Speaking of sitting around, sheltering in place, eating and drinking holiday cheer, etc.
From The Wall Street Journal:
One of the biggest myths about exercise is that it’s natural. If anything, human instincts lean more toward taking a nap. Want to feel bad about skipping a workout? Blame evolution.
Daniel E. Lieberman argues this theory in his new book “Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding,” which tips some of the fitness world’s most sacred cows. Everyone knows exercise is good for them, yet studies show most people don’t get enough of it. Mr. Lieberman set out to find out why, and the answers, he hopes, will help remove some of the shame people feel about their own inactivity that makes it even harder to get moving.
Mr. Lieberman criticizes people he calls “exercists” who brag about how much they work out and pass judgment on the less fit as unnaturally lazy. Those who take the escalator instead of the stairs are not guilty of the sin of sloth, he writes, but doing what they were evolved to do—saving energy only for what is necessary or recreational.
Other highlights from the book out Jan. 5: People who believe brutal cross-training workouts bring them closer to the brawny body that belonged to their ancient forebears probably are not familiar with research that shows Neanderthals were only slightly more muscular than today’s regular humans. Fitness buffs who think civilization’s pampering has muted our natural strength might not realize that a profoundly inactive couch potato moves more than a typical chimpanzee in a day. As for our natural talents, it bears noting that the average person runs as fast as a hippo.
. . . .
I wonder how people who do high-intensity cardio with weight training will respond to this book. I feel like you’re calling out CrossFit in particular.
I guess I am. I’ve done some CrossFit workouts, they’re great. I’m not anti-CrossFit. But there’s this CrossFit mystique that your inner primal macho ripped hunter-gatherer ancestor is who you were meant to be. If that gets you happy, that’s fine, all power to you, but you don’t have to make the rest of us feel bad for not doing these intense crazy workouts. They’re not necessary.
You get this sense by reading some books or popular articles that those of us who are contaminated by civilization are somehow abnormal because we don’t want to get out of bed and run an ultramarathon or go to the gym and lift 300 pounds. Our ancestors never did that and they would think it’s crazy because they were struggling to survive with limited food.
. . . .
From an evolutionary standpoint, how do you explain people who love to exercise?
It’s not that we don’t have rewards for being physically active. Our brain produces this wonderful mix of chemicals that makes us glad we’ve exercised. The sad part of the equation is that our brain doesn’t create these chemicals to get us to exercise. We’ve turned something normal and simple and basic into a virtue signaling thing.
It’s like people who are intolerant of other peoples’ weight. Most people in America are now overweight. They’re not overweight because of some fault of their own and they’re struggling, and yet there are people out there who are unacceptably mean to people who are struggling. I think we need to have the same level of compassion toward people who are struggling to exercise. There’s nothing wrong with them.
Do you disagree with those who call sitting the new smoking?
Let’s relax. The chair is not the enemy.
Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal (PG apologizes for the paywall, but hasn’t figured out a way around it.)
PG notes he usually doesn’t include two posts from the same source on the same day and hopes all the lawyers who work for the Wall Street Journal are skiing in New Hampshire or otherwise distracted. However, a great many of those writers and editors who work for news publications that cover traditional publishing seem to be experimenting with how it would feel to be permanently unemployed over this holiday break.
PG won’t name names, but some online publications that find something or several somethings to post about traditional publishing every day are running the same headlines they were before Christmas.
I am a person that just cannot “exercise.”
I walk quite a bit – but that is because I am going somewhere.
I lift and carry weights around most days – but that is to get things (lumber, pavers, rocks, tools, etc.) from point A to point B.
I don’t know if this inability to just “exercise” is genetic or not, but all of my ancestors, as far as we ever could trace, were farmers, which only changed completely in my generation. Farmers do not “exercise.”
Therein lies the divide between rote activity as “exercise” and necessary activity that, as a side effect, results in the same effects as “exercise”. People in physical activities don’t need to “exercise”, which is really a recent upper class invention, not a natural element of human makeup.
That much the OP got right.
The same is true of cats: ferrals and roamers don’t exercise but housecats run sprints.
For me, it’s not so binary. Everyday, I try to go out onto my property to “do some work”: chopping up dead trees, digging fence post holes, cleaning things, lifting, dragging, pushing, etc. Some of these things are optional, some are necessary. Am I upper class? No. Am I aware that I’m also getting good “exercise”? Yes. Definitely.
Then there’s Swimming, which is a world of its own. It’s more Spiritual than anything else. And it’s the perfect Exercise. I’ll be swimming long after I’ve stopped doing everything else.
Do you exercise just to exercise?
Or is the exercise the consequence of something else? Catching fresh air, walking to the store or park? Purpose.
That’s pretty binary.
