Why Should Humans Train? Why Do So Few Actually Train?
A reprint from the newsgroup: rec.bicycles.racing
From: “Per Inge Oestmoen” <pioe@powertech.no>
Myself, in average I run between 60-70 kilometers, or 40-45 miles, every
week throughout the year. Because I also maintain a weight training session
at two times 45 minutes a week, and in general vary between tarmac, gravel
and forest trails, I am seldom if ever injured. This adds to health insofar
as the capability of using one’s own body at a high level is part of being
healthy. There are legitimate reasons why we should look on it that way,
when the psychological and emotional effects of having a capable body are
included in this picture.
Indeed, the average adaptive limits of a “normal,” untrained human being
should be considered insufficient and intolerable in view of the vast
potential of the human body.
Everyone agrees that we ought to train our mind and mental capabilities,
and nobody would earnestly suggest that we stop reading or writing, or for
that matter any other science or mental discipline. On the contrary,
developing our mental and intellectual faculties as far as individual
potentials dictate is regarded a necessity and a birthright for all, and
rightfully so.
However, when it comes to the human body, which we literally carry around
24 hours a day all our life, there is strangely enough no such societal
concensus on the desirability of obtaining and maintaining a high physical
capacity. This in spite of the fact that the difference between untrained
and trained is immense. The countless physical activities we all can
perform when properly trained are astonishing, and as a high level of
physical activity and capacity can easily be kept into a very advanced age,
leading to a wide spectrum of activity, we have every reason to include
vigorous physical training into our everyday schedule. Why should not the
daily and lifelong physical training, leading to a high level of physical
knowledge be as natural as a lifelong activity and development of our
mental side? In both cases, training increases capability, and high
capability implies the possibility of high achievements.
Why is it seemingly so difficult for many humans to include high bodily
competence and concomitant daily physical activity in our obligatory range
of experience?
It has never occurred to me that I should run for HEALTH only. Large
numbers of people live utterly sedentarily and begin to smoke from they are
twelwe, and continue this habit to their death at eighty, and yet they
remain “healthy,” in the sense that they are not attacked by any chronic or
fatal disease. Your health is dependent on numerous factors, and it
certainly increases your potentials for being healthy if you train
physically. However, training is by no means a prerequisite to the
successful avoidance of disease, any more than the development of our
intellect is so.
The question is this: Do we humans want to consciously choose to be able
not only to perform the daily chores, but also to be able to achieve with
our well-trained physical selves the same way as mental performance is seen
as desirable and important? Twenty years ago, I determined that I wanted to
break out of the adaptive limits of the untrained, and managed to do so,
without having any special talents. The reward was an ability to use my
body at consistently high levels, and to experience daily the feelings and
sensations that go with it. These cannot be replaced with virtual reality
and electric stimulation of the brain, simply because this does not give
high bodily capability, that is physical knowledge.
We are not accustomed to realize that the capability to do things with our
body is a form of knowledge, but that is precisely what it is. That high
physical knowledge, which is available to all who desire it, should be what
motivates us to train our body. To train because we want to avoid disease
is way too narrow-minded, and cannot serve as a sufficient permanent
motivation. Only our joyful desire to obtain and to have a capable body,
and to use it, can do so.
