (downwards dog, warrior one and two). Anything to get your body moving in a healthy way.

And that’s it for now.

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// I need to tidy up this next section sometime

Pushups

A long digression on pushups follows:

Tldr: five sets twenty pushups is perfect for a guy who wants to be fit, healthy and strong, five sets of twelve is perfect for a guy if what you want is just health and wellness, but five sets twelve woman’s pushups (ie, from your knees) just for health is actually perfectly decent if you all you need is to stay healthy. If five sets of 20 pushups isn’t enough for you, try doing bench press instead. But I am of the opinion that most guys don’t need to go beyond five sets of twenty pushups thrice weekly. It’s enough.

And for health, 5 sets of about 12 pushups (full pushups or from knees) are perfectly fine, because there are so many other (and more important aspects) ways to get fit and stay fit, such as playing sports (soccer, tennis, table tennis, cricket and touch rugby), dancing, martial arts, walking, squats, lunges, bodyweight rows, jump rope, swimming, cycling, yoga, climbing, hitting a punching bag etc.

Hypothetically, for basic fit (which is unfinished, a work in progress, and basically still an intellectual exercise), I’d recommend five sets of twelve men’s pushups thrice weekly. It is enough to maintain basic health, vigour and strength in the “pushing muscles” of the arms and chest. But it isn’t too time consuming or fatiguing. It is suitable for people who keep fit and healthy by doing things like playing casual sports, walking, but also do a small assortment of other basic strengthening exercises and stretches. People are actually quite strange when it comes to things like upper body strength. I am of the opinion that walking, casual sports, and lower body strength/resistance training are of more relative importance and value when compared to upper body training, but that upper body strength ought not to be completely neglected. In a pinch, women’s pushups are tolerable (5 sets of 12).

For me personally (if I were still young and healthy), I would want to do 5 sets of 20 pushups 6 days per week. And I would be satisfied with that. It is a healthy number of pushups to do. Anything beyond that, and you probably want to step foot inside a gym and start thinking about regularly practising the bench press, using the pec fly machine, doing dumbbell pec flys, doing tricep pushups, doing cable push downs (triceps), deltbrsises etc.

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Old comment to follow…

Maybe 5 sets of 12 women’s pushups (aka pushups from your knees) makes more sense for some people than attempting to do full men’s push ups. If you can’t do proper pushups, just do the women’s ones. They’re actually better for some guys due to body mechanics. Don’t over think it! They can provide enough training stimulus to keep your chest, triceps and shoulders healthy. They’re good enough! At least, they’re are good enough for the first couple of years of trying to get fit anyway. And try to do them every day? And if you’re starting out, take 1-2 minutes rest in between sets. It is about teaching your nervous system that “push ups are easy”. You will find that changes in your muscles and muscle growth, etc happen downstream of that. Your body mechanics will change over time, and your posture will change over time (if you’re doing all of the other parts of basic fit), and you’ll eventually naturally find yourself gravitating towards ordinary men’s push ups. These are just the vague musings of a business school drop out and former economics enthusiast. That might be one of the important lines on this page.

Some people could try the theory that push ups are a “skill” to learn, and you just get better at them over time. They’re a “supplement” to the sports component anyway!

Ummm… wall push ups are a good way to get started, as are pushups with your hands on a chair/bench. Some people need a good push up progression to get started!!

Push ups should be easy. As Joseph Pilates said:

A few well-designed movements, properly performed in a balanced sequence, are worth hours of sloppy calisthenics or forced contortion.

Man should bear in mind and ponder over the Greek admonition: Not Too Much, Not Too Little.

It's the mind itself which shapes the body.

My translation: some people think that practice makes perfect. My counterpoint is that practise makes permanent. Which is to say, that exercises ingrain certain patterns into your body. And so if you regularly practice good pushups, without excessive strain, then you will put good patterns into your body, improving it from the inside out. Don’t over-think it.

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(Note: in my teens I had switched from pushups to bench press (I believed that to do any more than 5 sets of 20 full pushups was inefficient as far as exercises went - and that after you can do five sets of twenty you should switch to doing exercises such as bench press, delt raises, triceps pushups, cable machine tricep pull downs, pec flys), and I used to bench at the school gym. I was benching 40-60kg at the time. Which I think is acceptable for someone who’s not a proper gym rat, and as only just started going to the gym. At the same time, I was also capable of about fifty consecutive. I could do fifty even on the same day as bench pressing at the gym. I didn’t push beyond fifty often. I really meant it when I said that pushing beyond 5 sets of 100 is just unneeded or beyond fifty consecutive pushups in one go is superfluous. It’s probably just either a derpy way of showing off to your friends, or possibly a way of chasing empty numbers because you think the numbers matter.

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I used to do a lot of stuff at the gym. But I only had a membership at my high school gym (paid) for two terms (and sometimes went casually to the local gym, paid per visit). I mostly worked out at home before that.

I’ll do more about this in my personal life history.

I also played a little table tennis, maybe jogged now and then or cycled, jumped rope.

I got sick not long after. I got long term “satellite fever” 🤒. And I had to stop exercising totally. These people robbed me of my health, starting in mid December 2006]

A minor quibble and equivocation coming up:

One more update:

I had some “minor muscles imbalances” at age 18 (such as quite tight traps and shoulders) which made me perhaps 20% more susceptible to being harmed by remote control abrade technology, and slightly less aware of what was being done to me (by satellites and cell towers). But to all appearances I was totally normal. I was slim, with some muscle definition, and fairly decent ab definition, without being anything spectacular (I used to do a lot of sit ups, planks and other ab exercises, such as captains chair). I had gained 2-3kg from lifting by the way. I was fit and healthy.

They then destroyed my health, very badly, starting in December 2006 when I was overseas, and I have been sick (or otherwise unwell) ever since. But I've written about this elsewhere. TLDR; I was healthy, but they ruined my health.

A quick bit about target demographic:

The target demographic is that this is for "recovering computer addicts" (or similar), who were basically healthy anyway, and not obese, but still happened to be quite unfit. Ages, 15-35. This perhaps maybe not the only program you ever do, but it might be a good approach for quite a few years. (FWIW, I used to be a computer/internet/gaming addict.)

First most important thing, walk for 45 minutes per day, religiously. Up to 60+ minutes. Always. Rain or shine (dunno about snow). Stand tall, breathe freely and easily. Find a nice easy natural pace and gait over time. Don’t power walk, don’t do a “brisk” vigorous walk. Don’t dawdle too much, but just walk normally. It’s great for your posture, your back, your “nervous system”, your circulatory system, cardiovascular health, and metabolic health. It is good for your brain, sleep quality and digestion. It improves recovery from more vigorous exercise. It heals you from a lot, physically. There is no better exercise.

Walking is pleasure. It is one of the best and simplest pleasures in life, and one of the easiest.

There are virtually no downsides to it, and it gives you time to think.

That's all for now. I'm busy with other things (as at Sunday 10th January).

A lot of the stuff below this line is unedited. I may never get around to tidying it up.

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Ummm. If you’re a push up enthusiast /irony (or want to be)(edit, note: the term push up enthusiast is a slightly jokey ironic concept), it is really easy to advance. Just get really good at women’s pushups, 5 sets 12, multiple times a day, until it is easy, then test yourself with 50 consecutive women’s pushups, until you can manage that competently, before switching to men’s push ups. Along the way, you should have practised a few men’s push ups, just to see if you can. And then work your way up to 5 sets 12, and eventually 5 sets of 20. That is enough! If you can do five sets of twenty, you’re done! You’ve graduated! You’ve arrived! Don’t push past 5 sets of twenty.

If you are a push up enthusiast, then maybe work your way up to 5 sets of twenty standard men’s push ups, with semi decent form and breathing, and this daily. Otherwise 5 sets of 12 women’s push ups (as part of the overall system) three times per week is sufficient for overall health and vigour. Use your own judgement. The other stuff is just as important.

Good form matters, and so do varieties. So you can always learn triangle push ups, or “off set pushups”. Umm. Wide grip pushups are suboptimal though. One arm push ups are a mistake. Clapping pushups are overrated. Just have fun playing sport! If you can do five sets of twenty, then just have fun and play sports. You’ve arrived!

[the dogma at the time was that if you can do 5 sets of 20 pushups, then you need to switch to bench press, because pushups aren’t giving you enough of a “training stimulus”. And also, the dogma was that to do too many pushups on a daily basis can cause issues and injuries. So you should swap to bench press after 5 sets of 20.

My personal opinion now is that for health* you maybe need a maintenance dose of 5 sets 12 women’s pushups on a regular basis (thrice weekly), along side plenty of sports and walking, as well as other body weight movements such as squats, lunges and Aussie pull ups etc, but if you want more, that’s all good. This is health, not “peak athletic performance or whatever”

I might modify to paper to say:

5 sets 12 women’s push ups Mon/Wed/Friday for health, but bump that up to every day of the week if you want to build fitness. And if you want vigorous, healthy arms and a healthy chest, bump it up to 5 sets of 20 women’s pushups per day. That is plenty.

If after some months of doing 5 sets of 20 women’s push ups daily (totalling 100), you wish to become a push up “enthusiast”, then try converting (over time) the first two sets of 20 to men’s push ups. It may take a little to-and-froing. But only do this if you’re extremely comfortable with the woman’s push up. It’s actually a really good number. Treat it as a “health” thing, not a competitive thing. Other parts of the program are much more important. Like playing fun, moderate casual sports, or walking plenty, or life long learning of new movements and skills. Or the other body weight movements etc. Disclaimer, program still under construction. But seriously, 5 sets 12 women’s push ups thrice weekly are enough to maintain enough “health and vigour” in your arms that you can enjoy basic casual moderate sports, walking and learning new skills without feeling embarrassed, risking unnecessary injury, or being limited severely by weakness (equivocation: maybe only just enough, possibly you want to do the push up component daily, and the other movements thrice weekly. I’m not sure. I want to make it easy, and simple though!).

I just think that if people can have fun playing sports for 4-6 hours a week, and go for a good walk daily, that they’ll be totally fine. And enjoy good health, fitness and wellbeing. And I also think that to engage in long term habits of physical skill acquisition is beneficial to the brain/mind.

But I also think that to maintain an ordinary, baseline level of muscular strength to support this might be beneficial, so I think that the “basic fit maintenance routine”) might be beneficial. Maybe I should call it the “basic fit baseline maintenance routine: body-weight”.

Long digression on pushups has ended

// digression about quadrupeds and primates begins

Quadrupeds:

We are descended from quadrupeds, and are only partially (and ineptly!) adapted to bipedalism. We used to (our ancestors) support our weight on our forelimbs, which gave our chest and triceps and delts strength. And maybe we still need that. How better to do that than to get into our hands and knees and do 5x12 women’s push ups 3-7 days per week. I’d say 5x20 daily is really healthy, and extremely easy and achievable. Just for health! As bipeds whose bodies haven’t forgotten about our quadrupedal origins.

It is just evolution. Evolution isn’t about “survival of the fittest”. It about survival of the “fit enough”, or good enough for a niche. It doesn’t mean you inherit health, or that you are well adapted to bipedalism.

We still have some of the same biology as quadrupeds and ape (analogues). I forgot the term for climbing ape-like creatures.

Maybe we need to do pushing motion on the ground daily, and climbing motions daily, just to be healthy? Just an idea, and just a digression. Not as competitive one-up-manship, or macho posturing, but for basic health, vitality and well being.

Maybe we came from Purgatorius, teilhardina. Cute and lithe. Not like a chimp or bonobo. Or gorilla. More like squirrel monkeys!!

Primates:

Maybe we ought to have 7-15 minutes of gentle climbing every day. Maybe once or twice daily. Like climbing frames, climbing walls, playground equipment, or trees. In line with our evolutionary history. Just for health and fitness. For vigour and well being.

Edit: or maybe if you can’t do that, just have a 5-6 week vacation where you climb trees morning and night. Just for the mind-body benefits. It’s part of your evolutionary and ancestral inheritance.

// digression over

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I’ll just figure out the rest of the thing later.

Basics and fundamentals though: 45 minutes walking daily, 45 minutes sports daily, averaged out over the week (I wish)(table tennis, non stop cricket, indoor soccer, touch rugby). Maybe 5-6 hours per week. Play sports every day if you can, even if it just table tennis for 15 minutes at home, and the 90 minutes misc cricket, touch and indoor soccer on the weekends.

Religiously walking 45+ daily. Religiously getting 5-6 hours easy, casual sports weekly. And trying to do at least 10 minutes of anything daily, even if it just table tennis with a sibling, or tether ball with a child. You can do more on the nights you have free for yourself.

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And then if you need it, maintain vigour in your muscles through the fundamentals maintenance routine: aka basic fit routine? Aka basic fit “fundamentals and maintenance routine”.

Which is still under construction..

[Or your own version of very gentle resistance training at a gym or with body weight 2-3 times weekly (aka strength/bodybuilding. For me, the term resistance training can be used for a balanced approach that takes the midpoint between “body building training” and pure “strength” training. Kind of you do whatever works, without focussing?).]

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Basic fit system draft

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pedestrian

Draft version of basic fit

A quick draft version, it isn’t finished, but it is coming along well.

A quick bit about target demographic:

Still a work in progress, and hasn’t really been tested. For recovering computer addicts lol, who were basically healthy anyway. (I used to be a computer/internet addict.) Ages, 15-35. Not a whatever? Maybe not the only program you ever do.

Walking is pleasure. It is one of the best and simplest pleasures in life, and one of the easiest.

There are virtually no downsides to it, and it gives you time to think.

Secondly, play sports. Casual sports of a moderate level of intensity are perhaps the second best type of exercise out there. The improve coordination, build vigour and vitality. They’re fun, encourage socialising. Make you more robust and… less likely to injure yourself? They give you enough overall cardiovascular and metabolic wellbeing (when combined with walking). They help keep t your weight down. They improve your energy levels, they don’t burn you out. And they are stimulating enough to keep you entertained. And they’re good for your brain. Don’t be too weird about it, but they tie mind to body (like, improve the mind body connection). So you can move in dynamic way. Sports like table tennis, tennis, casual soccer, touch rugby, non-stop cricket, badminton, netball are best. Maybe have one table tennis night weekly, one badminton night, touch rugby with friends on Saturday’s and non-stop cricket with friends on Sundays. And maybe find a neighbour who plays a little tennis sometimes, or has a table tennis table of their own. I’m not sure, just be creative. Or play tennis twice a week, casually. And touch rugby+non-stop cricket. It’s good enough. A fitness class might suffice towards the quota if you feel like a change though. Just pick sometime good.

And they are fun! If it is fun, you’ll keep doing it! The psychological element is impotent.

Thirdly, maintenance. You have to maintain strength in the limbs/body etc, for health and wellbeing long term. And it primes your body for well being. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good, just do enough for health/vigour.

Fourth, always be learning new skills. Learning new skills is healthy for you. Good for your mind and good for your body. Getting those skills into your nervous system is very beneficial. Just don’t become a “mind-body” weirdo. Also, practise basic sporting skills, like kicking goals, throwing rugby balls, shooting hoops, getting goals in hockey, or whatever. As well as coordination skills like beanbag game (corn hole), darts, juggling, hackey sack, etc. I’ll figure out a program for this later. Ummm. Only do about half of this segments, or no more than two thirds. But remember: learning new physical skills, and improving your coordination grows your brain. Just like learning a second language improves your brain, or learning the piano. It might even prevent or guard against alzheimers, improve blood flow to the brain long term, and make you more resilient when it comes to recovering from things like strokes.