I believe you’re missing my point. I know what exercise is and can do (to help me be healthy in body, mind, and spirit). I am well-read on the subject. And so I find ways to incorporate certain activities into my lifestyle that promote that idea. Some have purpose, some don’t. Some are a mix.
I own a chainsaw. I could use it to cut up a dead pine tree in less than 30 mins. Probably 15. Instead, I use a small hand saw and take two weeks to do the same job.
If you want to call that “binary,” fine. I call it “active life.” Or maybe better: “Caveman Life.” 😉
Amazon delivered my new rip saw today. It’s a hand saw with teeth cut for sawing along the grain. My old saw is just fine, but this was such a good deal I grabbed it.
I rip my own boards when making something. That means I saw through the the middle of the board, from top to bottom. A one-inch thick board becomes two half-inch thick boards of the same length and width.
Can I buy half-inch thick boards? Yes. Can I run a one-inch board through a band saw? Yes. Can I grab my rip saw and do it by hand? Yes.
We’re saying the same thing.
Your “exercise” is the product of something *else* you choose to do. Whatever it is, however you do it.
It achieves something necessary.
That is how cavemen “exercised”: getting food, building shelter, staying alive. That is natural to the species, no?
I like to quote an old friend: Mark Sisson, who invented the Primal movement (sort of an offshoot of Paleo):
• Get to bed by 10:00pm (I’m guilty on that one)
• Raise your heart rate every day (yep, I do that)
• Do some bodyweight exercises every day (yep, do that)
Because I’m now doing a lot of writing/editing/designing, and thereby, basically stationary, I make a point of getting exercise every day. 30-45 mins or so. And swimming as much as possible. All of which feels very natural to someone like me who’s in his seventh decade.
One of the biggest myths about exercise is that it’s natural.
I’ve literally never heard anyone claim this until this story. I’ve always understood that the point of exercise is that our lives are “unnatural” compared to how people lived without modern conveniences. Once, I noticed an uncle of mine had ripped abs, and I think he was about 60-something at the time.
Why was he “ripped”?
Because for most of his life electricity wasn’t an option. So he and his brothers and cousins would build their own boats and houses. And their idea of going fishing was to dive in the ocean and go get the fish. You don’t need to exercise if you’re always engaged in manual labor or catching your own food. Or if you’re washing your clothes by hand, and going to the well to get the water.
On the plus side, though, you will look much younger if you can at least plug in Black & Decker to build your boat, and Maytag to wash your clothes. That’s one one trade-off.
The Wang Lung character in “The Good Earth” at one point noticed his eldest son was weaker and softer than he, because Wang was always working in the field as a farmer, and the son was a scholar who sat inside all day. He was old, the son was young, but Wang knew his son was no match for him (there is no fight scene in this story). I always understood exercise to be for sedentary people like the scholarly son; it’s puzzling that anyone would mistake exercise as “natural” in that context.
inactive couch potato moves more than a typical chimpanzee in a day. Really? One of these creatures must always use its muscles to do every task and get its own food, and the other one can use machines and call for delivery, and their lifestyles are comparable?
Plus, I thought chimps are supposed to be stronger than humans? Until now, I thought it was because they’re always using their muscles; even when they’re “sitting” they may be engaged in manual labor. I’m extremely skeptical that the chimps are wholly inactive when they’re not “moving.” Unless Jack Hanna & ilk weigh in on this, I’m not going to take the OP’s claim too seriously 🙂
I read the piece as referring to ritualistic exercisers.
The old time folks weren’t exercising for the sake of exercise; their physical activities were required to survive whereas today’s survival activities are less physical but no less necessary.
And often taking care of sedentary survival and having a life leaves little if any time for cross-training, pilates, running, or whatever.
His point strikes me as valid; ritualistic non-survival Exercise is no more a natural part of human existence than dietetically correct or vegan eating. Doesn’t mean that striving for a healthy lifestyle is wrong, just that it is a personal choice and exercise in particular is not always doable or even desirable. The book is still out on the optimum level of activity for longevity. Many forms of exercise take their tool on bones and joints and end up a net negative on quality of life.
I wasn’t disagreeing that ritualistic exercise isn’t natural, my surprise was the idea that anyone thought it was natural. Until the article, I assumed everyone recognized that ritualistic exercise was to counterbalance a more sedentary lifestyle.
Agreed on the toll exercise can take; it always seems joggers and runners have knee or hip problems. A coworker in his early 30s needed his hips replaced on account of all that running he does as exercise. Hip replacements for healthy young people just seems horribly wrong.
I wasn’t disagreeing that ritualistic exercise isn’t natural, my surprise was the idea that anyone thought it was natural.
For many, physical activity is natural, regardless of why it is done.
I had a friend who was always up to something: running, skiing, cycling.
He had his first knee operation before 30.
It wasn’t his last procedure.
By now he’s probably bionic.
