From the Hip #6 - "...like it's your job."

Have you ever stopped to consider the phrase "like it's your/my job" and what it says about our culture? 

"Holy crap, I'm out of shape... I'm going to start running every morning like it's my job." 
"This new book is so good I'm gonna spend the next week reading it like it's my job." 
"If you really want to lose weight, start following a balanced diet like it's your job." 
"I feel like I haven't spent any time with my wife in weeks... I'm going to spend start spending time with her like it's my job." 
"Man, he's chowing down on that burrito like it's his job!"

What's the message here? That "your job" is the most significant thing in your life, apparently. Any time I've heard this phrase used, it's applied to something personal: a personal fitness goal, personal health, a passion project, an enjoyable hobby, a personal venture started long ago. Lurking behind this phrase is this idea that personal endeavors should be secondary to our "job"—that whatever it is, it's not that important unless it's making us money, or unless someone with a bigger salary and fancier title than us is telling us to do it. Is that how we want to live? Is that the metric by which we wish to define importance? I, for one, believe that we ought to be prioritizing ourselves, our health, our passions, what we care about, what we believe in, what satisfies us and enriches our lives to the greatest degree. You should be doing what you do because you want to. Turn the tables on how you perceive what's important. If you really want to commit your efforts to something, tell yourself and your friends that you're going to "start running every morning like it's my passion," not "...like it's my job."

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Why BMI is B.S.

Confession: I'm overweight. Clarification: I'm overweight according to a flawed metric. 

I remember the resentment I felt during a physical evaluation for life insurance a few years ago: just before stealing what felt like a few gallons of blood from my arm (I survived, but barely), the nurse hurriedly measured my height and weight. 
"Hmm, weight, looks like 198, height, just over 5'11. Okey doke!" and that was the full extent of body composition measurements taken. 
As she wrote down the numbers on her sheet and I envisioned my monthly insurance rates ticking upwards because of how "overweight" I was, I wanted to say, "ahem, so, wanna see my abs? I'm pretty fit." ...but that might have made things a bit weird. 
See, I did not have, nor have I ever had, a high percentage of body fat (what the BMI purports to indirectly measure). Yet my BMI came in at 27.6 on that day, squarely in the "overweight" zone.

The problem is, though a higher BMI certainly can (and frequently does) correlate with higher body fat, it has the potential to give woefully inaccurate measures of actual body fatness. And yet, this cursory (at best) measurement of height and weight is par for the course. Yes, in more specialized settings there will certainly be more body composition measurements taken; but for most of you, your tailor probably knows more about your body composition and implicated health risks than your doctor or health screener does. And that's pretty bogus, given that BMI is used for things like published global, national, and local health statistics, insurance rates, general health screenings, prediction of health risks, medical advice, and more. 

So what's wrong with BMI? Why do I take issue with its widespread use? Let me explain.

1. First, a bit of history...
The formula for BMI was first introduced in the early-mid 1800s by a mathematician, statistician, astronomer, and sociologist named Adolphe Quetelet, and the term BMI (body mass index) was popularized in the mid-late 1900s by Ancel Keys, who determined BMI to be the preferred measurement for body composition in population studies (at least, when compared to another arbitrary and oversimplified measurement). Quetelet (who, I will reiterate, was not a medical professional nor a physiologist) himself warned that his method was not perfect, and that it was more of an estimation based on trends in body composition at that time and place; and Keys determined BMI to be satisfactory for population studies, noting that it should not be used to assess individuals. And yet, here we are. 

So, our most widely used body composition metric today is a 200-year-old quick and easy "eh, it works out in a pinch" formula developed by a mathematician. Seems legit.

2. It can be very, very inaccurate. 
Here are some pictures of overweight people, according to BMI: 

Lebron James / BMI: 27.4 / Overweight
Just look at that chubby face! ¹

Aneta Florczyk / BMI: 27.5 / Overweight
Go on, say it to her face, I dare you. ²

Rich Froning / BMI: 29.5 / Overweight (almost obese)
Abs, fat folds, same difference. ³

Okay, how about some obese people. They're bound to be at least a little chubby, right?