Fifth, you can be a fit healthy computer addict, instead of an unfit, unhealthy computer addict. Glhf.

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Old stuff: you can read it for completeness sake

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General movement education:

Lately, complete the general movement education component in your own time, including the mind/body stuff. It’s beneficial. But you don’t have to do all of it. Be selective!

Add to it: learn something like morris dancing, verbunk, German knee and boot slap dancing (schuhplattler). Do goofy funny dancing for a while at some point in your life. Add it to your repertoire. It helps! It really does! It greatly improves coordination, and improves the connection between the brain and muscles, And the injury rates are practically nil (unlike some types of training). Maybe do a variety. Try a variety of dances, some German, some Hungarian, some English. Some mixed, some male only. Some group, some solo. Use your own judgement. Cumulatively, maybe six months worth. Some at home, some at a class.

Either/or:

Or, for the crash course version of dancing: do the chicken dance + Macarena every day for thirty days. It’ll help you to limber up, and re enliven your body. And then do 3-6 months of rock n roll dancing. It’s very commonly available all around the world, and it’s fun and easy.

Add to it: 12 weeks karate classes, something like shotokan or seido. Anything with Kata. You’ll learn a lot from kata. They are a great training tool to have in the toolkit. 12 weeks, and then QUIT. You learn a lot, and the moves and kata stay with you for life. (Classes count towards your 4-6 hrs weekly sport requirment).

Try doing 6-7 weeks boxing, just to learn to throw a punch. Stand in a good stance. Hit bags, and to be light on your feet. (Classes count towards your 4-6 week sport requirment)

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For example:

This is after your already in the habit of all d the other parts of the pyramid, or at least underway:

Maybe do a crash course of Macarena and chicken dance daily for a month to limber up your body. Once per day, do the Macarena once, followed up by the chicken dance.

Do one easy 20 minute yoga flow video at least 5 times over the course of three weeks. Pick one, and do it.

Then do rock n roll dancing for 10 weeks.

Or, maybe do kung fu stance training for 15 minutes daily, for a month, using a list of stances you found online. Just do the most popular 6-7 stances. It still works its way into your nervous system, and muscle memory. You don’t have to follow their rules for training!

Then karate for between 10 weeks and 6 months, just to learn some discipline and “forceful” movement with some snap to it.

Then you learn sitting meditation from the John Kabat Zinn MBSR programme (or headspace) for exactly 8 weeks, then quit. Meditation is actually a bad thing, and part of a crummy religion (their theory of mind sucks) but it’s a good thing to understand.

Then you learn boxing for 7-8 weeks just to get better at coordination. And to hit bags, learn stance, stay light on your feet.

You learn folk dancing such as the English Morris dance, German Shoe Slapper (Schuhplattler), or Hungarian boot slap dances (verbunk). Dances that include women are also acceptable for cultural reasons, but unnecessary. Maybe try Csárdás, or a tiny bit of flamenco?

Then maybe after that, you learn yoga nidra, just for a month. Twice weekly, then quit. It’s actually bad for you, like most Eastern religious practise. But can be moderately useful.

Then maybe you learn really good jump rope, and simultaneously do the “tree climb protocol”. Booth improve coordination.

You then practise various throwing and catching games for three months, as well as sports drills: darts, bean bags, juggling, shooting hoops, kicking practise goals, scoring hockey goals, dribbling an ball etc. This is good for coordination. Coordination practise is like food for your brain. It improves the connection between your brain and your muscles via your nerves!

And then maybe you try Japanese Shinrin Yoku, or other types of nature appreciation (“forest bathing”). This also helps you understand the oriental/eastern mind and disposition. And meditate once or twice in the forest. Or just try reading poetry in amongst the trees. Or, try deer stalking or something. Appreciation of nature.

Ummm. Do a stretching video from you-tube sometime if you’ve never done one. And learn from it.

And maybe learn the yang 24 forms, or the 8 silk brocades, memorise it, practise it for a week daily. Then quit. It is good for memory and coordination. It is good experience. But don’t get stuck practising it long term! It isn’t very good for you! Too much eastern mind-body stuff makes you weird and ineffectual (it was designed for people with poor constitutions).

This is about long term training, and lifelong learning. You’re still doing the other elements of the up-side down triangle. And you don’t do all of the general movement education all at once. It takes time. You’re building experience!! You only count some of the “educational stuff” towards the 4-6 hours required sport. By the way, you actually need a little bit of basic fitness (from walking, sports and stretching and body weight fitness) to be able to benefit from some of that mind-body stuff. And the best mind body stuff we have in the anglophone west is boxing plus folk dancing, including jump rope.

Other ideas for life long learning:

Practise drills in hockey dribbling and goal shooting every Saturday for a month, or learning new table tennis serves several days a week for a month. Or learning to juggle irregular objects while standing on one leg three days a week for 6 weeks. The "skill acquisition and drills" grow your brain. And knit together more thoroughly your brain and body. Or learn 5 most popular German folk dances, for coordination.

Or improve coordination by playing a racquet sport with your non dominant hand, or throwing and catching with your non-dominant hand, or just bouncing a ball in the back of a bat or racquet with your non dominant hand. But only in moderation. Spend a month where you do thirty minutes a day practising with your left hand.

Stand on a balance board and juggle, or something. Or play with devil sticks. Anything.

A lot of it is about improving: overall coordination, mind-body connection, brain-muscle connection, hand eye coordination, and overall dexterity (especially with your feet).

Why do the basic fit body weight fitness routine?

It’s strength and general maintenance, including nervous system and posture.

It keeps your posture good, your walking gait good, and therefore your breathing good. And makes it possible to enjoy playing casual moderate sports. And makes it possible for you to continue to benefit from the ongoing general movement education.

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Note: a lot of this stuff improves the coordination, posture and the connection between the muscles and the brain. Kinds of like the same effects as what some people might see as Eastern mind-body stuff. But it does it indirectly.

Links:

Random links:

I’ll update properly later:

Verbunk:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NHI_7CySZK4

Shinrin Yoku:

https://youtu.be/12CCjoixpkA?si=4Mf92iTlkvyqahMe

Link to Japanese website

(I don’t agree with the Buddhist stuff, but “forest bathing” is smart).

Shinrin Yoku is really very, very similar to just chilling in nature, but with slightly more engagement.

Jump rope:

https://youtu.be/5cPdkE6iQf0?si=xPXhlTeRnaYgLm4X

https://youtu.be/K6pY2r2_CoM

Macarena:

https://youtu.be/OzV63IRR8BQ?si=HiiLMLIfR5ipfFdl

Chicken Dance:

https://youtu.be/4BdltUczNIQ?si=ibldl7Ywm9WtX8fY

Stretch video:

https://youtu.be/UIpnAwQ02Cw?si=al_p4ZPXYGN-u3ne

Yoga flow routine:

https://youtu.be/v7AYKMP6rOE?si=zZh6yo6sJcw6Sf8n

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The sport is the magic part, it changes everything.

The other stuff is just less important. Oh and walking at 45 daily is the best bang for your buck exercise in the planet. By far.

[As for body weight fitness: you can easily swap it for gym (basic resistance and strength training), but only if you definitely keep it uber, uber, super moderate. But you do slightly higher number of reps and sets, but significantly less intensity and weight than the dogmatists might have you do. And add slightly more rest in between sets. It’s a philosophy. You get good fitness, but you don’t murder your energy levels or get injured. Or end up burnt out relying on coffee to survive. I’m not explaining well. But maybe cut down intensity a bit, while maintaining consistency.

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In general movement eduction:

Idea, blue sky thinking

Basic fit nature retreat 4-6 weeks.

Go camping, cabins or campervan or tents, idk

Climb trees every day, for 3 sets of ten minutes.

Climb slowly, it’s good for you. Don’t over extend yourself! We used to be tree climbing primates, or whatever (sort of). And your body remembers this. Take some inspiration from chimps, they climb carefully (due to size and weight). [We weren’t descended from chimps though! We came from smaller primates, more agile, more lively. But perhaps less (natural) brute strength?]. Your upper body needs the stimulus, and the experience of gentle climbing, just for basic health (maybe). Just don’t push yourself too hard!

Don’t get fatigued!! Don’t “feel the burn”. It is just to train your body and mind. Your body needs it!

It heals the body. It is so good for your coordination and your upper back and shoulders, and the mind-body connection (a funny name for coordination), and can provide indirect benefits to posture and breathing (when combined with the other parts of the programme).

It’s basically rehabilitation for computer addicts. Or whatever. If you’re super fit, just ignore it.

Before you go for the trip, watch 5 youtube videos of chimps climbing. Notice how they are careful and slow lot of the time. They minimise risks, usually. They have fun lower down to the ground, but are careful up high. Also, make sure you’re comfortable with walking, casual sports and the basic fit maintenance routine, before going climbing. This is a part of the program of GME. It is specific pedagogy. This one is optional though.

While you’re out in nature, take the opportunity to do some other stuff like…

some “nature immersion experience”, loosely inspired by the Japanese art of shinrin-yoku.

Some nice walks..

Try some meditation, yoga, martial arts moves in clearing or whatever.

Sit on a platform up the top of a tree and have a cup of tea.

And then have a normal holiday. Where you just read books, eat barbecued meat, go fishing, play cricket, go boating on a lake. 90% a normal holiday. Make camp fires, eat damper, or go kayaking.

Alternative: just do four-six weeks of tree climbing, 3 sets of ten minutes. Daily. As a rehab/prehab protocol.

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Never stop learning. Learning is good for you!

End

Totally finish this section.

Outside of basic fit… totally outside…

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/5-of-the-best-exercises-you-can-ever-do

For lowest common denominator advice ^

It’s true though. Stuff like swimming and walking are some of the best exercises out there. Gentle strength training is very good as well. I’d add cycling to the list though, it’s physically and psychologically a really good one.

And kegels and tai chi are there mostly for reasons of political correctness. A little of each can help though. Especially if you’re having issues with the “well-being” of the hip/pelvis region. They can help to “re-enliven” that part of the body. They synergise well for that sort of thing.

A basic, moderate sport also helps. Like table tennis. That improves your reflexes, hand eye coordination, and the speed and “dexterity” of your feet. Dancing (of a light to moderate intensity, preferably sociable) is useful for a lot of people also. It’s good for improving the dexterity and coordination of your feet. And maintaining it.

For weirdos who work out too much

Assuming that you’re walking at least 30-60 minutes daily, and you do a basic body weight routine of easy stuff thrice weekly,

What if it is more important to “feed” your nervous system, and your mind, and your body with a variety of different physical movements, such as soccer, table tennis, tennis, touch rugby, and to keep in learning new things about movement and dance and mind-bush practises and shinrinyoku and time in nature than it is to achieve certain metrics in terms of sets/relaxation/weights, or to achieve perfect metrics in terms of cardiovascular abilities.

Maybe you’ll be fine anyway, just by showing up to play fun sports, walk and do a few basics thrice weekly, plus you keep always learning new movement patterns and skills. You’ll be fit enough.

Pull ups and dogma

The dogma is that pull-ups are a really good movement. They are a compound movement, and provide a strong training stimulus (intensity and difficulty of the movement).

I’m not so sure. I think that they are a good exercise in many cases, but might be the wrong tool for the job for a lot of guys. And that ring rows (progressing to, and including, inverted ring rows and Aussie pull-ups) are a much better movement.

Maybe things like pull ups are a great test of strength and capacity (like if you’re being recruited for the army, or showing off to your friends) but inverted ring rows are better for basic health and well being (within a programme that includes a that a variety of other movements. And within a life-style that includes a number of other exercise habits, sporting habits and physical activities).

Climbing for Nervous System Wellbeing

If possible, I might include a bit of mild/gentle climbing in the mix as well. We are descended from cute little monkey-squirrel rodents and primates after all (such as purgatorius and teilhardina).

The piece of the equipment known as “wall bars”, aka Swedish ladder, might be useful for some people, and become a little more popular as a piece of home fitness equipment. We had them at school. It could also perhaps synergise well with ring rows, inverted ring rows, and Aussie pull-ups. Particularly if you pick one with additional functionality.

If I had my way, I might also have a small climbing frame outside or a small cargo net to climb, examples one, two, three. As well as cycling to forests to climb trees sometimes (I live in New Zealand where we have many, many trees, and they are of the type that is suitable for climbing). This is for nervous system stimulus, not “muscle building”.

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Old stuff here, to be updated:

(Stuff about history of fitness just below..)

[Note: in the routine, Aussie pull ups and inverted ring rows are perfectly acceptable substitutes for one another. Just remember that moderation is king. I can’t prove this, and have never tested it, but I think that pull-ups might be too tougher for a lot of guys. And maybe if you can’t do a move for 5 sets of 12 (after practising it for ages) it is too hard for a moderate fitness routine? Perhaps things like the lat pull down machine and seated cable rows machine are better for “pulling movements”. With very moderate intensity. Strength without strain! For a normal dude who averages 45+ walking daily, and 45 casual, easy moderate sports daily. I know it is quixotic and eccentric, but I think seated cable rows and lat pull downs are better than pull-ups. Note: there used to be a dogma about compound movement being incredibly important. But I’m not sure that dogma always holds true. And I think pull-ups might not be as cool as some people think. I think they’re perhaps over rated for some people. But I have no proof. Umm. If you’re poor, and have no gym membership, then Aussie pull ups or inverted ring rows are an acceptable but inferior substitute for lat pull down and seated cable rowing machine]. I update this, I think a variety of ring rows, inverted ring rows, and Aussie pull ups are totally okay. And are very good, as part of an exercise and fitness regime that includes other movements, and a lifestyle that includes other physical pursuits and activities.

This is all untested though.

But…. Your moderate “fundamentals maintenance routine” shouldn’t strain you too much in basic fit! You should be walking, and enjoying sports. The “fundamental maintenance routine” is a supporting element.

Still a work in progress.

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Pehr invented the wall bars and the Swedish gymnastics curriculum. It was a school curriculum. For kids iirc. And other people. He was a true pioneer. People like the inventors of yoga and Pilates borrowed a lot from him.

Pehr Henrik Ling

Pehr Henrik Ling (creator of the Swedish gymnastics curriculum, and developer of a lot of “physical culture”) is an interesting dude. But it looks like a lot of his stuff got memory holed. Or is just de-emphasised on Google. Or so of his techniques got turned into hyper competitive rubbish? Idk. He predates yoga-asana, Pilates, nautilus company and Jack LaLanne and Arnold Schwarzenegger, as well as American fitness industry in general. And Arthur Jones (nautilus, medx, see also: Bowflex parent company), and Greg Glassman, Pavel Tsatsouline, Bikram Choudhury and Paul Bragg and William Banting (noted undertaker, and populariser of low carb diets).

Jack LaLanne

Jack LaLanne has strong ties to Paul Bragg. It is well worth looking back at some old videos about people like Jack LaLanne. Take a look at episodes of his old TV show, and watch a documentary about his life. Also, he and Arthur Jones pioneered a lot of the tools of the trade, and popularised a lot of the techniques and dogmas of the industry.

Overtraining

Jack LaLanne used to claim to do ninety minutes strength training TO FAILURE every day for every major muscle. Followed by thirty minutes cardio. Even as he was aging.