The problem with modern lifespans is you often end up writing checks your body can’t cover. And unlike the cavemen, you do live long enough to deal with the damages. Often a long, long, time…
As for our natural talents, it bears noting that the average person runs as fast as a hippo.
I’m not sure that works as intended.
The article is making so many points that are just weird. The average human runs slower than the average predator in general. We outwit animals, not outrun them. At most we can run about 28 miles an hour, for about 15 yards, and then we tap out.
Allegedly a top, world-record setting human can run a mile in 2 1/2 minutes. That’s fine, but a gray wolf has already caught up to that human, because it would take them 1 1/2 minutes to run that same mile. Even prey animals, e.g., horses and rabbits, will run faster than us, which is probably why rabbits are hunted with snares.
It sounds like the writer is getting into strange arguments with strange people. But he managed to get a whole book out of it, so good for him?
Humans make up for speed with endurance. We sweat and shed excess heat by perspiring, so people can for run longer than a horse, wolf, or animals we used to hunt.
And since we’re talking about “cavemen,” there is circumstantial evidence that Neanderthals were better suited to sprinting vs. the longer endurance potential of Sapiens. And that’s how I dramatize it in my Neanderthal series.
Intrigued … do you have them using their speed to hunt animals that humans have to tire out first? I’m imagining your characters using their superior speed to outrun wolves or bears, either to catch them or escape from them. Or do they use it against human characters?
I focus more on the differences in strength between the two species (or sub-species, depending on your POV). And also on their improved night vision. And the conflicts are both people-to-animals AND people-to-people. The people-to-people ones are the more interesting, of course.
Here’s an interesting resource talking about Neanderthal legs and feet anatomy vs. Sapiens: “The truth, though, is that Homo sapiens are well-designed for loping along for long distances across open landscapes—especially when compared to Neanderthals. They had legs and feet that, recent research suggests, were better suited to sprinting, squatting, and hilly hiking than to running. […]”
https://www.sapiens.org/column/field-trips/neanderthal-locomotion/
Sub-species sounds a bit more accurate if we buy into the extensive crossbreeding theory. Which I’m not totally convinced of; the shared genes might be remnants of a common ancestor (erectus?).
For that matter, I’m skeptical that crossbreeding, if it occurred extensively, was all that…friendly…
Human tribalism history suggests any crossbreeding with neanderthals would be closer to the Romans and tbe Sabines.
In my books, it’s very friendly. Make love, not war.
And look where that got them. 😉
I confess to being shaky on this, but I think sub-Saharan Africans lack the genes.
[replying to Elliot321 because no more room on the nested Reply tree]
“I confess to being shaky on this, but I think sub-Saharan Africans lack the genes.”
That’s been revised as of new research this year. They’ve got ’em.
Makes it more likely the genes pre-date the (potential) crossbreeding. My skepticism just grew stronger. The kin/stranger divide is rooted deep in sapiens-sapiens.
Cool info, thanks. On the dying out front, I liked the scenario in the EM Foner’s EarthCent series, where alien AI whisked the Neanderthals off of Earth because they realized the humans were going to wipe them out otherwise.
The twist is that the continuing existence of Neanderthals is discovered after a first contact incident, where it turns out the Neanderthals thrived on another planet, and developed FTL travel. The humans are still trying to figure out how to make FTL drives.
“On the dying out front, I liked the scenario in the EM Foner’s EarthCent series, where alien AI whisked the Neanderthals off of Earth because they realized the humans were going to wipe them out otherwise. […]”
Thanks. Will have to check these out. Not a lot of contemporary Neanderthal fiction around. And I like the Humerous SciFi genre approach.
I can never predict what posts will generate comments and what posts will not.
Jumping into this conversation, I’ll suggest that humans also make up for a lack of speed with spears and rifles as well.
Spears and atlatls 😉
🙂 The weapons go under the “outwit” category.
Then again, I also liked the scene in “Footfall” where the alien invaders are suddenly terrified of humans when they discover the implications of our hands having both bones and opposable thumbs.
Humans make up for a lot of things by being social animals. Social grouping is a huge evolutionary advantage. The most severe punishment that can be dealt someone in a primitive culture is to be cast out from the social group – it is essentially a passive death sentence.
Fire and tools do help quite a bit as well.
Endurance, yes, we’re the persistence hunters. We have the stamina, the lower life forms have the speed. Early man likely said, “Let em run, they’ll die tired when we catch up to them.” 🙂
Hippopotami may look clumsy and clunky and goofy, but they can reach speeds up to thirty miles an hour, are very aggressive, and have some dangerous teeth.
We would all be healthier if we did what our ancestors did.
Eat bugs, grubs, and roots. Eat what meat we caught or hunted with sticks and spears or found dead on the trail.
And most of all, walked 20 miles a day looking for food.
Yes, all who knew us would comment on how healthy we looked in our coffins, having not quite managed to attain our thirty-fifth year.