Dwayne Johnson / BMI: 30.8 / Obese
Soft and jiggly like a rock (get it?). ⁴

Brock Lesnar / BMI: 36.9 / Obese
He heard what you said. ⁵

Ronnie Coleman / BMI: 41.4 / Morbidly Obese
8x Mr. Olympia is morbidly obese. Sure. ⁶

So, in case the point is not yet abundantly clear, BMI has the potential to give very, very misleading results. Athletes, particularly strength and power athletes, tend to have higher bone density and much greater muscle mass than sedentary populations, and therefore have BMIs that suggest much greater body fatness than they actually have. 

So what, some athletes have misleading BMIs and pay a little more for life insurance and skew statistics a bit... But most of us aren't professional athletes anyways—what's the big deal?

Well, first off, this doesn't apply just to a few pro athletes. I'm about as average as they come athletically, and as mentioned above, I am classified as overweight. With the rising popularity of sports like weightlifting, powerlifting, and Crossfit in otherwise "ordinary" populations, more people are packing on extra muscle to their frame and becoming "overweight" and "obese" as they exercise more. Yes, exercise might make you "overweight" or "obese"—you heard it here first.

In addition, it's not just the more muscular crowd that's affected. BMI can be incredibly inaccurate in the other direction as well. BMI measurements are very likely to underestimate body fatness. The New York University School of Medicine conducted a cross-sectional study in which they compared BMI measurements with the results from a DEXA scan (which is arguably the most accurate method of measuring body composition) in a group of adults. The study found that while BMI classified 26% of the participants as obese, 64% of the subjects had obese levels of body fatness according to the DEXA scan. In all, 39% of subjects who were not considered obese according to BMI were found to be obese according to the DEXA scan. In addition, the BMI measurements were considerably more likely to misclassify women than men (48% vs 25% misclassification). Additional studies have shown similarly dismal results for the accuracy of BMI in correlating to actual body fatness and predicting disease. 

Now, look around the internet and see just how many population health studies and statistics are based on BMI (I'll just tell you: it's almost all of them). All of those studies and statistics could be immensely inaccurate and the implications misleading. Example: according to the CDC, just over 1/3 of the American population is classified as obese. What if that number was more like 60-70%? If the inconsistencies found in the NYU study are any indication, this may be closer to the truth.

To make matters worse, studies have shown that being "overweight" according to BMI was not associated with increased mortality, and another demonstrated that among patients with coronary heart disease, those who were underweight or normal weight had the highest risk for mortality, while those who were overweight had the lowest risk for mortality, and moderately obese patients had no increased risk for total mortality. (Please note that this does not mean we should all try to get fatter because that's healthier. These studies merely suggest that BMI alone does not accurately predict body fatness and therefore disease and mortality risks.)

False positives on the one hand, false negatives on the other hand, false implications about health risks in both hands—regardless of how you look at it, BMI doesn't inspire much confidence. 

3. It ignores most of the factors that affect body weight and composition.
BMI assumes a relatively equal body type for equal heights and weights. But look around next time you're in public and note the massive variability in body type. Two people who are built similarly don't necessarily weigh the same, and two people who weigh the same aren't necessarily built the same. When looking at how BMI is measured, you have to ask: What about people with higher or lower bone mass (bone is about twice as dense as fat)? How about those with higher or lower muscle mass (muscle is about 5/4ths as dense as fat)? What about variations in frame size? Body type differences by gender? Inherent variations in healthy levels of body fat by gender? Variations in body shape and proportions that come with age? Waist size? What about amputees? BMI ignores all of these factors. 

4. It's arbitrary.
Weight (kg) divided by height (m) squared. That's the formula for BMI. What's the magic of weight divided by the square of height? Well, nothing. Quetelet looked at trends in body weight/height and body composition and constructed a formula that very roughly correlated. In addition, the rigidity and the arbitrary nature of this formula (because squaring the height really has no real-world basis) means that BMI tends to overestimate the body fatness of taller individuals and underestimate the body fatness of shorter individuals. Nick Trefethen, an Oxford mathematics professor, has suggested a formula of 1.3*weight (kg) divided by height (m) raised to the 2.5th power as a more accurate measure than the traditional BMI formula, though he recognizes the absurdity of doggedly sticking to overly-simplistic metrics for complex things like body composition, and proposes it only as a somewhat better alternative to an inherently flawed metric. 