For his strength training: he would work out to failure on his exercise machines (they were resistance training machines of the type you ought see in a modern gym) (nautilus, or similar) seven days per week. For ninety minutes. To failure. He was obviously lying about that. No one has that level of “recovery”.

Food Faddism, aka orthorexia

For his diet, he ate only two meals a day (late breakfast and early dinner), consumed at least 10 raw vegetables daily and avoided white flour, sugar and “processed” foods.

From Google, “Jack LaLanne's routine was a two-part daily plan focusing on a two-hour workout and a “clean”, two-meal diet. His workout consisted of 90 minutes of strength training, often followed by 30 minutes of swimming or running.”

If you’re interested in the history of fitness and health, you need to look into the history of this guy.

Ps: raw vegetables are a scam (except as a flavour and texture element) and so is the demonisation of normal flour (white flour is the best flour, it is good for you). Whole grains are way overrated (sort of).

But I do agree that over-processed (overly refined and then recombined) food products aren’t ideal. And the industries, culture and supply chains that go along with them are legitimately an issue.

Other fitness “influencers”

Early body building magazines, back in the Arnie era, were full of lies. He was friends with LaLanne by the way.

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Basic fit system

It’s the type of thing where guys between 20 and 30 might do it for a couple of years, enjoy it, and then move onto something harder, like gymnastics, martial arts, or a competitive sport, and then back to basic fit again. It’s not really for former “jocks” who stayed fit though. It’s more for former computer addicts who want to be healthy and fit, without falling prey to fitness fads and hucksters. That’s the idea anyway.

Gym fitness is still cool. But if you truly embrace it, it’s like a whole other way of life, and a different style of training.

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Dumb random examples of Australian pull ups that I ripped from YouTube. Aka body weight rows, but also ring rows.

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Note: I still haven’t scientifically tested my methods on a suitable cohort, so I can’t recommend them yet. So it’s still just at the ideas stage right now.

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Old junk here:

// this is non compulsory, individual voluntary

// ideas + toolkit. Is useful, but must have brain first

Here are some more of my unfinished ideas^

(Edit: Aussie pull-ups are as good as inverted ring rows, but you just need a pulling movement that targets the mid back, in moderation).

The next step in that is to complete the “education component”, but I haven’t written that one yet.

The ideas are based on my study of things like history, sociology, anthropology, psychology etc. as well as my time studying at business school, and reading business books. The ideology is pretty much based on business school stuff.

Treat it as inspiration.

Education might include:

Learn good jump rope, like a boxer

Learn the Yang style simplified 24 forms, then practise it for a month, then quit. Ditto for the 8 silk brocades in qigong

Learn one kata, such as heian shodan, practise it for a month, then quit.

Coordination:

Learn to juggle, 3 pins, 3 balls. Try hackey sack, play the “beanbag game”, play hoops over a peg game, try bouncing a ball on the back of a tennis or table tennis bat for time. Hand eye coordination is good for your brain.

Learn two dances (such as the Macarena, chicken dance, NZ haka, the twist (see the yt video), or some dumb disco dance) and then practice them for a month, and then quit.

Practise a basic yoga video (sun salutations or similar) 5 times over the course of 3 weeks. Or at least learn how to do downward facing dog and maybe practise Sphinx pose, and child’s pose for a bit. Try to learn warrior one and two.

Practise gently and safely climbing trees every day for three weeks, if you live in a place like NZ with access to good trees. Otherwise don’t worry.

Try learning the MBSR stuff by John Kabat Zinn. Be sure to try out progressive relaxation at least a couple of times.

Try doing shinrinyoku.

For the finale, just sit quietly in the forest drinking tea. Three times.

***

That’s it. FWIW, a lot of it is about getting to the point that you can benefit from the mind body stuff, then actually doing it. But once you’ve done the mind/body stuff, you’ve done it, and you can throw it away. Don’t linger on the “mind body” stuff too long. Don’t do too much. It just makes you into a weird person. Stick with casual sports, walking and the basic fit fitness routine long term.

Fitness is like a weird psyops campaign, and I think the above routine is simple and minimal enough for a lot of people. A lot of fitness culture is overblown, encourages people to overly fuss about themselves and their body, and image. It encourages a hyper self obsessed society and also results in tons of injuries. Also, sport culture is overblown the top, and too competitive.

My vague gestalt/overall feeling, without evidence or commitment;

I think that perhaps USA/anglophone world fitness causes “overstimulation” and overexcited nervous systems or whatever. And a more “calm” oriented way of doing things might be appropriate. And I want to someday create that. I thank that my approach might some day be able to create that. Gentle/moderate fitness, without excessive strain. Almost like inspired by Japanese slow jogging (niko niko running).

Moderate overall fitness, without injury, excessive strain, or overstimulation of the human organism.

An (un)common sense approach, built out of the ideologies of the business school environment. With some knowledge of history, anthropology, sociology and psychology incorporated into it.

I think that a mild-moderate fitness routine, plus walking, plus casual, relaxed, moderate sport is perfectly good for many people, at least in some seasons of their life.

Also, learning new things is good. It isn’t for everyone, and it isn’t finished.

I might actually create it sometime, these are just the bare bones for it. It’s have to finish the first iteration. Test it out myself for about 6 months. And then test it on others, before releasing it for wider trials. And only after scientifically tested trials would I think that it was totally ready for release.

I just wanted to dump it online to get it out of my head, and it of the way.

It is kind of silly, in a way??

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That’s all for now!

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Just for ideas and inspiration

Extra:

Verbunk. Funny boot and thigh slap dance might be good for over-all coordination. But also might be very good for the hips, pelvis and ankles (in a round about sort of way).

https://youtu.be/NHI_7CySZK4?si=0HiEctye4GcQM8Lr

Here is an example of good jump rope:

https://youtu.be/5cPdkE6iQf0?si=xPXhlTeRnaYgLm4X

Here is another example of good jump rope (v good).

https://youtu.be/K6pY2r2_CoM

Misc:

Ideas, for general physical education and development, especially for the 2-3 dance components.

Macarena:

https://youtu.be/OzV63IRR8BQ?si=HiiLMLIfR5ipfFdl

Chicken Dance:

https://youtu.be/4BdltUczNIQ?si=ibldl7Ywm9WtX8fY

Silly disco dance, good for over all coordination

https://youtu.be/8Z9RTdj93o8

Polynesian war dance #1

https://youtu.be/vYmszJ00aMM?si=D7KKY7fcjUArf628

Polynesian war dance #2

https://youtu.be/lt6GRghrmaU?si=KIHPRHtm7YyRQZmX

If you are a long term computer addict like some people I know, or played too many games in their youth.. or like me in my youth, then doing the something like the macarena followed by the chicken dance every evening for a month might help people to limber up. On top of the other stuff. Based on my understanding of anthropology, traditionally dancing has been an excellent form of pedagogy and training. It is just to loosen up and improve coordination.

***

This playground equipment doesn’t fit the rest of the system all that well, but owning in would be awesome. But whatever.

https://creospace.co.nz/playground-equipment/climbing-structures/rc-101-tower-net-small/

Climbing, regularly at home…

I want one 😀😀😀. It doesn’t really work with the system, but if I had it, I’d use it.

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Other:

Jumping Jacks

https://youtu.be/q_Z29u7nglQ?si=V5aOrP0DEmgI74-h

Rock n Roll

https://youtu.be/Z3kVMCjUhIk?si=e8OmqbP0VVLm3S-Y

Hip Hop

https://youtu.be/KzVuW_RNbUY?si=WWoKhtNcTo6eqjIZ

Arm wave tutorial

https://youtu.be/xebXGmgjAdk?si=taVDXVXjc85knImu

Stretching Routine, basic

https://youtu.be/FI51zRzgIe4?si=Gq50SOXAoDiNGBvt

Napoleon Dynamite Dance:

https://youtu.be/BiAwpYIkRmU?si=8O6L1swQRUr_BT4v

Other dance: earth, wind and fire (good example)

https://youtube.com/shorts/x90h-8hZRQU?si=onQq4o61BTfVaoMT

https://youtube.com/shorts/-hoMkiiz9X0?si=kqP0DJkRr80vTJX7

Extra disco: ideal for stuff like coordination

https://youtube.com/shorts/Y-N4unahP9Y?si=J-xZyzd9bsJMFTMY

Earth, wind, fire:

https://youtube.com/shorts/MDt7iJk1BmQ?si=xIchT3Nm1vSqoGZw

Perfect^ if only it were a male example??! Or at least pretty close to ideal lol.

Earth wind fire (inspiration):
https://youtube.com/shorts/sF_lcW3u4wo?si=QyX8Ba6f6Z-9GmXW

Leek Dance (just ideas):
https://youtu.be/c17xydS2vgU?si=0_jZwA7kjsTVFLbb

Hamstring stretch:
https://youtu.be/wr_8aak4Wbc?si=NF1I5L808yua_4O1

Shaolin 5 Steps Flow, a good thing to learn.
https://youtu.be/z2D6_03eA04?si=dOtq5Jaspq9T5q5O

Extra dance cover, roly poly

https://youtu.be/lfhLmIpCyM4

Random dance: (vague ideas)

https://youtube.com/shorts/R9O8QE3lrXM?si=d6HaC4RN1FNCMV7W

Another idea for general fitness, inspiration:

https://youtube.com/shorts/DGkgRTj8pO4?si=GIrnLd1WpSg7YREX

^ it creates spring in the feet/ankles and lift through the body? Puts a bit of life into you. And you can just do it!? Not really, just inspiration. I don’t like the hula hoops. But they are “boffo”, or a “Mcguffin”.

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Ring rows:

https://youtube.com/shorts/NwoWnfJzzII?si=u7CysptOnisOgTRB

https://youtube.com/shorts/Zy8k-kbWD00?si=mqNc-KisajWp8erD

https://youtu.be/sEAOZc77wk8?si=_m_4U2YXWokO6uzW

Chest opener:

https://youtu.be/urICkMgMrjk?si=665KiWPMKR-XCrn6

https://youtu.be/Y_3zKUgylhk?si=wI-nhm_EyV2n4IZh

Push up progression:

You may want advice on how to do a push up progression:

https://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/push-up-progression-plan/

However, I can't vouch for this page, I haven't checked it yet. If you have not yet managed your first push up, this is the page for you.

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Key Aspects of General Physical Fitness

Efficiency of Body Systems: Fitness refers to how well your heart, lungs, and muscles function together.

Daily Activities: A fit person can perform everyday tasks and routine activities with greater energy and for longer periods than an unfit person.

Disease Management: Fitness helps the body resist chronic diseases and improves immune system function.

Energy and Alertness: A fit individual has sufficient energy to complete tasks, enjoys leisure activities, and maintains mental and emotional alertness.

Capacity to Respond: Fitness provides the strength and endurance to handle unexpected or emergency situations.

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Experts define physical fitness as “one’s ability to execute daily activities with optimal performance, endurance, and strength with the management of disease, fatigue, and stress and reduced sedentary behavior.”

This description goes beyond being able to run quickly or lift heavy weights. Despite being important, these attributes only address single areas of fitness.

Map territory relations

I was a little bit inspired by the concept of “Japanese slow jogging” aka niko niko jogging. Aka smiling pace jogging. Ie, fitness that is so easy that you can do it without much strain. “Gentle” fitness. Kinda. I’m not dogmatic about it, but I think some fitness is over the top in our modern society. And maybe there needs to be a n alternative. A low intensity fitness that gives someone the best of both worlds, particularly for guys that maybe get a bit injured sometimes? That is why I have been working on it in the privacy of my mind.

High intensity stuff is good too though. I enjoyed things like Muay Thai and boxing when young. Going to the gym was fun. I also liked table tennis and a little bit of soccer and hockey.

***

Note: seated rows, or bent dumbbell rows might be more seisie than inverted ring rows, but ring rows are way cheaper and easier. Aussie pull ups are cool too. Moderation is key.

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I learned a little bit from observing that people who do certain types of fitness get hurt.

Like people who do marathons or distance running or trail running get hurt.

Examples, a member of extended family ended up getting a broken rib and punctured lung playing soccer, nearly drowned in their own blood. Another family member needed a knee surgery at age 20 after excessive running and sporting activity, and never fully recovered (he can’t even ride a stationary bike for cardio properly), one of them injured his arm showing off by trying to arm wrestle a young boyfriend of his ex-wife, and then keeps reinjuring it by trying to show off with things like one arm pushups. And needs cortisone shots. Or a kickboxer I know of needed a hip replacement maybe unrelated). Or a woman I know damaged her back cycling, or one relative broke her shoulder coming off a bike. People who do iron men end up with damaged hearts (uncle Andy did those). People who do marathons often end up needing knee replacements. Yoga practitioners who do headstands end up with damaged hearts to their necks (I looked into the literature on that one). Weightlifters and Olympic lifters end up with nasty injuries (statistics not withstanding). BJJ guys end up with sore necks and hands shredded to pieces, judo have sore joins and shredded hands. Boxers have smooshed faces and a bit of mild head injuries.

I think the crazy ones are injuries from too much jogging, too much biking and overdoing it barbell lifting.

But also, I wonder (theorise) that maybe people hurt their “nervous system” by “overstimulating” themselves long term as well?? I can’t explain that one “scientifically” though.

Also, I observe that yoga people end up sometimes getting a little bit floppy or languid. Or just plain weird.

And qigong people sometimes end up weak or have mental issues.

Maybe a more moderate approach, where you have lots and lots of walking, and some relaxed sports like table tennis and beach cricket (each twice weekly) might work better for many?

And adding just a dash of general fitness, just to help people to maintain good posture, as well as overall vigour and health, might not go amiss.

Ummm. I like the definition or term “physical culture” but maybe it is redefined. A bit.

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Idea: 3 items

For former computer addicts and excessive video gamers like me, who aren’t totally inept.

45 walking

3-6 hours moderate, casual sport per week

2-4 times per week basic fit fitness routine

Slowly get used to it, over time (months), the on-ramp might take a while. Not too long though.And then keep doing it steadily for a few months.

After that, you are ready for the educational component. Then just work your way through the educational component. Finish it, And then keep doing the three bullet points.

That’s it.

It’s just sensible, no frills, “boring fitness”. Except it’s fun and easy and satisfying.

Because casual moderate sport is enjoyable and sociable.

Because walking is pleasurable and very healthy.

And the basic fit routine is easy enough to not feel burdensome, and gentle enough to not waste your energy or burn you out, but good enough to keep you going.

The psychology works, I think.

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Quotes:

A few well-designed movements, properly performed in a balanced sequence, are worth hours of sloppy calisthenics or forced contortion. - Joseph Pilates

Above all, learn how to breathe correctly. - Joseph Pilates

Lazy breathing converts the lungs, literally and figuratively speaking, into a cemetery for the deposition of diseased, dying and dead germs. - Joseph Pilates

The Chinese say that you are as old as your spine.

***

I think that I may have reverse engineered enough stuff into what I have designed that people might end up with healthier spines, backs and posture. But also might end up breathing better, sleeping better, and feeling calmer.

Good quality form for exercises helps though.

I borrowed a lot of ideas from a variety of teachers, but I think I ought have distilled some stuff that is useful. They may have mistaken ends for means sometimes. The teachers themselves can simply solve problems, for other people. But their next generation of teachers may have got the wrong end of the stick sometimes. Idk.

