Sunday Story...Steppin' Out

Sunday Story…Steppin’ Out

You circle the parking lot looking for that coveted parking place closest to the door. The stairs, the escalator, or the elevator? The last time you rode a bike was several presidents ago. Roller skates? I don’t think so. We live in a mechanized world. We drive way too much. It all contributes to this faster, fragmented and furious pace we are living.

I am not anti-car. I love my car and I love driving. I love that I can get in it and be someplace in a very short order. If I had to walk to San Francisco I probably wouldn’t get there very often. On the other hand…

The principle of general physical preparedness (gpp) says that I should be able to get up and do what needs to be done with my body. Can I carry a 40 pound child through an amusement park and out to the far reaches of the parking lot? Can I use an axe and shovel all day to dig that stump out of the yard? How about sprinting 100 or so yards to the scene of an accident to render help and being able to do it when you arrive on scene? Climb a tree to rescue your kid’s cat? Maybe even something simple like walking a mile or two because your car breaks down and there is no cell coverage for AAA to come and save you? Maybe even simpler…reach down and pick something up from the floor without bending your knees?

This level of fitness…the general physical preparedness level…requires that you do a number of things. We have talked about these things before. Lift heavy things. Move them quickly over a distance. Sprint once in a while. Pull yourself up, push yourself up, sit yourself up, squat down. Do things in ways you wouldn’t normally do them. Expect the unexpected. Connect your body, your breath, and your mind into a unified whole. Move slowly often.

This last one is the one many of us have trouble with. We are bipeds. That means we were made to move on two feet. We were not made to sit on our behinds. We were designed to move often and with ease and comfort and not in your “fat-burning zone” either. When was the last time you walked from the furthest reaches of the parking lot? On purpose? Or walked up the stairs instead of the escalator right beside the stairs? Or rode a bicycle just to get from point A to point B? No hurry, no worrying about the rpm or your pulse or anything else? These activities are meant to help increase your base metabolic rate. Just like sprinting once in a while will do. And moving heavy stuff over distance quickly will do.

What is your base metabolic rate you may ask? This is the rate that your body burns energy. The more we sit, the more sedentary we become the lower that rate becomes. In other words your body requires less and less energy to maintains its basic functions. So the more I sit, the slower everything moves. And I require less energy to just be alive. This is a good thing if I am starving to death. Most of you are not starving.

Maybe you can think back to a time when you were very active. Not exercising not training but really active. Maybe you were playing and moving; up to lots of things in the world. Your base metabolic rate was probably pretty high. And you were feeding yourself often and without a lot of care. And you weren’t overweight. Then your activity level dropped off. And so did your base metabolic rate. But your calorie intake remained the same and it still wasn’t all that much good food either. Guess what…5 years later your health is declining noticeably. You are tired. You aren’t able to do some of the things you used to take for granted.

Better get in shape, right? So you get on the bike, on the treadmill, the elliptical (human on the wheel) and start doing “cardio”. After all this is what all the experts say will do the trick right? And you start moving into the proverbial “fat burning zone” and stay there for about 30 minutes while you read Time magazine or People or watch the tube. And guess what? While you are on that machine in that zone you are burning fat. So why do we see so many people who are religious about their 4 times a week chronic cardio habits never make any significant changes in the body composition?

Because, and here is the most important part of this whole article, chronic cardio does not raise your base metabolic rate. In other words, once you stop working, once you get off the machine your body stops burning fat and goes back to whatever it was doing before you got on. Which for most of us is burning glycogen (a form of sugar) because that is what we are fueling our bodies with. Our base burn rate is so low that your body doesn’t need to burn fat at rest.

Your body is designed to burn fat as fuel most of the time. When I walk or ride my bike at a leisurely pace I am burning fat. My body is trained to do that. When I run really fast and lift heavy stuff I am training my body to burn energy faster and do it consistently over the course of the day. Of course I am not sitting around all day either.

Get up, get out of the chair, off the couch. Start moving. It is your birthright. Your body was designed as a well oiled efficient machine meant to go places. Being on the treadmill, the stationary bike, the elliptical takes you nowhere, no matter how fast you go. Get off the human hamster wheel. It wasn’t designed for humans, unless you are in captivity. Maybe someday…

So…start moving and start eating real food….animals and plants…mostly plants. Take it one baby step at a time but start stepping. Pretty soon you will be stepping out!

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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