Most arbitrary of all is the rigid categorization of "underweight," "normal weight," "overweight," and "obese." What makes someone suddenly obese (and subject to all the risks of obesity) when the decimal point of their BMI ticks from 29.9 to 30.0? In addition, these numbers have varied considerably over the years as different governing bodies have changed what they think qualifies as "underweight," "normal weight," etc. The absurdity of this all should be evident by now. But apparently the CDC, insurance companies, and much of the medical community don't give a damn about that. We sent a man to the moon almost 50 years ago, and yet we're still cool with using a 200-year-old, over-simplified, and arbitrary metric as our primary method for measuring body composition and predicting health? 

5. It rests on assumptions about body type.
Put simply, BMI assumes a particular body type for everyone (specifically, an unfit and sedentary body type). Not only does body type vary immensely from person-to-person, but it also varies with geographical location and over time. To give credit where it's due, some national and international organizations do try to adjust for this by setting their own cut-off points; however, these distinctions are often arbitrary themselves, and have the downside of muddling the results of long-term longitudinal studies or global comparisons. 

6. It's a statistical, population-based measurement that we consistently use to assess individuals.
Need I say more?

7. There are a number of more accurate measures of body composition and predictors of health complications.
At this point, there really is no reason to use BMI. Yes, it's convenient and easy and you can make the kids in a high school health class memorize the formula. But we have countless other methods that do their job far better than BMI. Of course we have precise metrics such as DEXA scans and lipid profiles that can give accurate and detailed assessments of numerous health factors. However, to get an accurate assessments of body composition and health, we don't always have to lean on high-tech, high-cost procedures. I won't get into all of the alternative methods here (there are plenty), but there's one that stands out in particular. Remember how I mentioned your tailor probably knowing more about your body composition and health risks than your health screener or doctor? That's because numerous studies have demonstrated a much higher accuracy of waist circumference, waist-to-height ratio, and waist-to-hip ratio in the prediction of all-cause mortality, disease risk, etc. These findings are significant considering how easy it is to measure waist and/or hip circumference. Using waist-to-height ratio or a similar measurement in health screenings, medical check-ups, and statistical analyses requires virtually no additional cost, training, or time, and yet it would vastly improve the accuracy of our population health studies and individual health assessments. 



It's time to say bye-bye BMI, and I'm certainly not the only one to be saying this. Countless doctors, health professionals, health organizations, and reasonable people are realizing the massive shortcomings of using BMI as our standard of body composition and health risk assessment. Perhaps someday the global health organizations, standard-setters, and governing bodies will catch up with the blog-osphere and change their ways. 

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1 By Steve Jurvetson (Flickr: LeBron James) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons^↩
2 By Artur Andrzej (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons^↩
3 By Lance Cpl. Derrick K. Irions [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons^↩
4 (Wikipedia:Contact us/Photo submission) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons^↩
5 By Miguel Discart [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons^↩
6 www.localfitness.com.au. [Attribution, CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons^↩

From the Hip #5 - Big Changes Make Big Changes

When it comes to health and fitness, people tend to look for "the solution" to their ailments or "the step" to health and wellness. Basically, this comes down to laziness. It's a case of "okay, I acknowledge that I need to improve my health, and I guess I'm willing to do one thing to fix it, but that's it." The reality of the matter, though, is that there is no magic bullet. Health and fitness are not one-step, one-solution matters, and that kind of thinking is, frankly, foolish. Do you really think that the status of your health and fitness is going to do a complete 180 because you started eating some açaí berries? 
It's much bigger than that. It is a product of all aspects of your lifestyle. To varying degrees, every single thing you do contributes to your health and wellness. To make sweeping change (in your health, fitness, etc.), you must make sweeping change in your life choices. The magic bullet mindset is a massive detriment to anyone who falls into its trap (and a massive money-maker for supplement, "health food," and drug companies who love to sell you their proprietary secret pill or powder or superfood to give you everlasting life and superhuman performance). This mindset keeps us bouncing between feelings of erroneous and misdirected hopefulness and feelings of resigned hopelessness: we enthusiastically try whatever magic bullet Dr. Oz or our friends' Facebook feed is featuring this month, find that it makes no appreciable difference in our life, give up on self-improvement, continue with our old habits and feel helpless and powerless, see an add for a new magic bullet, and wash-rinse-repeat. 
I guess "take responsibility for your own health, make better decisions, and put in the hard work every day" just doesn't have the same selling power as "drink this juice and you'll be a living god!" 
We all know that making massive turn-arounds is possible. We've all heard the stories of people who went from being obese and tumbling towards death's door to being healthy, active, and happy. We've all heard stories about recovery from disease, about turning life around and walking away from addiction, about regaining health and fitness against all odds. We know it's possible. We just need to accept and embrace that it takes more than a magic bullet. Big changes make big changes. 