I stole ideas.

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This is a really important part.

Another angle:

Basic fit:

Stay fit mostly through walking and casual, moderate sports, but do a small amount of basic body weight training to keep yourself fit enough to enjoy both walking and casual, moderate sports long term.

Add in a smidge of general movement education for best results.

This is a really important part.^

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Target audience: guys who loved sitting at the computer a bit too much in their youth, did stuff like a tiny bit of IT, or tech, or coding, and loved games. Aged 15-35. Decent verbal intelligence or verbal logic skills. Not mega geniuses, but computer savvy people who are capable of passing high school. But not necessarily university dudes. People who want something fun and moderate? Not gung ho people, or mega athletes.

It might help people avoid catastrophic injuries or going down wrong paths that get them hurt… while still enjoying decent health and vigour.

People who want something different would find it themselves.

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Here is all of the old stuff:

It is from before I thought about it properly. Idk what to do with it?

I’ll leave it here.

You don’t need to bother reading it tbh. It is kinda boring?

Stuff like that can be worth learning, for maybe 30 days. Then stop. Just 30 days to try them out, before moving on.

Misc other ideas:

“Basic fit”

Blogged on on-ramp routine.

From a blog, but get referred by a friend @ casual sports night at field

Toolkit/elements:

1. Jump rope

2. Kata + Stances + Isometrics**

3. Body weight, 6 moves:

squat, lunge, pushups, plank, calf raises, body rows

4. Stretches, very basic

Routine/combination:

Basic routines 2-3

Discussion on sets/reps

How:

Play a sport, any sport, casual/formal idk. Or join casual sport group.* become a “sports guy” (or sports girl)
Learn each item in the toolkit thoroughly: competence => mastery
Combine the elements, and practise a basic routine mon/wed/fri
Switch to a new sport for a bit
Maybe do a martial sport/art, combat sport for 6-12 months
Switch back to a normal sport, maybe join a hockey team, b grade local. Keep up the routine.
Go for a walk in the woods once in a while.

Essay idea: why you need to become a “sports guy”, not a fitness guy.

Maybe read “anti fragile” by nassim talib, take a look at the concept of resilience

The toolkit + routine exist to support your ability to enjoy your sport long term. They are a means to an end. Ie, the fitness routine exists to support your sport. Idk.

*local message board, I want pick up local flag football every Monday/Tuesday

**ideas for isometrics: downward facing dog, locust pose, boat pose, chair, warrior 1,2

// it doesn’t constitute advice, but it’s just a start in the direction of sensible thinking

//I’m not the boss of you. If you don’t like my ideas, find better ones.

FWIW, Sports guy/girl isn’t the same thing as a serious hardcore athlete lol

Key concepts: judgement, competence, mastery

Appendix A: Sample routine: mon/wed/fri (or every day)

Once you can do it, and are basically competent in the elements..

Warmup: 8-9 mins total

Jump rope (warm up):

2-3 minutes jumping rope

Asian traditional arts (warm up):

Basic kata sequence (eg Peaceful mind level one, shotokan)

Horse stance, Bow Stance, Downward facing dog

One other isometric or stance of your choice

Main bodyweight strength training element:

60 pushups (push ups from knees acceptable)

60 squats

30 lunges (15 each side)

30 body weight rows (aka Australian pull ups or inverted rows, on a bar or rings)

20 calf raises

60 seconds plank (x2), on forearms

Pick your own sets and reps. I don’t care how you get there, but.. you just have to get it done in one workout session. Idc, idk how

[maybe 3 sets of 20 for pushups or whatever?]

[circuit training maybe acceptable?]

You can swap body weight rows out for pull ups later on

Stretch, breathe:

Child’s pose

Sphinx

Can you touch your toes?

Hopefully touch the ground with a straight back (natural spine)?

A backbend, like cobra? Idk?

Side lunge?

Ham strings, quads, calves, shins, groin, hip abductors, lay on back and stretch glutes a bit.

Anything else involving stretching, breathing. Idk. Find a coach. I’m not the boss of you.

Stand there like a tree. Tadasana. Tada!

Final cool down : bounce/dance around on the balls of your feet, to loosen up a bit, shake your arms around

Note: if any element needs attention, practise. Add an extra 10-20 minutes to it. Or whatever. Idk. There is often room for personal judgement.. unless you lack common sense. It’s a practise, not a set-in-stone list of rules 🙃🫠

Ummm. You can always have 2-3 sample routines, that combine the elements..??

But it’s playing the sport that is the important thing. If you’re not a “sports guy”, then the routine/elements might not be for you. The “basic fit routine, elements, on ramp” exists to support your ability to play a sport/attend a class/learn a skill and or art

// maybe there are people who run a “basic fit” practise group for the first 4-5 months of the year. Jan - May. And a guy from your sports club or kickboxing class invites you. Idk, nbd 🤷

// not advice, more just the product of a “brainstorming session” at 4am

Appendix B:

I’d just end up doing:

Routine:

Mon, wed, fri

1. Jump rope

2. Asian stuff: A few extra static poses, stances, isometrics, or a kata thrown in there sometimes.

3. Body weight fitness

4. Stretches

Sport:

I’d change whatever sport/activity I did every couple of years. Hockey seems good. Outdoors stuff a while, soft ball a bit, “fun cycling” for a year. Idk, non stop cricket casual group. Flag football (forget touch rugby, field is too large). Table tennis. Half field soccer. “Obstacle course fitness class”. Have a boxing bag/gloves/wraps in the garage. Movnat, mountain biking, climbing wall. Handball. Fencing. Badminton. “Lawn games 6 month module”, don’t ask. (Sport/activity is a category, lawn games can be one for 6 months, so could fun cycling). Think… sometimes something becomes an obsession for a bit? Or maybe you have something steady. Probably (if healthy) casual turf hockey if available. Like, regular Thursday/Saturday night pick up games, or something (pick up game night is for people who played a couple of seasons hockey at some point). Or social league hockey or whatever. Or maybe fencing for 18 months, until good enough. Then back to hockey or whatever. You just always have to have one.

Umm. Probably just fencing for 12-18 months and then hockey long term. Smattering of other things.

[People pick a sport, then add in basic fit. But sometimes you switch sports.]

Pull ups and dogma

The dogma is that pull-ups are a really good movement. They are a compound movement, and provide a strong training stimulus (intensity and difficulty of the movement).

Climbing for Nervous System Wellbeing

If possible, I might include a bit of mild/gentle climbing in the mix as well. We are descended from cute little monkey-squirrel rodents and primates after all (such as purgatorius and teilhardina).

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***

Old stuff here, to be updated:

(Stuff about history of fitness just below..)

This is all untested though.

Still a work in progress.

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Pehr Henrik Ling

Jack LaLanne

Overtraining

Jack LaLanne used to claim to do ninety minutes strength training TO FAILURE every day for every major muscle. Followed by thirty minutes cardio. Even as he was aging.

Food Faddism, aka orthorexia

For his diet, he ate only two meals a day (late breakfast and early dinner), consumed at least 10 raw vegetables daily and avoided white flour, sugar and “processed” foods.

If you’re interested in the history of fitness and health, you need to look into the history of this guy.

But I do agree that over-processed (overly refined and then recombined) food products aren’t ideal. And the industries, culture and supply chains that go along with them are legitimately an issue.

Other fitness “influencers”

Early body building magazines, back in the Arnie era, were full of lies. He was friends with LaLanne by the way.

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Deranged and unhinged rant coming right up:

Apples are lame. They were spread heavily in America for the purpose of making applejack, by freeze jacking. They’re good for puddings and alcohol. I’m kinda joking about this. By the way, prohibition was a scam in the USA. It was a way to create revenue for criminal gangs and mafias that rapidly cropped up in response to it. These gangs only went away in the 70s, once the corporate world was strong enough to smash anything in its way, and so the fbi stepped up their anti gang stuff.alcohol prohibition was a scam used to empower and finance gangs indirectly, so that the people in the USA couldn’t fend for themselves selves so easily. It was one of the first, and most effective war on drugs. Ummm. [Don’t drink too much, if at all. It is bad for you. But prohibition is even worse for your health.]

Raw fruit and vegetables.

Food faddists ruin everything!!!! See Paul Bragg: mentor of Jack LaLanne (who himself was a close personal friend of Arnold schwarzenegger. Edit: he was just affiliated via a political board. Arnold is actually kinda cool, even though I don’t trust him at all. Btw, body guiding is 50% legit, but kinda a mistake. It’s complicated. It’s vanity! But it works. Vanity sucks!!!!! It’s horrible for men as well as women. Modesty is better. Just like pride is dumb, and humility is better).

Eating ten raw vegetables a day is what people like LaLanne advocate for. And Paul Bragg advocate for massive juicing and apple cider. Don’t do it. It sucks. They’re con artists.

Apple and carrot juice is good for you. With a tiny bit of sweet bell pepper, sometimes. And that’s it. Perfect. Vitamin C and beta carotene and tons for other compounds, it’s great.

Excessive consumption of raw fruits and vegetables (especially vegetables) is a scam. Just eat normal cooked vegetables! Thoroughly cooked vegetables are better for you! Eat normal fruit. But fruit must be sweet!! If it isn’t sweet, don’t eat it. Peaches, bananas, oranges are great. Some fruits ought simply to be made into jams or puddings.

Drink freshly made apple and carrot juice. It’s great for you. Don’t go off the deep ends.

Green smoothies are a scam. Eating raw leafy green veges sucks. Salads are an American scam, sent to ruin your digestion and make you miserable. Cook your greens before eating them. Salute your spinach in rice bran oil, with garlic and season with soy sauce.

Spirulina and chlorella are silly.

The demonisation of white flour is bullshit.

Flour is good. Normal un bleached organic white flour is fine. It’s just a way to waste your time and stymie you. Sourdough bread is overrated, as is overly crusty white bread. Beer is good for you. Side effects include happiness and good company. Immoderation on alcohol consumption is very good for you, but only in moderation (ie, only intentionally, and sometimes). Moderate wine consumption. Is lame. Wine tastes bad and people pretend that it doesn’t. Just like baijiu. Whiskey and beer are nicer. White wine is too sour. Cider is too acidic.

Cooked vegetables are good for you. Moderate consumption of sweet fruit is good for you. Carrot and apple juice is very good for you in moderation. Leafy greens ought to be cooked. Proper white bread is healthy, it is a food staple source of life and starch. It is the staff of life. It really is. Truly. The texture of modern bread sucks though. Adding bran or germ back into the bread for texture is okay, but overrated. Black tea with milk is healthy. Possibly, probably more so than wank like matcha (which is tasty though). “Antioxidant culture” is weird.

Look up William Banting (noted undertaker), populariser of low carb diets. Banting (or going low carb) is a way to deliberately destroy lives. It’s a scam. Atkins, south beach, paleo, primal, all lame. All suck. The demonisation of white flour intertwined itself with this very well. White flour turned into ordinary bread, with normal crumb sized (not polystyrene fast bake style, nor sour dough) is good. It is the staff of life. Moderation is still important. Too much bread can make you fat. But the word for that is gluttony. But undernourishment is a problem too!!! Look at the history of the far east (Aka, the oriental constitution)!

Note: digression perhaps we might use the word far east, or oriental? Instead of Asian? Because Asian includes people like central Asia? And South Asia? And south east Asia? And austronesian and Melanesian peoples also?

And I don’t want to lump all of these people in with the far east (Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam). The Confucian parts of the world tend not to be very sensible? And tonal languages with character based writing eastern sensibilities often cause issues matters of the intellect, as well as in communication. Parts of east Asia aren’t always known to be the most sensible people when it comes to issues of mortality, health, life or wellbeing either.

***

Cheese is good for you, along with bread and beer. Cooked vegetables and fruit. Meat is nice too. Lamb is the best, but whatever. Weird health foods like quinoa or LSA mix are probably sub optimal. But idk.

By the way, a lot of the old fashioned muscle mags had dishonest (drujvan, or drəguuaṇt) advice that made you get sick, burnt out and hurt. And the advice was bad for you even if you were on steroids too. They encouraged overtraining. Reframe it: they encouraged you to over do it, and do it badly. And then people get injured or really badly burned out. Exercise induced burn out is really bad. I think some people “fry” or otherwise “cook” their nervous systems over time, with fitness. Idk. I think the “high intensity” dogma associated with some types of fitness are a scam. I can’t prove it though. But it depends on who you are, and what your goals are. And if you have spare time to recover and rest!!! Or a job. And who are you trying to impress anyway.

End of massive ramble / rant.

Vanity: it sucks

https://youtu.be/-ntIL36bgEk?si=s6wwaddleZph7J6g

Random note:

Some people act like stiffness is always bad, and “fluidity” is always good. Flow like water, crash like a wave. But I disagree. Sometimes you want to build what I call normal “robustness” (my special use of the word). And that might mean sacrificing “fluidity” or flow, or the magical fairy sparkles called prana or qi.

How do you do it? Ummm. Just plenty of robust outdoor walking, some kayaking, some normal sports, a bit of camping, some cycling. Tennis, soccer, touch rugby. A bit of basic resistance training or whatever. Gym or at home. Body weight or weights. And you probably need volume.

This is only as an antidote to excessive “flimsiness”, often associated with particular styles of physical training.

You can be flimsy and fluid, and loosey goose-y when you’re young, because you have the brain-muscle and mind-body connection to get it done. To make stuff happen (the over all coordination), but as you age, or lifestyle changes, you need to put stiffness and robustness back in there. Even though it isn’t as exciting.

And you rebuild the reflexes, and the coordination! The reflexes/coordination/quickness on the feet/robust active movement/ability to exert force vigorously aren’t there!

Also applies to people who become too bendy from stuff like Pilates.

5 days weekly: squats, 5 sets 12, pushups 5 sets 12, lunges and calf raises, some. Plenty of jump rope, daily walk 45 daily, and go gentle 2-3 hikes weekly (like 90 minutes). Play table tennis, and maybe soccer/touch/cricket or whatever, twice weekly. Rebuild the robustness. Climb some fences and trees too. Chop some wood, carry some firewood.

Just ideas.

It means that you don’t twist your ankle when you jump off of your dad’s boat, or break your ankle hiking, or it means you don’t break your arm slipping off of a step. Or you just land better.

Lastly, toughness in things like hiking. Like hiking three straight days for a comfy 4 hours at a time with bag in your back.

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Diet Quacks and food faddists

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Banting

Banting, dietary advisor and noted undertaker

https://www.etymonline.com/word/banting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Atkins_(physician)

Very serious scientist. At one point considered becoming a comedian

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/health/special-diets/what-is-banting-diet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bragg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_LaLanne

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Jones_(inventor)

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Low carb

Demonisation of ordinary white flour

Demonisation of ordinary basic staple foods

Raw Vegetable Fanatics

Diet weirdos

Juicing fanatics

Supplement weirdos

High Intensity Exercise Proponents (causes burnout)

See also: destroying joints by doing marathons.

It's actually hard to pick and choose and chew through the bad advice, to find the good advice.