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How to Make Your Feet More Awesome

Our feet have become dulled and sluggish. For most of us today (or at least those of us who are likely to be reading this), our feet are encased in a cast of sorts from birth until death. Out of the womb and into a pair of “supportive” shoes. In addition, most of us carry out our lives primarily indoors. Our feet live on flat, solid, uniform, and predictable surfaces; and on the occasion that we do present our feet with an irregular surface by going on a mountain hike, doing some outdoor labor, or going for a walk in the woods, most of us take this occasion to strap our feet into the thickest, most protective, restrictive, and sense-deadening boots we can get our hands on. All of this results in our feet becoming unaware, inexperienced, unadaptable, dull, atrophied, and dysfunctional. 

Think of a parallel situation: from birth, you have a thin cloth draped over your eyes. The cloth obscures visual detail and filters out most light. How adept will your eyes be at making out details and adapting to various levels of lighting? Or take the mind for example. If you live your life never being mentally challenged, never having to analyze and make sense of unfamiliar ideas, never having to push yourself to learn something new, how much mental acuity are you likely to display in the face of even a moderate mental challenge? The same principles hold true for the feet. 

(For another interesting example, we can look to the infamous "cavefish," which dwells in deep/dark waters and has evolved to have non-functional or minimally-functional eyes, a more extreme case of the "use it or lose it" adaptations that can take place over an extended length of time.) 

Nerves on nerves.¹ 

The structure and function of the human foot is an absolutely incredible feat (hah!) of engineering. Capable of easily handling incredibly high loads and forces, but also of very delicate and precise movement, our feet can be both strong and dexterous. The feet are one of the most heavily innervated parts of our bodies, and with good reason. As bipedals, almost any sort of ambulation we do starts from our feet. Our ability to move, our ability to execute precise movements, to accelerate, decelerate, and change direction, our physical perception of our immediate surroundings, our standing balance, our ability to lift, throw, jump, run—it all originates from the feet. The feet are our primary connection to the earth. And yet, along with the hands and neck (two other enormously important parts of the body) they tend to remain largely ignored and untrained in the fitness community, even among high level athletes. When you step back and think about it for a moment, this makes no sense—training the rest of the body intensely while ignoring the feet is like putting bicycle wheels on a Ferrari. But I guess it’s just not sexy enough to have strong feet. 

So what about this footwear business? Isn’t this 20+ billion dollar industry that makes well-engineered, highly-protective footwear supposed to make our feet invincible, high-performance machines? The greatest irony of all is that in addition to our feet being largely untrained and incapable, our best efforts to preserve them in a protective casing 24/7 have been mostly unsuccessful. Foot pain and dysfunction are hugely prevalent over a lifetime, for active and sedentary populations alike. Population studies have found regular and/or ongoing foot pain in ⅕ - ⅓ of the participants, with higher prevalences among sedentary populations ^{2 3 4 5}. That should be baffling to you. Sedentary populations—people whose feet are “challenged” only to saunter from the couch to the car to the office chair and back to the car every day—are having high incidences of chronic foot pain. 

In order to combat this wholesale atrophying of our feet and optimize our physical performance, function, and health, the feet need to be used in a way that allows the senses to be stimulated, that allows the structures to move through a full range of motion, that challenges the joints and muscles to move over irregular and unfamiliar surfaces, and that strengthens the muscles and joints. Unfortunately, this does not happen in daily life for most people. Therefore, we must put intentional effort into training our feet, just as we train our legs, our core, our shoulders, our lungs, etc. We must challenge our feet more. This can take numerous forms, and I am by no means an expert on podiatry; however, there are a few simple things we can start doing to build up the strength and “intelligence” of our feet.

1. Start slow and be sensible. I’ll start with this, because it really precedes and applies to all of the other suggestions about training your feet. If you’ve spent the last 30 years of your life wearing thick, “supportive” sneakers, it’s not a good idea to throw them away and start going on 10 mile barefoot hikes through the mountains right away. Start slower and more conservatively than you think you’ll need to, and be sensible about it all. Also remember: this isn’t about making your feet macho and tough by walking on shards of broken glass and climbing Everest in sandals. It’s about restoring function and optimizing performance. Now that we’ve cleared that up...