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IMO, basic food stuffs such as rice, white bread and pasta are fine. And potatoes. I think raw vegetable fanaticism is silly and just gives people upset stomachs. I think fresh fruit juicing is legitimate though. I think apple and carrot juice is nice, about 1 metric cup daily. But it's a hassle to make. Sometimes a bit of fresh orange juice or capsicum added to the juice is nice. These people are weird though. I should make a proper post. I wonder if the best vegetables out there are just ordinary leafy greens, but you're best just cooking them first, and they have to be shockingly fresh, straight from the garden. Stuff like spinach, Swiss chard or mustard greens. I think that greens from the supermarket are just a bit sad, and probably the nutrition from them is dead, and the taste and texture even more so. Probably the way to do it is to _grow your own greens_. I need to start growing spinach on my deck, if ever I'm healthy enough to get out there again. Also, greens should almost always be cooked. And: personal opinion, the tender leaves are better than that older tougher leaves, and you should cut the stems out. But maybe that’s just being fussy! For example, baby spinach from the garden sautéed might be healthier and tastier than the mature spinach plant, or the fully grown silver beet plant.

(Note: if you have a good orange (or tangelo) tree at home, then one glass (daily) of orange or tangelo juice is perfect. When it comes to orange juice, It’s just the prepackaged stuff, with the “vitamins” added back that is no good. It has to be fresh and home made. Also, store bought oranges aren’t as nice as ones you grow at home. Don’t worry about why, they just aren’t. They are bred to be shelf stable, and have uniform appearance, but their flavour and nutrition just isn’t there, unfortunately).

I think that cooked greens are best, and that salad fanaticism is a psyops campaign. The occasional salad is okay, if kept small, and in moderation, like a small side, or flavour side element of bitter green herbs and vegetables beside bread and olive oil. But I don't trust them. I also think that greens don't belong is juice. But that's just my opinion.

Note: my mum used to work at crop and food research in Hawke's Bay, and we had a massive glut of apples! What do you do with all of those apples! We used to have apple and carrot juice every day. Sometimes with capsicum (which is extremely high in vitamins, especially vitamin C). Also, we had an orange tree (tangelo tree), with extremely juicy oranges that were good only for juicing. So we had a lot of apple and carrot juice, sometimes with stuff like capsicum. And also orange juice. _I do wonder if a simple cup (200-400ml) of this sort of juice daily is extremely healthy_, and might actually be kind of a "killer app" in the area of food nutrition. _Just take the goodness of apple, orange, carrots and capsicum and juice it_. But the diet faddists and quacks get in the way? We tried lots of juices at home, and she tried a few at work. And even tried to get funding for testing out new juices and products (edit: message received over wifi messenger, she did get funding at crop and food to research new uses and products for apples).

I think fresh home grown greens (cooked) and apple/carrot/capsicum/orange juice might be the "low hanging fruit" in nutrition. But that's mostly for the americanised western world? It's complicated.

Edit; more explanation home made centrifugal juice, apple and carrot 200-400ml seems good to me, 4-7 times weekly. There is a bit of nonsense in the world of “juicing” such as juice fasting, juice cleanses, juice blitzing, but you should ignore all of that. And if you get a “juicing book”, they will tell you to try out weird combinations of ingredients like apple/carrot with spinach, lettuce, dandelion greens, beets, broccoli, cucumber or whatever. But the only juice you really need is apple and carrot. That’s the “killer application” for the centrifugal juicer technology. Sometimes with a little bit of capsicum or orange. But people add too much stuff, like wheatgrass, spirulina, chlorella, spinach or kale. That’s no good. They think that more vitamins = better, but it’s not always the way. Just stick to the basics, of apple and carrot. Juice must always taste good, and be sweet.

Note, by the way, about 200-300ml of freshly squeezed orange juice is amazing for things like vitamin C, but only if it very fresh. One pitfall to avoid is that store bought oranges aren’t as tasty as home grown, but if you have good oranges, then orange juice is great.

Tldr; Apple and carrot juice, 200-400ml, made in a centrifugal juicer. 4-7 days per week. That’s it. Maybe 1/4-1/2 of a capsicum as well, sometimes.

White flour is okay, but is calorie dense, and goods made with it are easy to overeat. White sugar in moderation is just a food, and not the devil, but can be fairly addictive and ruins your teeth and metabolism, leading to weight gain and diabetes. Basic complex carbohydrates (aka starch) are incredibly important. They are a basic staple food supply. Bread really is the "staff of life". And plain white rice is an excellent basic, excellent sustaining food. As are pasta and cornmeal (idk much about corn, but I think Mexicans eat a lot of corn tortillas?). Anyone who tells you that basic sources of carbohydrates such as bread, pasta, rice, corn tortillas, potatoes and sweet potatoes are the devil is just trying to ruin your life. Low carb is evil. Some people tell you to eat tons of whole grain bread (see mountain rye bread). By I reckon that sort of bread is overrated. It's nice in moderation, but white is better. They push it by fetishising Swiss mountain people. But I think the narrative is bogus. I think that the push towards hyper-wholegrain bread is bogus. Note: the bread we eat has lost its texture, due to weird industrial baking processes. Maybe we just need white bread with the normal texture again (like my mother used to bake at home). And I think sourdough bread is weird and boring.

I think people who eat ordinary decent food are fine. I don't have any real answers. All I have are two simple ideas: 300 ml of apple and carrot juice 5-7 days per week might be really great bang for your buck, and leafy greens are probably best home grown, picked fresh and served cooked. Other than that, it's just try to embrace normal eating? Follow what seems to have worked for the past 80 years for people you've met? Also, take a look at some of the faddists of the past. That's maybe the most powerful things you can do. But then again, frozen spinach might be just as good as fresh spinach? I'm not sure. Maybe the benefit of homegrown and sautéed spinach is that it tastes good.

Maybe the true moral of the story is that salads are overrated, and a bit of a scam (unless you really love the taste/texture, in which case that's all good).

Ummm. There was a psyops campaign to indoctrinate people into the idea that healthy eating = tons of raw vegetables (including but not limited to salads), but it’s bogus. Personal opinion: cooked vegetables are great, but avoiding too much uncooked vegetation can be a good idea. Like, eating a giant bowl consisting of seven different types of raw vegetables for dinner for the purpose of managing your weight is a silly idea. I don’t want to create a system of healthy eating, I just want to point out that the raw vegetable (and salad) indoctrination thing is just a psyops campaign. Umm, you can just have meat, rice and a few different types of cooked vegetables with dinner. And if there’s a little bit of salad sometimes, or grated carrot, it’s totally normal. If you’re confused, just research “Jack LaLanne” and look at his diet recommendations. He lied to a lot of Americans. Seriously, 2-3 hours reading about him, it’ll open your eyes.

They wanted to fetishise and pedestal-ise raw vegetables. But I think that’s lame. A bit of raw vegetation is fine. But cooked is better. Don’t fetishise or otherwise put raw vegetation on a pedestal.

Personal opinion: for a westerner, raw vegetables are a “sometimes food” and/or to be eaten in moderation, but cooked vegetables are better.

Conclusions

200-400ml apple/carrot juice from centrifugal juicer is great, daily or 4-7 times weekly

Don’t put raw vegetables on a pedestal, cooked is usually better.

If you want your greens to taste good, and be healthy, then you might need to grow them at home and cook them with fat (like sautéed and wilted spinach). Recipe here. [frozen spinach is still healthy, but the flavour and texture is ruined]

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Scientists

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahachiro_Hata

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6478456/#:~:text=Now%20for%20Salvarsan%3B%20recognised%20as,Japanese%20man%3B%20Professor%20Sahachiro%20Hata.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ehrlich

Why was the cure for Syphilis not more commonly and readily available? Why did the world wait until antibiotics were effective and reliable?

***

The Tuskegee Study started years after Sahachiro Hata and Paul Ehrlich had created a cure for Syphilis, and continued years after multiple effective cures for Syphilis existed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study

Read this, but try to see past it, to what it is hiding. Which is that Salvarsan had been available for years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_syphilis

Read this one and try to see some pictures also^

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I think that the cure for Syphilis wasn't widely used or available because the wealthy, the powerful, and the influential, as well as the sex pest brigade, and a lot of academia, didn’t want people to see them as being "dirty". And also because they wanted to keep sleeping around, because "latent" syphilis (just like latent HIV) isn't seen as being that bad. They acted like latent syphilis wasn't so bad, because sex mattered to them more.

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No nose club:

https://www.weirdhistorian.com/things-to-know-about-the-no-noses-club/

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Why does the comical villain Voldemort have no nose?

https://youtube.com/shorts/DokQNaM4swo?si=Qfe6UHkwqslQNfmp

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If you look into the old literature, there is a lot said about the link between wickedness and the visible effects of Syphilis.

Evil people's noses would fall off.

Or maybe have their faces marred by warts. Or other skin diseases.

Or their penis might fall off.

Voldemort was designed as the stereotypical hairless, syphilitic bald madman. Totally evil, obsessed with never dying.

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There were also burning horrible diseases and various horrible types of VD that existed in the past, like in biblical times. It was seen as connected: evil sex pests, the oppress people, act badly, then get diseases that are horrible and miserable.

Why do you think mercury was such a common and popular "cure" in Chinese medicine? It was because it could be used to "treat" VD. Maybe. I think. I should probably drop that paragraph. It’s too non specific. There is probably a link, but not a strong one.

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For background reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_culture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turners

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Bjelke-Petersen

By the way, prior to a lot of this “physical culture”, fitness practises were based on military training.

It’s all just history.

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Explode bad thinking

Btw, with a lot of the stuff that I just posted, I’m just tying to explode bad thinking. But I also want to avoid the situation whereby “people throw the baby out with the bath water”.

E.g. “juicing” as a cultural phenomenon, and the advice surrounding it, is stupid. Such as juice fasting, juice cleanses, juice detoxes and green juicing. Or adding spirulina and wheatgrass to their juice. But the underlying technology of the “centrifugal juicer” is good. And a basic recipe of apple and carrot juice now still fundamentally sound.

Or telling people to eat large quantities of raw vegetables like 8 serves daily, because they have “tons of vitamins” is bad, because it just doesn’t work well in practise. But just because a lot of diet advice is bad, it doesn’t mean that you should eat nothing but junk food all days. Maybe good advice is to eat maybe at least 2-3 serves of basic, well cooked vegetables per day, and no more than one serve of raw vegetables. As well as one glass of freshly made juice (either orange juice, or apple and carrot). Good vegetables might be boiled carrots, steamed broccoli and cauliflower. Sautéed greens. Or steamed beans. Or just lettuce and tomato in a sandwich. E.g. a sandwich for lunch with tomato and lettuce. And a cup of fresh juice in the afternoon. And with dinner, some boiled mixed vegetables, from frozen. Or some sautéed, wilted spinach. Or a basic stir fry with vegetables, meat and rice. Breakfast is just anything, like toast or whatever.

But you have to understand people like Paul Bragg, Jack LaLanne, and their ilk. They are all lying to you.

Ps; for vitamin C, you can literally just eat an orange. And just so long as you eat other vegetables daily, you’re okay.

People with an “organic home garden”… they just eat plenty of vegetables, and it’s easy. But people who rely on the industrialised food supply have to find other ways to do things. Or people in the olden days, like English peasants, might have a large kitchen garden, and use that for vegetables, and eat an avalanche of fresh vegetables (while also relying on wheat from their strip on the fields, and milk/cheese from their cow, who might be grazing on the commons, or raise a pig for sausages etc, or keep chickens). But I rely on the supermarket for my food? And some of the food is a bit processed, so how do I make up for it? Well, freshly squeezed orange juice might be a good move, as could centrifugal juiced carrot and apple juice. And also, the “low hanging fruit” or the “best bang for your buck” when it comes to growing your own vegetables might be sauteed/wilted greens from my own container garden. Because you just can’t get good fresh spinach or greens from the supermarket. Or at least not the tenderest leaves. It just goes sad too quickly.

Oh, and ordinary lamb and beef (from grass fed New Zealand livestock) is one of the healthiest foods out there, in reasonable quantities. You probably do want to trim some of the fat though. Organic, free range, well treated chicken is good too (here in New Zealand), but pig can be a mixed bag. Fish and seafood are good as well, and free range, organic eggs are fine.

It’s all just ideas.

Mostly, in those last few segments above I wanted to expose the lies of people like Bragg and LaLanne. Banting and Atkins. I’m not trying to teach optimal health.

Update:

Jack LaLanne was a charlatan, a mountebank and a huckster. He's no good. And his teacher, Paul Bragg, was a quack.

If you learn everything you can about these two guys, it will change and update your perspective on the American fitness industry. It’s about education.

Banting and Atkins were also liars, charlatans, and good for nothing.

Arthur Jones is a complex character. His equipment and designs can be very useful, but his business dealings were somewhat shady. And much of his advice was deliberately bad, such as his emphasis on exclusively “high intensity” fitness. Too much “high intensity” training will make you unwell. You’ll end up burnt out, and/or injured.

Here is a quote ripped from Wikipedia, “Jones's ideas tried to move the public's notion of bodybuilding and strength-training exercise away from the Arnold Schwarzenegger school of training, which involved hours in the gym using free weights, to high intensity training. This involves short, single sets, with each set taken to the point of complete muscular failure with a full body workout frequency of three times a week with the intention to maximize muscular hypertrophy and strength increases. (Later in his life, he recommended doing it once or twice a week.) Jones said: “The secret, if there is one, is high intensity. And when you actually train with high-intensity, you don’t need a lot of volume.”

David Solt’s comment: he was advising people to work until failure, on every set, for the whole body. That is just plain bad advice.

These guys are dishonest. If you can, try to educate yourself. But at the same time, when it comes to healthy living, physical fitness, and physical exercise, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

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Umm. Change in conversation topic:

Some people choose body building as their way of life. And I think that’s fine. Not as a dilettante, but as a major part of their actual purpose if life. And also as a major goal in life. As part of their way of life. I think that’s okay. If it’s what they genuinely want. But that’s for serious body building.

And some people use training at the gym to stay healthy, and only exercise in moderation. And that’s fantastic as well.

And some people need to stay fit for a sport or a job (like first responders, police etc). That’s important.

But many people just need to stay fit and would be better off doing it through walking and plenty of sociable, casual sports, with only a relatively moderate amount of formal exercise. And perhaps some small amount of basic education. You could perhaps live a good life this way. Avoid injury and burnout, have good posture, and breath well. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.

The boy, the man and the donkey:

https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/type1215.html

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Japanese Forest Bathing

Japanese forest bathing, or Shinrin-yoku (森林浴), is the mindful practice of immersing yourself in the forest atmosphere to improve physical and mental well-being, involving slow, sensory-focused walks to de-stress, lower cortisol, and reconnect with nature, a concept promoted by Japanese doctors and ministries since the 1980s for preventive health. It's not exercise but a way to "bathe" in the forest's sights, sounds, and smells, often by leaving technology behind and engaging all senses.

Key Aspects of Shinrin-yoku:

Intentional Conscious Immersion: Intentionally connecting with the natural surroundings using all five senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste of fresh air).

Slow Pace: Walking gently and calmly, without a destination or strenuous effort, allowing for deep relaxation.

Technology-Free: Disconnecting from devices to fully focus on the present moment in nature.

Health Benefits: Reduces stress, lowers blood pressure, boosts immunity (through phytoncides from trees), and improves mood, acting as a form of preventive medicine.

How to Practice:

Find a Forest: Choose a natural setting, from dense woods to a local park.

Leave Tech Behind: Silence your phone or leave it in your pocket.

Breathe Deeply: Inhale the fresh, clean air.

Engage Your Senses:

Listen: To birds, wind, rustling leaves.

Look: At light filtering through trees, patterns on bark, colorful fungi.

Touch: Feel the texture of leaves, bark, or moss.

Smell: The scents of earth, flowers, and pine.

Walk Slowly: Stroll aimlessly, letting your mind wander and relax.

Stay Awhile: Aim for at least 20 minutes, or ideally 2 hours per week for maximum benefit, but any time spent is valuable.

***

It is good stuff. It restores the soul. It transforms the individual from the inside out. As a side effect, weight loss might "accidentally" occur as an indirect side effect.

Just as an aside, for best results you might take a book and a thermos-flask of tea (preferably something like English breakfast tea with milk) to the forest to enjoy _after_ finishing the shinrin yoku session.

This practise of shinrin yoku is probably 10x better and more effective than spending the equivalent time in meditation.

Glhf

And don’t ever forget that “these people” withheld Paul Ehrlich’s cure for syphilis for decades (the period between the wars). So of course they lie about health and fitness.

Look up Ehrlich’s cure for syphilis, Salvarsan. It’s good, and it works. Introduced in 1909, but withheld*. Until penicillin and other antibiotics were invented. Uhhh. Just learn the history. The true history. It is freely and openly available. Just dig a bit.

But also read the history of Ignaz Semmelweis, the Hungarian doctor martyred for his promotion of handwashing for the prevention of purple fever and maternal mortality after childbirth, and refusal to chill out when powerful people told him to.

Aka, public health officials and academics. As well as bureaucrats and the medical establishment as a whole. Doctors. They’re kind of bad people sometimes. Seriously. And they’re most likely responsible for the Spanish flu epidemic (spreading it, and deliberately using the wrong treatment methods, for the purpose of increasing casualties) and possibly the outbreak of pneumatic flu in Manchuria.

Tldr; the people who tell you what’s health or good and bad, are tards. So, meh. Whatever. Take anything they tell you about fitness, health, nutrition with a grain of salt. They’re tards anyway.

Ps: voldemort’s nose fell off because he had syphilis. Google “the no nose club”. Ahahahaha.

PPS: and also see my other page An unfinished page about charlatans and hucksters in the fields of fitness and diet

This is a work in progress, I hope to fix it up later. I’m just dumping it. The whole segment needs to be rewritten.

I just needed to get it out there.

First rule, I’m not the boss of you.

And you can do as many stupid things as you want in life.

Boring intro:

Eat ordinary basic food. For a start. Eat regular meals, like lunch dinner and breakfast. Umm. And eat things like meat, vegetables and potatoes/rice for dinner (or regional equivalent, although this is primarily for people of my background (English speaking former colonies of the UK, and UK itself. Or similar.). And don’t live off of pop tarts and Coca Cola.

Actual ideas…

Ummm. Get enough beta carotene and vitamin C.

Here is how:

It’s juice.

Have plain orange or tangelo juice 3-4 times weekly.

Have centrifugal juicer juice 3-4 times weekly. Use carrots and apples as your base. It’s fine on its own. And maybe preferably just to keep it as is. If desired, add any one of the following: capsicum, mandarin, orange, strawberry or other sweet juice. But plain apple and carrot is actually almost ideal. Never juice anything green. And never add anything green to your juice. Just stick to the basics. And it’s magical as is.

Next, if you miss a day juicing. Just either have two servings of fruit, or have a smoothie with: banana, blueberries, milk and yoghurt.

Next, abandon all love for “giant white girl eating disorder salad bowls”. And tons of raw or undercooked vegetables, and just cook 80-90% of your vegetables.

Ummm. And once you’re having cooked vegetables. Then make sure you’re having green vegetables 4-7 times per week. And umm. Just cook those one lightly-moderately. Overcooked greens are a mistake. But things like onions and carrots cook well. It’s just the avoidance of the feeling that you have to eat giant bowls of salad to be healthy. That’s the big lie. The big lie is that “giant bowls of uncooked vegetables matter is healthy”. Umm. No. What’s healthy is… a bunch of other stuff. The other big lie is that you “have to eat tons of lightly cooked, or uncooked vegetation to get the nutrients”. But no, umm. I can’t explain it, but no. If you’re getting plenty of beta carotene from things like juiced carrots, and plenty of vitamin C from things like juiced fruits (and eating whole fruits), then you don’t need to undercook your vegetables. You can cook them. Cook them normally! Now as for leafy greens, as well as green vegetables in general, they’re tastier cooked, and better for your digestion, and the texture is nicer, and there is less chewing. And kids will be more likely to eat them too. They should be cooked moderately or lightly. If overcooked, their taste and texture is ruined. Also, don’t juice them, or put them in smoothies. They contain something I call “green vegetables factor X”, which loosely correlates with vitamin K. Good examples of green vegetables are: spinach, mustard greens, silver beet, green string beans, Brussels sprouts, asparagus, and sugar snap peas. If overcooked, they don’t taste so nice.

Next point, vegetables like onions, garlic, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots etc are just about as good as greens, and often more palatable, and nicer for digestion in large quantities. Fresh green herbs are good too. Parley, coriander (aka cilantro), basil and mint are some of the best and most available herbs in my part of the world. And are all very nutritious in small quantities. Repeat of information for the juicer: the best juices for the juicer are carrot and apple juice, and also carrot, apple and capsicum juice. Almost everything else is just weird nonsense. Those are the true uses for it. An orange to add sweetness is legitimate as well, I guess.

That’s all I’ve got for now.

Just eat normal foods, I guess? Ordinary decent foods are usually the best. I just wanted to rescue people from those two “big lies” and rescue juicing from being ruined in people’s minds by a litany of lies and silliness and dumb recipes. There was a psyops campaign to promote those two big lies, and to ruin the reputation of juicing, and make it associated with health lunatics and weirdos (stuff like wheat grass juice, spirulina and kale juice; instead of basics like carrot and apple juice. By the way, when you use the centrifugal juicer technology, carrot and apple juice ought to be seen as the basic juice - the baseline juice that you either have on its own or add stuff to. It is the “base” for centrifugal juicer technology. Kind of like basic orange juice is a perfect basic juice to squeeze at home. If apple and carrot juice is the king of juices, then plain orange juice [slightly watered down] is the queen of juices.).

TLDR: have orange juice or apple and carrot juice daily. Cook your vegetables, including green vegetables. Raw vegetable and salads only in moderation. Don’t fall for the “three big lies”.

Another big lie is that tons of whole grains are good for you. But I can’t go into that now. That was an “emotional” psyops campaign to vilify ordinary white flour in your mind/heart. The truth is that white processed grains are safe and appropriate foodstuffs. Along with moderate amounts of whole grains. They’re both really good. Don’t fall for the campaign to demonise bread. It’s not the devil, but there is more to that story. It really is the “staff of life”. But there have been serious efforts to undermine it. Long story short: bread, pasta, flour, white short grain rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes. They’re all acceptable foods. And at the same time, over eating will cause problems. So, ymmv. My opinion: a lot of the problems come from having your “nervous system ramped up” all of the time, over training, too much fitness, burnout, and lack of sleep. As well as basic stress. But that’s just an opinion. For most basic people, I think that short grain rice, made in a rice cooker is a very good grain. And also, moderate amounts of pasta, cooked al dente is very good. Carbs have been unjustly maligned, see William Banting, but I can’t go into that today.

I’ll finish this later.

Note: if your body is in “chronic burnt out dysfunction mode” all of the time, or your metabolism is already ruined, then I do acknowledge that sometimes some people find that carbohydrate restriction is useful. As well as excessive gruelling cardio. But at the same time, please don’t vilify carbohydrates, or basic staple food stuffs. They are actually very important, and very good for you.

There is an ongoing psyops campaign to create an association in your kind between bread and unhealthfulness and also with weight gain. It’s a scam. Don’t believe it.

Umm. As for weight gain: walking helps, but I don’t have anything more to add for now.

Uhhh. I mean, eat normal decent food to begin with??

Like meat, fish, poultry, eggs, nuts, grains, bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, kūmara, lentils and chickpeas and beans. Fruits, vegetables. Fresh juice, water, tea, coffee. But start from a decent point.

Processed and refined foods are good too, some of them. For example, to chop and boil an onion is to process it. To turn apples and oranges into juice is to process and refine it. To make polished white rice is to refine it. Refining isn’t bad.

But these are just ideas.

Ps: you could just have fruit (two “servings” daily), if you hate juice. But fresh juice is good, and I wanted to rescue the “narrative” on juicing from the loony tunes lunatic brigade. Also, I wanted to rescue basic green vegetables from the idea that giant salads or green juices are the best way to have them. I’m not a trail blazer here, and I’m not a food guru. I just think it’s good to rescue people from bad thinking sometimes.

****

Ps: stuff like buttered green beans, boiled/steamed until tender, served with salt and lots of freshly ground pepper, are probably just as good and nutritious as those “leafy green vegetables” that we’re all supposed to be eating more of. And besides, they keep better in the fridge, and are easier to grow. FYI, home grown green beans are really nice, and much easier to grow and store than leafy green vegetables.

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Unrelated: There is this thing called the Pareto principle. It’s a good one.

*****

What does mr “generic medium sized city dweller” Ian Smith do after reading my stuff?

Walking 45 daily

Cycling 2-4 hours weekly, always gentle.

Squats and lunges (air squats and body weight lunges, according to taste and need, throughout the week). Some calf raises also (reverse lunches are very, very good as well if you have dodgy knees).

Salsa dancing 2-3 times weekly, because he likes it (or rock and roll)

Dinner: meat vegetables and potatoes, or fish rice and vegetables. They eat their 5+ a day, but sometimes prefer to have their intake juiced or in smoothies, but can’t stand the weird juices or smoothies (just apple, carrot and capsicum; basic apple and carrot; or plain orange; or banana, strawberry and milk with a dollup of yoghurt). They’re not afraid of bread, rice, potatoes or carbs. And if they start gaining weight, they just eat a little less or cycle more.

Besides, if they really wanted to lose weight, they would take up shinrin yoku once weekly (the David Solt version, which is 20 minutes nature immersion/experience aka conventional shinrin yoku, followed by reading a book and having a cup of tea from a thermos for 40 minutes while still in the forest). And then next, something like 20 minutes music meditation daily (ie, you sit quietly and listen to music with your eyes closed; the music you choose is according to your own taste, and is your own version of “relaxing”. Personally, I like Pink Floyd and Linkin Park for relaxation. But mozart’s requiem works too. Maybe call it “music based stress reduction”, a ‘scientific approach’.

Ian just laughs, and follows the 80/20 rule (Pareto principle) because he is free to choose for himself what to do. And he has common sense. And he appreciated the “heads up” when it came to Jack LaLanne, Banting, Bragg, Arthur Jones and other guys like that. He believes in learning about history, and from history. He’s fine, and happy, but nothing special. He believes in making sure that his legs are strong, and stay strong!

Anyway, it’s all silly nonsense.

I just had to post it to get it out of my head. It’s just a generic example, and it’s perfect. And plenty of other examples could be written.

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Joseph Pilates was really smart. I don’t think he was a charlatan.

Unrelated:

I think that “reformer Pilates”, invented by Mr Joseph Pilates, is pretty good. It used to be called "contrology" and it was Mr Pilates "system of universal gymnastics" as it said on his sign outside his studio. It's not a "total system of physical culture", but it is very good for a lot of people. It predates yoga, and is far superior.

He was a boxer, circus performer and living statue. And seemed to know his stuff.

He quite clearly was doing plenty of other stuff other than using the reformer and other equipment. For example, he probably performed plenty of body weight squats, or other movements for his legs, and probably enjoyed jumping rope and hitting the punching bag, amongst other things. But the methods seem sound, and have stood the test of time. YMMV, and the quality of teaching varies.

He was very German though. And lived quite a bohemian lifestyle. He tried to get his methods recognised more widely by the medical establishment and failed. He faced push back, and eventually someone burned his fitness studio in New York down. He died one year after the fire in his studio, possibly in relation to his injuries sustained in the fire (he fell through the floor and suffered lung damage form smoke inhalation).

Other points

Next point, strength building using conventional equipment at "normal gyms" is beneficial also, in moderation. And it works. But not every trend that can be found in the modern fitness industry is necessarily good for you. It depends on means and ends. I base my point of view on the study of history.

Pilates isn’t like perfect or anything. But it genuinely looks to be fairly good, and I don’t think he (Joseph) was just another charlatan. Modern classes are sometimes imperfect, but that is to be expected from any method. But probably many of them are very good, especially if you get a good instructor.

[There are plenty of intelligent ways to build strength and gain muscle including using weights, gym machines, various pieces of equipment, barbells and dumbbells, body weight exercises, and ordinary sports, as well as outdoor pursuits, as well as resistance/elastic bands, Swiss balls, swimming, and anything under the sun. Even cycling and jogging. But maybe you have to be sensible? Use common sense! And I think that strength matters, and muscle growth matters. And that moderation in both areas is a good idea. And taking a slow and steady approach to both muscle growth and strength building is great. Especially if you’re a normal person. Being weak sucks! It’s no fun. And having bigger muscles (in moderation) is just more efficient than having small muscles.]

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I’m just spamming ideas. Maybe some guy chooses to…

Probably

45 minutes of walking daily, at a normal pace, relatively easy terrain/ground

3-4 gentle bike rides weekly, of 20-30 minutes each

Something like reformer Pilates (formerly known as contrology) to rebuild the connection between brain and muscles (mind and body). Twice weekly for at least 12-24 weeks.

Shinrin Yoku once weekly (the David Solt version: 20 minutes actual Shinrin, and then half an hour just reading a book and having a cup of tea from a thermos - black, with milk)

Daily music meditation practise (you sit in silence on a chair, upright as though about to meditate, then just listen to relaxing music of any kind, like bach or Chopin - I prefer pink Floyd - while focusing your attention on the music). 20 minutes 4-5 times weekly.

Maybe either table tennis or dancing once per week, to rebuild and improve coordination.

Once or twice weekly, have a drink in the evening and LISTEN to a radio show (or radio audio podcast) for 45 minutes, and close your eyes. Don’t always be using your eyes! It is bad for posture.

Food: start with a baseline of meat, potatoes and vegetables (or rice fish and vegetables). And stuff like sandwiches (or better) for lunch.

And have orange juice 3-4 times weekly, and use a centrifugal juicer to make carrot, apple and capsicum juice twice weekly. And cook greens. Instead of abusing your soul with salads or green juices.

It’s just a bunch of ideas. And it is just the starting point. Especially because building strength, building mind-body control and brain-muscle connection is a long term project. As is learning how to modulate your nervous system, and build long term coordination (especially and including things like hand eye coordination, but also poise, grace, timing and rhythm).

[And the maybe eventually gives up the Pilates, or puts it on the back burner to focus on building strength and robustness through stuff like robust bushwalks (aka hiking), body weight movements like air squats, jump rope, hitting a punching bag or whatever, or even kayaking or outdoorsy stuff]

By the way, in my opinion, in the long term, robust, healthy, strong* legs trump things like perfect cardiovascular health, or perfect cardiovascular fitness training methods (like measuring heart rate when you’re on your daily run or whatever). Although cardiovascular health and well being matters too.

*strong doesn’t automatically mean “barbell strong”, instead it means strong from walking, hiking (aka solid bush walks, where you walk for a couple of hours, not for days), gentle cycling, jumping rope, racquet sports, dancing, body weight fitness (squats/lunges/calf raises). Uhh. Gym stuff is nice too, but not essential. As well as all of that sort of stuff.