2. Ditch your shoes when safe/possible. Shoes do provide necessary protection in many cases, and some special medical circumstances require shoes to be worn at most/all times. However, for most of us, we’d be better off ditching our shoes and going au natural more often. Shoes, particularly dress shoes, boots, and running shoes designed for more “support,” tend to have three main detrimental effects on the feet. 

1. First, shoes provide a thick barrier that dulls sensation and removes your connection to the surface you’re standing/walking/running on. Have you ever had thick winter gloves or work gloves on and tried to do a task that requires a bit of precision and fine motor control with you hands—something like tying your shoes, digging your keys out of your pocket or bag, or using a small tool—and found the task nearly impossible? Having shoes on our feet has a similar effect, and keeping the feet encased in shoes all the time has a lasting impact on our feet’s ability to perceive and make sense of its surroundings, and to perform precise movements or adjustments that should be relatively easy.
   
2. Second, shoes often overprotect. Don’t get me wrong, the protective abilities of modern footwear are a wonderful advancement (no hookworm for me, thank you very much), and absolutely necessary in some cases. I would much rather wear some thick boots at a construction site than have a nail through my foot, or wear winter boots than lose my toes to hypothermia. But for surfaces that are not outright dangerous, there’s no need to wear shoes. Having shoes on all the time makes our feet weak and wimpy. You should be able to walk on coarse sand, grass, and cement without pain.
   
3. Third, shoes often restrict movement, encourage poor positioning/movement patterns (such as the heel-strike), and limit the development of foot strength. Like a mold or a cast, your shoes will, over time, change the shape of your feet. In addition, the shape of your shoe affects your gait, your joint movements, your positioning, and how the muscles of the foot, leg, and hip are used. The most common shoe design is to have an elevated heel—dress shoes, running shoes, boots, even sandals all tend to have this design to varying degrees. In addition, many shoes (particularly traditional running shoes, heavy boots, and really fancy-shmancy dress shoes) have a toe spring: a sole that is molded to have an upward curve in the front, intended to allow the shod foot to “roll” from toe to heel rather than having to (*gasp* God forgive) bend at the toes when you walk/run. To make matters worse, most shoes (dress shoes and women’s shoes in particular) run narrow in the toe box, squishing your forefoot and putting your poor toes in a crunched-up position. Over time, this literally changes the structure of our feet, and can lead to bunions, ingrown toenails, overlapping toes, as well pain and a change in gait and foot function. This devious combination of elevated heel, toe spring, and restrictive forefoot design gradually shortens the length of the heel cord and posterior lower leg structures, puts your toes in a constantly extended position, prevents the toes from gripping the ground, puts extra stress on structures of the underfoot, limits the muscular and other soft tissue involvement in movement and shock absorption, forces a heel-strike, and makes your foot and ankle an all-around inflexible, weak mess. 

So, when you’re in your home, at the park, at the beach, in your backyard, going for a short walk, doing a workout, etc., ditch your shoes and let your feet move and feel, unrestricted and uncontained. And in situations where going without shoes would be unwise—on hot summer days when the ground is 115°F, when you’re going on a hike through heavily wooded areas, when trudging through 3 feet of snow, when making a presentation to the board of directors, etc.—I suggest that you...

⁶

3. Go minimalist. Fortunately for all of us, the minimalist footwear movement is gaining more and more traction every day, and this means more and more minimalist footwear options becoming readily accessible (and some even look kinda normal!). There are a few main things to look for in minimalist footwear:

1. A flat sole. Always remember: flat butts are bad, flat soles are good. The heel-toe drop should ideally be 0mm, but if you’re just working your way into minimalist shoes, a slight heel-toe drop (<4mm) is fine to start out.
   
2. A thin, flexible sole. Just having a flat sole isn’t enough to make it minimal (sorry 1990s, your weird Spice Girls platform shoes don’t count). You want a thin sole that allows you to have some ground feel, and a flexible sole that allows your toes to bend just like they would if you were barefoot. The application of the shoe will determine some of these qualities (for example, minimalist boots will generally have a slightly thicker sole), but in general, the more minimal the better.
   
3. No/minimal “arch support.” Yes, you should probably throw away all of your preconceived notions about arch support. “But what about my poor arches?! Won’t they collapse into a heap of skin and bones and sadness if they don’t have support 24/7?” I don’t know, does your head flop around side-to-side because you don’t wear a neck brace 24/7? Do you need to wear a reinforced cage around your torso to keep your upper body from collapsing? There are certainly some more extreme medical circumstances in which some form of arch support or orthotic can be beneficial, but for the average person, all arch support does is allow the structures that naturally form your arch (which has an important function, by the way) to get lazy and go dormant. Most people don’t need arch support. They need stronger and more functional feet.
   
4. An adequately wide toe box. The toe box should be wide enough that your forefoot/toes are not being compressed in any way when your full weight is on that foot. Toes need room to splay. If your toes are scrunched together or bursting out of the sides of your shoes when you walk, the shoe isn’t wide enough.
   
5. Thin, flexible upper. This one’s pretty self explanatory. Your shoes should be able to move the way your unshod foot moves, so a relatively thin, flexible upper will be necessary so as not to restrict movement.
   
6. Sturdy construction. Because your minimalist shoes will have less material than your standard running shoe, it’s important that you get a pair that is well constructed and uses durable materials. Otherwise, you’ll be wearing through your soles every few months, and then you’ll have no choice but to go barefoot. 
7. Something you’re willing to wear. There’s no point in
   buying a new pair of minimalist shoes if you’re too embarrassed to wear them. I would say, first off, that you
   should not be embarrassed of taking care of your body and being an efficient, high-performance human being, even if it means your shoes look a bit different. But if those weird toe-shoe-foot-glove things aren’t quite your style, that’s fine! There are enough options out there that everyone should be able to find a shoe that suits them. It’s easy to find any style of minimalist shoe, from trail shoes to crosstrainers to huaraches sandals—there are even some pretty stylish minimalist dress shoes and boots out there, so you can look dope and move right. 

Again, let me remind you to start slow and be sensible with your minimalist footwear. If you’re a marathoner and you’ve been wearing traditional running shoes and heel-striking for your whole life, strapping on a pair of ultra-thin sole, 0mm drop minimalist shoes and going for a nice easy 20 mile jog will not go well. Do your research, recognize that you will need to relearn your running form. Start by walking in them for a few weeks, then jog a lap around the track, then go for a mile, etc. Going barefoot and wearing minimalist shoes can have tremendous benefits for your foot health and function, unless you do something stupid and get stress fractures and destroy every ligament in your foot on day one. 

A - Good (though could possibly be wider). B - Bad! Toes should splay, not squish. ⁷

4. Challenge your feet more. This, in my opinion, is the most fun (and often most overlooked) part. Take off your shoes and find ways to make your feet work, to give them new challenges. Once you’ve gotten used to walking around barefoot, you can start with something like walking or running in the sand. Sand is excellent because it’s both relatively forgiving and quite challenging to your feet. The uneven and unsturdy ground challenges your feet to move at different angles, to feel the ground and adjust to shifting surfaces, to push, pull, grip, and spring in a constantly changing environment. If you’re a runner, study up on barefoot running form (Google forefoot/midfoot strike running form, Pose method, etc.). Look for opportunities to strengthen your feet, to move across uneven surfaces, to move nimbly. Grip the ground when you’re walking barefoot. Walk around the house on your toes for a few minutes per day. Jump. Climb a tree. Go on a mountain hike and hop around from rock to rock like a happy little mountain goat. Pick things up with your toes. Practice balancing on odd objects like rocks and logs. Walk through the woods as silently as you possibly can. Play “don’t touch the lava” in your house or at the playground. Hop around on one leg. Play some frisbee barefoot in the grass. Give your feet a good massage with a lacrosse ball every day and practice some yoga poses that stretch your foot/ankle musculature and challenge stability and balance. You can be really scientific and precise about it if you’d like, or you can just have some fun with it do whatever you feel like—either way, challenge your feet regularly and they will benefit from it. 

Whether you’re a professional athlete or just trying to stay healthy and live a good life, chances are that you’re not giving your feet the love they deserve. Challenge your feet more and force them to become better. Optimize your performance from the ground up!