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Added a note about the Chorleywood process:

Chorleywood:

Chorleywood refers to a prosperous village in Hertfordshire, England, known for its leafy charm, commuter links (Metropolitan Line), and as the birthplace of the revolutionary Chorleywood Bread Process (CBP), a high-speed, low-cost method that uses intense mechanical kneading to create soft, fluffy white bread, dominating supermarket loaves but criticized for sacrificing taste for texture and efficiency.

The Process: Chorleywood Bread Process (CBP)

What it is: A method developed in the late 1950s/early 1960s by the Flour Milling and Baking Research Association in Chorleywood.

How it works: Uses high-speed mixers, added fats, extra yeast, and chemicals to rapidly develop dough, allowing for cheap, low-protein British wheat to be used.

Impact: Enabled mass production of soft, white, long-lasting bread, making bread affordable but leading to a decline in traditional baking and flavor.

Legacy: Forms the basis for much of the UK's industrial bread production today, though often modified.

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IMHO, bread made without the Chorleywood process might be better. I think that the satiety index is worse with this factory made bread, the glycemic index is slightly worse (I'm not a true believer in GI though), and I think that the hyper-palatability of Chorleywood bread and the ease of eating it contributes to over eating and ill health. But also it just tastes like polystyrene and has rubbish texture, so all you can do with it is put peanut butter or jam on it. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I feel that the process creates cheap and ubiquitous bread that is safe and easy to eat (especially, it is easy for people with bad teeth to eat), but it might be suboptimal for some of us. I don't have a good answer. I don't think sourdough is the answer though. I think that sourdough is okay (it's actually really nice, but only as a sometimes thing), but a little over rated. And I think dark rye bread is okay, but I wouldn't want to eat it all the time, if you know what I mean?

*****

These next two segments are probably okay. But they're just ideas.

Here is a fun and interesting idea that I came up with. I call is the "sustainable posture improvement protocol". It is still in development.

Sustainable posture improvement protocol

Every single day, seven days per week, I want you to...

Body-weight exercises (do them according to your taste, or otherwise follow my instructions):

Air Squats 5 sets of 10 (aka body weight squats)

Body-weight lunges 3 sets of 10 (that is five each side, three times over)

Calf raises 3 sets of 10

Women’s pushups 4 sets of 10 (wall pushups are also acceptable if women's pushups are unsuitable or too difficult)

Body-weight ring rows 4 sets of 8

Planks:

This one is complex.... please do two planks of thirty seconds if you're weak? Or try to do four planks of thirty seconds if you're normal and healthy. Or you can do a single two minute plank if you’re reasonably strong.

Sit ups (or crunches): do 3 sets of 12 sit ups, but only if you're comfortable with them. They are optional. And some people aren’t ready for them, and can’t easily benefit from them. Some people may even find them to be harmful. Only do them if they feel appropriate. But please do try to learn how to do sit ups, they are a very good exercise.

Sit ups are optional.

Walking for 45 minutes per day, every day. As though it is a religious rite. When you walk, stand tall and breathe freely and easily. Do not "power walk" or engage in "brisk walking". Do not dawdle either. Walk at a normal pace. Just walk as thigh you are going for a relaxing stroll in the park, or simply trying to get from point A to point B. This is primarily for relaxation, not vigorous exercise. Walk on terrain and ground that is fairly level and even. For example, normal suburban neighbourhoods or quiet city streets are ideal. Well kept gravel paths out in nature of the kind we often have in New Zealand are good, as is walking on a things like a wooden path along the waterfront. Doing laps around a field is perfect, as are laps on a walking track. I don’t want you climbing mountains or walking on soft sand as part of this protocol. Or at least, it does count towards your 45 minutes of daily walking.

After your daily walk, you can stretch your hamstrings, quads and calves, as needed or as desired. But please don't feel that you need to stretch them every day. At least, not in a serious way. A gentle quick stretch daily is acceptable, but you shouldn’t be properly stretching them any more than 3-4 times weekly.

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Sport

Play table tennis (or tennis) or soccer, or any sports. Play them 3 times a week. Any one sport will do. Even if it just a short, friendly game of tennis at the local tennis courts with your colleague or nothing more than table tennis with a friend in your garage for just 20 minutes, that is enough. Ideally, you might go to a casual table tennis night at a local club, or organise a gathering of friends for soccer on a Sunday afternoon. Three light-to-moderate instances of sport weekly. Tennis is perfect, table tennis is perfect. Pickleball and badminton are perfect. You want something where you have to "move your feet", and something where hand eye coordination and reflexes are required. Something that is "alive", without being excessively vigorous (sports such as squash, or touch rugby, or a tackle sport, or boxing, or whatever, are "excessively vigorous" and also too cardiovascularly intense). Nothing "high intensity" is allowed in this protocol.

It can literally just be tennis, table tennis or casual soccer three times a week. It can literally just be casual table tennis in your garage with your flatmate/roommate every week.

Cycling

Please go for a bike ride three times a week. Each ride should be about twenty minutes long. Keep the intensity low. It should be "low intensity steady state" exercise. Try to ride around on fairly easy terrain. Keep your butt on that seat the whole time. It's easy cycling, but you have to do it right. It'll keep your legs healthy, and it is great for keeping your heart, lungs, metabolism, pancreas and blood healthy.

In a pinch, you can swap in 20 minutes on an elliptical, stair machine or rowing machine. But only if you don’t have access to a bike. But don’t do this often. Stationary bikes are okay as well, of course.

A very gentle, easy swim for no more than 20 minutes can be substituted for the bike ride, but only if circumstances dictate it. And only if you are already a confident, habitual swimmer. And only if you are swimming actual lengths. The bike ride is better.

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Music meditation

Please do two sets of 25 minutes or "music meditation", taken in the evening, with a five minute break in between, and some light stretches afterwards. Here is how you do it... sit on a chair, close your eyes, and listen to music quietly, and do it with the same upright posture as meditation, and a similar attitude of mind/heart. The breath itself is "healing". But mostly it is the down time itself that helps you.

[Or otherwise, you just sit and chill while listening to music. But no reading allowed, or conversation. You have to say, "I'm just listening to music, and not doing any work that requires me to focus my eyes intensely. I'm always hunched over reading something, and straining my eyes! They need a break and so do I."]

Light stretches

For the light stretches, post music meditation, here is what you do. First, do any quick stretches that you enjoy. Secondly, and then you do "draw the bow* a bunch of times (it is a move borrowed from qigong). Also do “lifting the sky”, a handful of times. And also touch your toes a few times (normal toe touches, not special/qigong ones). Oh, and roll your shoulders backwards a few times. Shake it all out. Yawn and stretch and flex. Do about 20 star jumps, then punch the air 10 times in a chill and relaxed manner, do high knee marching for ten seconds, with your arms moving at the same time, and you're done.

*Or if you hate traditional Asian martial arts and qigong, do ten Mr Burns' Iroquois Twists from The Simpsons (in King Sized Homer, season 7). I am kind of joking about these, but they’re actually perfect. And that is the joke when it comes to Mr Burns and his fitness class. Link here. Note: you could also do 10 “Usain Bolt’s” (five each side). Or just do a dance that involves using one’s arms. It actually doesn’t matter. Just pick anything.

Edit: if you do your music meditation, or listening to the radio, later in the evening, or shortly before bed, I am going to suggest shifting the light stretches to a point just after the walk, or after the light-moderate body weight exercises. Perhaps you walk, then do the body weight exercises, then do the gentle stretches, and then you’re done. And you do this 7 days a week (you can take Sunday off if you’re a Christian, or Saturday off if you’re a Jew or a Seventh Day Adventist). You get the sports and cycling done at any point throughout the week (it doesn’t need to be evenly spread out, just you have to avoid too anything gruelling or high intensity). If you occasionally forget to do the “light stretches”, then that is okay.

***

As for music.

I find that the best sort of music for sitting quietly is stuff like:

Pink Floyd, dark side of the moon, wish you were here, the wall and the song “echoes” from meddle. I like St Matthew Passion by Bach, as well as his cello concerto, Mozart’s Requiem and Chopin's nocturnes are also very relaxing. Something like “Minutes to Midnight” by Linkin Park is also fairly relaxing, but perhaps that is a generational thing. And each person will have their own tastes and preferences when it comes to music to relax to. I also liked relaxing while listening to things like My Chemical Romance, Nirvana or Metric. The Beatles are also good (Abbey Road, side two). It’s all about what you find most suitable for sitting there doing nothing.

Version two (a substitute for music meditation).

If you absolutely can’t abide listening to music while maintaining an appropriate upright seated posture, then just listen to a radio show for two sets of 25 minutes. Have a cup of tea, coffee, herbal tea, or a drink (beer or whiskey - only one, and only if your day is almost at an end, it relaxes the muscles slightly and opens up the blood vessels). Good radio stations and shows to listen to might include BBC radio four, TwiT, RNZ, NPR (one of their story telling shows), 99% invisible, the incomparable, the history of rome by Mike Duncan, or anything like that. Something relaxing and easy to “zone out” to like TwiT is good, or at least it used to be a decade ago. The only point is that it has to be time spent without reading or writing anything or focussing your eyes on anything important, like knitting, cross-stitch or conversation. Take a break!

For best results, do this close to bed time, and don’t read afterwards or spend ages on your phone before bed.

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Do this protocol for 3-6 months.

You are TOTALLY banned from "high intensity" exercise and "lifting heavy" for the duration of this protocol. But you do have to do the body weight exercises such as squats and lunges! You are also banned from gruelling cardio.

Note: here is a quick note about pushups. Some people's bodies aren't suited to push ups, and they hurt, or are excessively hard. If this is you, don't beat yourself up! Just "make do" with wall pushups until you can do women's pushups. Once your body improves, you might find that push ups get easier! Something similar is true of sit ups. Not everyone is “ready” for sit ups, or able to properly benefit from them.

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Here is a random add on:

If you can go to 10 weeks of dancing lessons in any one of: rock and roll, ballroom dancing, or swing dancing, then that is good. And if you can already dance, just go along to the regular club nights to enjoy dancing and learn new skills. It is very, very good for you because it forces you to move your feet a bit. Don't be weird about "posture" when dancing though. It just gives you feet that are more alive. It’s all about being lighter our feet. It’s just a “nervous system” thing. Any decent sociable dancing might probably do the job. This part is optional. Maybe so if after the main protocol is over and done with.

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This is a rough draft:

Here is another fun idea:

Demographic: this is for men under the age of thirty who are healthy and not badly overweight (a little padding isn’t the end of the world though). If you have old injuries that you haven’t recovered from, then maybe it isn’t for you. It’s suitable for people who aren’t hugely athletic, maybe they spent too much time on the computer growing up. Maybe they live a sedentary lifestyle, maybe they don’t. Please use this post as a starting point, like the opening of a conversation that asks, “what exactly is normal? What is sensible? What is wise, reasonable, appropriate, or prudent.”

It is called the "achievable and moderate approach to learning self defence for the sake of self preservation by learning to fight".

The moderate and achievable approach:

Phase One: 6-12 months

45 minutes of walking daily (for relaxation)

Play one racquet sport 2-3 times weekly (table tennis is best, but badminton and pickleball are good too. Tennis is acceptable if you already know how to play). Play this sport on a casual, relaxed basis. Preferably with friends. For example, you might go to a casual table tennis night at the local table tennis venue once weekly for two hours, and then also play table tennis in your garage twice a week with your cousin or friend. It’s just to get you moving. It’s good for your reflexes and your hand-eye coordination. Racquet sports also force you to move your feet. It’s also good for building what I call “appropriate, general base-line physical activity”. By the way, table tennis is ubiquitous in many parts of the world, and injury rates are very low. It’s a great game/sport to play on a casual basis.

Play one team ball sport 1-2 times weekly (soccer is ideal, but basketball, netball, touch rugby, hockey or anything else is okay too. Even cricket or softball would be better than nothing). This will help you to build up a little bit more athletic ability, through basic experience. It will also improve overall cardiovascular fitness and improve your ability to run a little bit. Play this on a casual basis as well. For example, you might arrange to have a regular weekly get together with friends (or acquaintances you met online) on a Sunday to play a game of soccer at a local park, or inside an enclosed indoor venue. And then follow up the game of soccer with a relaxed game of non-stop cricket.

Buy the following items for the garage (set them up, but don't bother to use them): one pair of 16 oz gloves (you can go up or down 2 oz if you'd prefer), one pair of ordinary boxing wraps, one medium weight boxing bag (pick something equal to 50% of your weight, if you’re overweight, then pick a bag that’s a little lighter than half your bodyweight), one high quality jump rope, maybe a really good speed bag. This is what I call an “economics and psychology” hack. If you buy them, you’ll use them someday.

Go to shotokan classes twice weekly (if you can find one). As far as martial arts go, it is a good balance of effectiveness, healthy and appropriate physical training, meeting new people, preparing your body for other physical pursuits, and self improvement. It’s a good type of training if you want to learn how to defend yourself, and the injury rates aren’t nearly as bad as they are in things like boxing, Muay Thai, BJJ, kyukoshin or other combat sports and martial arts. It is a good martial art in-and-of-itself, and it will train you in such a manner that things like boxing will be easier to get into as well, if you so desire. If you’re a normal guy, and unfit but healthy, if you’re untrained but enthusiastic, then 6-12 months of shotokan will change your life. Your coordination will improve, your confidence will improve, your posture will improve, and you’ll learn how to fight. You can ignore 90% of what you hear online about “McDojos”, just go to Karate. It’s good enough. It’s more than good enough. It will give you some skills, education and training that will last you a lifetime.

If you’re uncertain about the effectiveness of karate as your primary form of training, just google “mma people who did karate, kickboxers who did karate” and you’ll find a ton of people who started out in karate. It’s actually a really, really good way to start out, because you learn a lot, but you’re not getting hit in the face a whole bunch. And it trains the body and the mind. And you don’t need to have extraordinarily high levels of cardio, strength and conditioning to enjoy it and benefit from it. Whereas you need decent conditioning, cardio and strength to enjoy things like boxing, kickboxing and Muay Thai. That is, the barriers to entry for boxing, kickboxing and Muay Thai are pretty high in terms of cardio and conditioning.

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Phase Two: 3 months

Quit Shotokan and just get fit.

In this phase, you quit the karate. And just focus on fitness. You’ll sign up for boxing in twelve weeks.

Do some cardio of any suitable kind, choose whatever is easiest for you. Do it just three times a week. Jogging is the best form of cardio for those who want to do boxing, or at least it’s traditional. Things like cycling, swimming, using the rowing machine and using the elliptical machine are all other solid options.

Learn to jump rope. Practise it until you get good at it. Do plenty of ordinary jump rope. Learn how to do a basic boxers’ jump rope at some point (you shift your weight from foot to foot as you jump). But practise whatever type of jump rope feels best for you. Boxing is a fundamental, basic foundational skill for someone who wants to box, or be good at punching, kicking or otherwise hitting people.

Practise: push ups, sit ups, lunges, squats, planks, side planks, maybe sit ups with a twist (aka rugby sit ups).

Maybe start doing some bag work, both normal bag work and perhaps a little speed bag work.