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1 By Dr. Johannes Sobotta [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons^↩
2 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304395911005616^↩
3 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186%2F1757-1146-1-2^↩
4 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6115797^↩
5 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20382520^↩
6 By Seth Cochran (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons^↩
7 By Ada S. Ballin (Science of Dress, to face of page 240.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons^↩

From the Hip #4 - Time is Made, Not Had

One of the most common excuses I hear for not exercising, not being fit, not meeting health goals, not following through with a plan, etc., is the classic "I just don't have enough time."

But how much time you have doesn’t matter one bit. Everyone has the same amount of time in their day. The world-class Olympic athlete who trains for 7-hours per day, runs a charity organization for inner city youth, and cares for her family has the same amount of time in her day as the obese layabout living in his parent's basement who single-handedly keeps crappy daytime television programs and the local supplier of Doritos afloat. Having time is not what matters; what matters is how much time you make. 
I believe we should all ban “I don’t have enough time” from our vocabulary. That simple phrase turns the onus away from us and puts it on someone/something else. When I say “I don’t have enough time,” I make myself the unfortunate victim of the cruel constraints put on me by the all-powerful time gods. My fate is not my own, but that of whoever took all of my time away and gave it out to everyone else who magically seems to “have” more time. We ought to replace the phrase “I don’t have enough time” with “I don’t make enough time.” Our time, or at least what we do with it, is made, not had. It is a matter of prioritization and management, not accident and fortune. And when we tell others and ourselves that we “don’t make enough time,” we must face the reality that the distribution of our time is a choice. Didn’t get to the gym yesterday even though you told yourself you would? That’s because you didn’t make the time to do it. Didn’t spend the time to do meal prep for the week, and now you’re eating freezer meals and fast food? That’s because you prioritized something else. Didn’t get enough sleep all last week? That’s because you let something else take precedence over sleep. And sometimes this is okay! Sometimes you should prioritize something else over working out or cooking your own food or getting 8 hours of sleep every night. Sometimes family takes priority, sometimes an important and time-sensitive opportunity comes up, sometimes it’s okay to make the choice to skip your workout. The key is that it is a choice, and it is a choice that you made consciously and that you believe was the right choice. However, when you have to tell yourself or your coach or your partner that “I didn’t make enough time to come to the gym,” knowing that your time that should have been spent working out was actually spent browsing Facebook posts and watching bad reality TV, that should be a gut check for you. That should make you reconsider your priorities. Is mindlessly scrolling through social media and watching Snookie go snookie-ing about more important than your health and your goals? 

Our time is a choice, not an accident. Treat it that way.

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Say Yes to Distress – Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus

I am pleased to feature a guest post by Greg Hickey, a collaborator in the world of fitness and writing. Greg Hickey is a former Philosophy major, personal trainer, and baseball player, and current forensic scientist, endurance athlete, author and screenwriter. His blog KineSophy discusses topics in Philosophy and physical fitness, and a free ebook on these subjects is forthcoming. His debut novel Our Dried Voices is available on Amazon, and information on all his written work can be found on his website http://www.greghickeywrites.com.
Enjoy this post, and find more like it on Greg's blog, KineSophy. 

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“The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.” So begins existentialist philosopher Albert Camus’ famous essay, The Myth of Sisyphus.[1] According to Camus, Sisyphus was “the wisest and most prudent of mortals.”[2] The king of Corinth, Sisyphus betrayed Zeus, king of the gods, in order to win fresh water for his subjects. In return, Zeus sent his brother Hades to bring Sisyphus to his death, but Sisyphus tricked the god of the underworld and held him captive so that no mortal could die. When Ares, god of war, finally rescued Hades and Sisyphus perished, he conned Hades into letting him return to Earth, where he lived for many more years before Hades tracked him down and sentenced him to the stone.

           

These descriptions of his mortal exploits indicate Sisyphus was no common sinner, but a clever man who was good to his kingdom, loved life and desired to remain on Earth for as long as possible. And for this spirit the gods condemned him to the most rote and eternally frustrating task in the afterlife. The man who lived to cheat death did not merely die; he was sentenced to an endless existence of reiteration, which the gods must have considered the exact opposite of the pleasures he found in life.

The nature of Sisyphus’ torture lies in this endless repetition. Each time he reaches the top of the mountain, the stone falls back to the bottom again. He must push it up the mountain not once, not twice, but over and over again for all eternity. Sisyphus’ bane is his consciousness. He knows the toll the last trip took on his body and his will, the toll each previous trip took, and he knows he will have to go through it all again. The parallels here to everyday human life are obvious if we view life as a series of tasks to be completed and obstacles to be conquered. And just as Sisyphus cannot escape his punishment, there is no hope of succeeding finally and absolutely in life. We always face another task, another obstacle, and a human lifetime is no match cosmically for time and mortality.

Yet Camus reminds us that “there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.”[3] Once Sisyphus comes to grips with the inevitability of his lot, he regains a modicum of control. The rock sits before him. He can drive it up the mountain once again. The gods who put him there cease to matter. The task is in his power to complete. Each successful trip up the mountain is a victory. Each restart at the bottom is an opportunity. Therefore, Camus concludes, “the struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”[4] For Sisyphus, each step upward, each successful ascent, is another triumph over his fatigue, over the gods and over his past, and these cumulative victories are enough for his happiness.

For me the power of the myth resides in the physical nature of Sisyphus’ challenge. This physicality certainly reflects the era of the story’s original telling (after all, this is the same culture that gave us the Olympics), but the ancient Greeks were not short on great thinkers either (see Aesop, Archimedes, Aristotle, Democritus, Euclid, Hippocrates, Homer, Plato, Pythagoras, Socrates, Sophocles and Zeno for starters). Yet consider the diminished impact of the following revision of the story:

The gods condemned Steve to ceaselessly solving the same Sudoku puzzle. But each time Steve was about to fill in the last number, all his work would disappear and he was forced to start again from scratch.

I find it hard to see the romantic luster of the original myth in Steve’s plight. We can imagine poor Steve chained to a desk, hunched over a worried scrap of newspaper, frantically jotting down numbers before they wash away, but he is hardly the same noble figure as Sisyphus straining under his rock.

Does Steve’s fate hit a little too close to home in comparison to our modern lives? Would our feelings about the story change if the gods compelled Steve to try to solve Fermat’s last theorem, cure cancer, or unlock the secret to thermonuclear fusion? I think not. What makes Sisyphus’ story so compelling and so tragic is its very tangible, physical nature. There are no half-measures, no equivocations. Intellectual pursuits are too abstract, too indefinite, to carry the symbolism of myth. But when the rock reaches the top of the mountain, the rock reaches the top of the mountain. Sisyphus’ task is accomplished. Hades may cause the rock to roll back down again or set a new peak in front of Sisyphus, but these are new challenges and not continuations of one long endeavor.

Likewise, the pure physical torment of Sisyphus’ task strikes a chord with us that the intellectual equivalent does not. There is no end to Sisyphus’ agony as he strains against his stone. His hands and shoulders scrape and bleed against the jagged rock, sweat cascades down his brow, every muscle fiber in his body burns and screams under the weight. Everyone sees Sisyphus’ pain. Everyone recognizes his effort. And when he succeeds, we can all acknowledge his triumph.

I in no way intend to diminish intellectual accomplishments. The genius of Leonardo da Vinci, Marie Curie and Albert Einstein remains undisputed. But Camus’ Sisyphus demonstrates the psychological power of physical accomplishment. Because of the physical, tangible, definite nature of Sisyphus’ task, “his fate belongs to him.”[5] Each summit of the mountain is a victory of Sisyphus’ own making. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy” because he has the power to conquer adversity time and time again. Imagine what he could accomplish (physically, intellectually or otherwise) were he not condemned to his rock. Would anyone doubt him any achievement to which he set his will?

At its foundation, The Myth of Sisyphus reflects Camus’ belief that “there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”[6] If life is hopeless and agonizing, is one ethically justified in taking one’s own life? Camus says no. The Myth of Sisyphus, as a defense of that view, is an essay about an ethical choice represented by the image of ceaseless physical toil. It teaches the power and virtue of exercising one’s free will to overcome a physical challenge. And though Camus’ argument applies to any obstacles encountered in the course of our lives, it is the physical nature of Sisyphus’ challenge that gives the myth its vitality. In KineSophy, I delve more deeply into the connections between physical and ethical action, and Camus’ essay provides a good introduction on the subject. To be a Sisyphus is to take the first step to becoming a better human being.

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[1] Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. New York: Vintage International, 1991, p. 119.

[2] Ibid, p. 119.

[3] Ibid, p. 121.

[4] Ibid, p. 123.

[5] Ibid, p. 123.

[6] Ibid, p. 3.