You can quit the two casual sports you have been playing. The two sports from the previous phase are now optional. Maybe keep table tennis, it's healthy for you and great for both reflexes and hand-eye coordination. Or quit the sports, and focus on improving your fitness.

You need to be comfortable with doing five sets of 12 pushups daily before you can even think about moving into phase three. ___But the basic standard is five sets of twenty. You should ideally be capable of doing five sets of twenty push ups at least thrice weekly before moving on to phase three. It will save you time in the long run to get good at push ups now.__

You should be comfortable with five sets of twelve squats daily, and capable of doing five sets of twenty squats without too much strain. Don’t do five sets of twenty squats every day though. It could be three days a week doing five sets of twenty squats, and the other four days it is just five sets of twelve. Do whatever works for you when it comes to body weight squats.

You should be able to do three planks each lasting ninety seconds. These should be resting on your forearms. And you should be able to do side planks as well. There’s no strict requirement when it comes to the training frequency for these though, just learn them.

You should be quite capable of doing three sets of twelve sit ups without any real hassle. You should be *doing* more sit ups than this, but you at least need to be capable of that standard. (You should have already been comfortable with that after doing shotokan though. A lot of people have been doing tons of pushups and sit ups for years though. It’s totally normal to practise those moves for years and years on end. It’s okay if you’re a little behind other people. These things take time.) I’m not actually sure what the standard should be for sit ups before moving into the next phase though. Just be sensible and use your own judgement.

Please learn to do "rugby crunches", that is sit ups where you sit up and then touch your elbow to the opposite knee (you lift your knee to do it). Don't worry about repetitions for this benchmark/test. I can't find a good YouTube video for this one.

You need to be able to do three sets of three minutes jump rope.

And lastly, do something for your front delts. Just do something that will make it easy enough for you to keep your hands up in sparring. Practising on the speed bag is great for your delts, and will make it easier for you to “keep your guard up” in boxing. The beauty of the speed bag is that it conditions your shoulders (delts and traps), making it much easier to keep your hands up in sparring. I.e. to keep your guard. Or just do “front delt raises” with fairly light dumbbells. Or else you can't keep your hands up in sparring!

(Ps: it really helps to have some decent conditioning before you step into the ring the first time to spar. So if you have decent conditioning, cardio and have thrown a punch before in karate class, it helps. Or else you won’t enjoy it as much. And by the way, conditioning isn’t all about “cardio” or pure “strength”. It’s has a lot to do with “being used to” doing certain things. So if you’ve been throwing karate punches for over a year in karate, and hitting the speed bag and normal weight boxing bag, you’ll find sparring easier. Don’t over think it. But you do build conditioning when you attend a boxing club, so you don’t have to be perfect before you show up. Use common sense!)

Phase three:

Do 4-5 months boxing. Just go to a club that meets and practises twice weekly. Let them teach you whatever they want to teach you. And let them take the lead on which material to learn and how best to practice. Work on your overall fitness as well.

And then quit after 4-5 months. Quit while you’re ahead!

For further explanation of how phase three works:

(When I went to boxing as a 15 year old, you just showed up and did bag work. You got there and they said, “can you tie your wraps? And just go do bag work”. And we were all just rotated around various bags, and switched from station to station to when they told you to switch. And there was loud music. It was just lots of bag work. We also had warm ups, focus mitt work sometimes, medicine ball training, jump rope, we did push ups and sit ups out on the concrete, we had to job to warmup. We did sparring drills. I don't think I ever learned a thing about footwork in class. I might be lying, about that last one. But we just had to figure out a lot of stuff for ourselves. I had to google some stuff. I really enjoyed it. They taught me a bit about my stance, and gave me a few pointers on punching technique. The moral of the story, is that you just have to get in there and try stuff out).

Ask them for advice on stance, punching and bag work. Ask for advice on how to jump rope, how to get fit and stay fit, and how to shadow box. Especially ask them for some advice on how to adopt a good stance, how to punch properly, and how to do bag work. Less footwork stuff, and more jump rope, stance, punching and bag work (this might be a controversial point). [However, you can just do drills and shadow boxing for footwork, without feeling obliged to "apply" any of it in sparring. Also, you can just “make it up as you go” for how you "move your feet" in the ring, just so long as you stay light. That is merely personal opinion. Maybe, you “make it up as you go” when you soar, but somewhere along the way you still do some drill. Anyway, focus on learning to maintain a good stance, keep your guard up, learn to punch, do bag work, and plenty of it. And jump rope a lot, and build up your basic, fundamental foundations in fitness. After that, a bit of sparring and shadow boxing are a really good idea. And after that, maybe practise a variety of drills, including but not limited to footwork drills.]

Some warnings and advice:

But don't let them get you into the ring too quickly. And when they do get you into the ring, see if they can do "limited sparring", like.. a practise session where you use your jab hand only, straight punches only, no hooks. And where you aim for the forehead of the headgear? And you use your right hand only for defence.

That is, a practise session of “limited sparring” of left hand jabs only, and right hand guard and block only. No hits to the face, aim for the forehead. Wear headgear, move around plenty. (Here is a hint for that practise session, every time you parry a jab, circle to your left and throw a jab of your own. Just keep on moving.

But take it slow. After you have 4-5 months experience, please quit. You just need a quick bit of education and experience in this area.

Once you're comfortable with "limited sparring" (jab hand only) and your fitness is good enough, do just a little bit of proper sparring (light sparring only at first for the first few weeks, then by agreement increase the pace and how hard you hit, but _never_ full force against friends. Not even full force against their body or guard.). And then quit while you're ahead. Sparring is actually the best part of training in boxing (or maybe the second best, just after bag work). It is certainly the most fun! But then wear and tear is an issue... so maybe get out of the sport before you're too into it. You ought not to need too many "robust" or "vigorous" sparring sessions to be able to learn to “defend yourself for the sake of self preservation through learning to fight”. And that was the “design brief” or mission statement anyway.

I'm just getting you basic stuff for self defence for the sake of self preservation through learning to fight, while avoiding too much wear and tear. That means a few robust sparring sessions and a bunch of light ones are enough for you to "test" out your skills

But focus on stance, punching, bag work, jump rope, fitness, and learning to shadow box more than sparring, at least at first. Simply knowing how to maintain your stance, keep your guard up, hit them hard and stay mobile might be good enough for the sake of self defence.

Note: shadow boxing won't make much sense until you have a bit of experience sparring.

Maybe even only 3 months boxing is fine. I'm thinking of cost/benefit ratios and risk reward ratios here. It’s all about making sensible investments when it comes to your time, money, energy and physical wellbeing, while protecting one of your biggest assets (that it, yourself! Your brain, body, health, face and teeth etc. And for those of you don’t know, stuff like dental injuries and emergency dental work are a nightmare. And absurdly expensive. Take care of your teeth and face! It’s a risk/reward, cost/benefit, investment thing! Boxing is legitimately a somewhat insane and daft thing to do long term. It’s just that some people like doing something insane and daft. Life can be a pick your poison thing).

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Phase four:

Maintenance.

45 minutes walking daily

1-2 normal casual sports (like table tennis or soccer)

Do just enough push ups, sit ups, squats, lunges to keep healthy; and or other light/moderate strength/resistance training

Jump rope a little

And sometimes do a little bag work. Nothing special.

And maybe do a little shadow boxing (using your experience sparring as material for visualisation etc).

Just get on with your life.

Then leave it in the rear view mirror.

Leave it behind.

Uhh. You can still practice, but leave it behind. You completed the course.

****

Ps: if sometime down the road, you want a new hobby, then 6 months judo is also a massively awesome thing to do. But it is “out of scope” for this protocol.

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^ think of some of this stuff kind of like the antidote to “misinformation”. It sort of just counteracts it. Merely reading a lot of this stuff reduces the impact of misinformation. The ideas I post aren’t really always ready for “prime time” or even implementation (they need testing, and they need work). But they might be able to get you moving in the right direction. Towards “normal”, but the sensible, prudent version of normal. It will help you to see things in a more clear headed manner. And it might just help you to “pick the low hanging fruit” and make prudent decisions when it comes to making wise investments with your time and energy.

A lot of the ideas and underlying themes come from my education in accounting at university. Things like price vs value. You’re analysing the fundamentals, like getting the best fundamental value, and the best price. While protecting the capital. That will be lost on some people. But it is okay. It’s kind of like value investment.

Oh, and if all you do is phase one, you’re ahead of a lot of the game at your age.

****

Why karate first? Well, it is because a sport like boxing is really hard to get into if you’re a normal guy. And the learning curve is steep. And if you’ve done 6-12 months karate first, it’s way easier to get into boxing.

What type of karate? Honestly, there are other types that can work just fine. But I picked shotokan because it’s one of the more popular. And I think there is less wear and tear associated with this type of karate. They don’t bash you about to toughen you up, and they don’t do full contact sparring. They love doing point sparring. And they don’t rush you into sparring too fast. I think that these are all positive signs. But there are other kinds too. Use your own judgement. Something like goji ryu sounds okay. Seido sounds good. Even kempo might be highly appropriate (I never did Shotokan, but I did do about 6 sessions of Kempo at about the age of 15/16, just as I was getting into boxing). Kyokushin might be okay for some people, but they try to condition your body by hitting you. They do this to toughen you up, but I don’t think that it is healthy or sensible to do too much of this. But even then, the Kyokushin kata might be very beneficial! I think shotokan looks like the smartest one for normal people. It has a strong emphasis on kata, and kata is good pedagogy. And they don’t tend to do a bunch of bare knuckle sparring, which is sensible to avoid. Due to wear and tear. Try to do something that trains you to be stronger, quicker and better coordinated, but doesn’t wear you down or hurt you too much. Also, try not to run the risk of too much damage to your face or teeth, or not too frequently. It’s all about sensible risk to reward ratios and sensible cost benefit calculations. By the way, a lot of top notch competitive fighters started out learning a martial art from Asia, like karate, kung fu or taekwondo. Especially karate. For example, GSP got their start in Karate. Ray Sefo did kung fu before he did kickboxing. Bas Rutten famously started out in taekwondo. Not that you’re training to be a competitive fighter! Remember the goal here, the mission statement, the objectives, and avoid mission creep. It is called the "achievable and moderate approach to learning self defence for the sake of self preservation by learning to fight". And we want to avoid too much wear and tear, and try to be prudent about avoiding excessive risk.

And a few months getting extra fit before going to boxing can help too. It’s about getting the best bang for your bunch, while minimising wear and tear on the body. It’s about getting the best return on investment, while managing the level of risk. And getting in-and-out of these things fast, instead of spending a lifetime training hard, as a lifelong martial artist.

One more point, it’s about “the training” more than it is about the specific style. But the style does matter too. And the trainer matters too! As well as fitness, strength and conditioning!

Appendix A:

Here is an example of a good bag (for a lightweight, 60kg):

https://www.nzboxer.com/punch-bags-plus/nz-boxer-medium-punchbag

Or at least I think it’s a good example.

Example of a speed bag here:

https://www.nzboxer.com/pro-ultimate-speed-ball-platform-adjustable

You don’t really need one of these though.

You don’t need a “heavy bag”, a super heavy bag, an uppercut bag, or a torso dummy, a long bag or any of those things. Just one basic bag of a “medium weight” hanging from the rafters of your garage. Focus mitts are useful, as are good, high quality Thai pads. But you don’t need those at home either. Just the basic “medium weight bag”, a jump rope, a pair of basic wraps, and a pair of 16 oz gloves. A high quality speed bag is an optional add on, but they’re really expensive!

Edit: I forgot to put this in! I buried the lede. It’s about statistics and odds! Self defence is all about statistics and odds. It is about improving your chances of coping with and dealing with an incident without getting hurt badly. Coming out ahead. But there’s always a tougher guy. It’s improving your odds of winning, and avoiding or minimising damage taken. But if you’ve done a bit of karate, got fit, done a few months of boxing, you’ve greatly improved your odds of coming out ahead if an idiot tries to punch you. It means you can move around, dodge and block punches, and throw a solid one-two punch. And maybe a few other moves. And you’re familiar with those sorts of things.

*****

I like this guy:

https://youtu.be/A35tAWjohhQ?si=s1b0foHSFqBoHaJp

I think he’s great. He stays mobile, and so should you.

By the way, if you’re worried about footwork. Just jump rope lots. And wear good shoes.

Update:

Jump rope is widely used by professional boxers to improve footwork, cardiovascular endurance, and coordination. It is a standard, essential tool for building the agility needed for boxing.

You should do it even if you aren’t a boxer (such as if you train in karate)(under this program). It’s fantastic! If you want to punch, and if you want to move around quickly and stay agile, mobile and quick on your feet, you need a jump rope!

It is one of the fundamentals (in my humble opinion).

****

Addition:

Ps: if you're under 17, just do 6-12 months of judo or wrestling first. That is, make sure you're moderately fit first (and if you're not fit, get moderately fit first). And also make sure you have tolerable coordination and reflexes. And if you don't have them, develop them through basic sports such as tennis, soccer and table tennis. (You don’t need massive amounts of fitness or coordination to try out judo or wrestling as a teenager, but you do need some general athletic ability, fitness and coordination to really enjoy them). Then do 6-12 months judo or wrestling. Then make sure you learn something later that involves punching and striking. That could maybe be a few months (3-12 months) of karate, and then a bit of boxing. Try to minimise your time phaffing about or engaging in boxing though. There is a lot of wear and tear. Judo is the best thing ever. It’s safer and more fun than most, and you learn a lot, and get a lot of experience. The older guys (twenties) should do a year of shotokan (including a year of kata) before they do anything, because they're already decrepit. And need to prepare their body and mind properly for training (jokes haha, kinda joking, kinda not). That’s why I wrote the above program (self defense stuff). (extra note: for teenagers, the standard for fitness to get into judo or wrestling as a sport, is that you’ve basically played a sport before, you’re in the habit of playing a sport, any sensible sport, and you can run around a field without being too puffed. You can actually do a crash course in this if you really needed to).

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The big question though, is why?

Why? What is the motivation behind the whole protocol for self defence for the sake of self preservation by means of learning to fight?

It’s the boy Scouts motto: be prepared!

And also, “do your best” (the cub scouts motto).

(Girl guides have the same motto too).

You can actually just read the Boy Scouts book, and a book by the founder of judo. Or maybe the Gene Tunney book. You might glean some insights from all of those.

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Jump rope

Basic fit system

Pareto Principle and Diminishing Returns

A few ideas

Quadrupeds:

Basic fit system draft

Draft version of basic fit

General movement education:

For example:

Links:

Idea, blue sky thinking

Outside of basic fit… totally outside…

Pull ups and dogma

Climbing for Nervous System Wellbeing

Pehr Henrik Ling

Jack LaLanne

Overtraining

Food Faddism, aka orthorexia

Other fitness “influencers”

Basic fit system

Pull ups and dogma

Climbing for Nervous System Wellbeing

Pehr Henrik Ling

Jack LaLanne

Overtraining

Food Faddism, aka orthorexia

Other fitness “influencers”

Diet Quacks and food faddists

Conclusions

Scientists

Explode bad thinking

Japanese Forest Bathing

Sustainable posture improvement protocol

It is called the "achievable and moderate approach to learning self defence for the sake of self preservation by learning to fight".

The moderate and achievable approach:

Update:

Jump rope is widely used by professional boxers to improve footwork, cardiovascular endurance, and coordination. It is a standard, essential tool for building the agility needed for boxing.

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