Physical Culture, Personal Evolution
by Josh Leeger
Copyright 2011 Josh Leeger
Smashwords Edition
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Chapter 1 - Introduction - Why “Physical Culture, Personal Evolution?”
From a very early age I was fascinated by comic book superheroes and amazing physical feats. I loved Bruce Lee and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. In high school I played football and competed in track and field in high school, played with my friends, and studied when I had to. But what I really wanted to do was to be like Bruce and Arnold! I wanted that speed, power, and physique. I wanted to know how to do that. My other idol growing up was Carl Sagan. So at the same time, I wanted to understand the source of human activity – why it is that we do what we do as human beings on this earth of ours.
I veered off the path most of my friends went down, studying Classical History and Psychology in college, reading about Eastern religions and mystical traditions, getting involved in meditation and experimenting with different diets. I participated briefly on the crew team, but mostly stuck to weightlifting and martial arts.
After college I had a series of corporate jobs, looking for a good fit for myself in that world – all the while studying the body and civilization, playing when I could, and getting into more martial arts all the time.
In December of 2005 my father had an aortic aneurysm. A bubble had formed on his aorta (the major artery that takes blood from your heart and out to the rest of your body) and could have burst at any moment! He had an emergency surgery to replace his aorta with a Gortex tube!
Standing there in the intensive care post-operative unit, staring at my helpless dad who was now hooked up to machines, with tubes and wires all over (and in!) his body, I realized that I wanted more than corporate “success” in my life. I vowed to myself then and there that I would begin pursuing a life in harmony with all of things I’d come to value - careful work and craftmanship, nature, free- and creative-thought, physical expression and physical strength, laughter and humor.
After over a year of searching and deliberating, I decided to go to graduate school to study something on that path. The choices I’d settled on were ecology or physical health, and I chose the latter. Grad school was my immersion in physical, social, and cultural study and practice. During school I got to work as a personal trainer at the best personal training gym in San Francisco, and was an invited speaker at the University of Maryland, and an invited participant at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.
I found that the old way of approaching physical activity – trying to get people to exercise with gadgets and wild claims – is dead. There is a better way to get fit.
Chapter 2 - What Is “Physical Culture?”
But Josh, I hear you say, what the heck is “physical culture?” Good question! Physical culture is everything having to do with the body - your body. Physical culture is the entirety of existence. At least, that’s what it means to me.
The term “physical culture” was used in America at the turn of the 20th Century to describe health practices people in the now-industrialized USA could use to maintain well-being. Tons of books and articles were written on everything from cold showers to weightlifting and calisthenics (movement) to “hygiene” or cleanliness.
But physical culture is much older than that. Every “civilized” culture has had some sort of “physical culture” - a set of ideas and ideals about how the body should look, move and feel.
Modern “Fitness” and Why It Doesn’t Work
The modern way of talking about fitness in this country is based on the way our culture currently creates meaning, and the values we give to those meanings. Right now, in the United States, meaning for most people, and especially for people making policy-decisions, is based on “science.” But the word “science” simply means “knowledge.” Different cultures at different times have different ways of doing “science.”
There are a couple of ways that we make knowledge. One of the two most-prominent modern scientific methods involves gathering data on a sample of a homogeneous population, testing that sample, and then taking the average results of the test as the result. That result is then applied as the “rule” for that population. What “most people” within that population do, or how they are, becomes the “right” or “best” way, and the basis for planning action and policy.
The other most-prominent method in our modern scientific culture is to investigate minute and relatively separate aspects of larger things, to discover “how they work.” Once we’ve discovered “how they work,” we apply those lessons about “how it works” (in isolation, that is) back to the system as a whole, almost always ignoring the fact that the thing we studied only really works when it’s part of the system. And that it “working” has to do with all of the intricate connections to all of the other parts of the larger whole.
Pop Culture versus Science
But popular culture, and popular wisdom, is very different from these scientific approaches. In fact, it’s the opposite!
Modern popular culture holds up the “outlier” - the single individual who makes it big - as the role model. Of course, this method is similar to the scientific method in that it ignores all of the other people supporting that star outlier personality. But few people notice that.
Why Fitness Doesn’t Work
All of this adds up to an approach to the individual that says a few interesting and conflicting things:
1. You are “best” when you are “average.”
2. You are “best” when you are “completely unique” (far above average).
3. The people who know what is “best” for you are scientists and stars.
So you’re supposed to be the “best” “average” person you can be!
I personally spent a lot of time fighting these two ideas of personal “success” (let alone dealing with the “corporate” model of success). I’d get programs from magazines or books, watch and follow DVDs, read about what fitness stars were doing in their workouts, and listen to the (often conflicting) medical advice about what to eat, what not to eat, how much, and when.
In the end, I learned a couple of things.
Lessons Learned
The most important lesson I learned, that the endless “fitness industry” still hasn’t grasped (or has it - some authors argue that the fitness industry, and industry in general, does not want people to know the principles of self-development…if people know the principles of personal evolution, they won’t need the magazines or stars anymore!) is that there are basic principles about how the body works that science has accurately described, and that these principles are relatively simple.
Understanding those principles can guide anyone to success in physical activity.
The myriad of physical training practices are all fantastic in their own way. There’s something to be learned from every discipline, be it martial arts, yoga, Olympic weightlifting, bodybuilding, Pilates, Crossfit, kettlebell lifting, or bodyweight-only training.
Beneath all of those things lies the function of the body. All methods exploit different aspects of the moving human body. The purpose of this manual is to give the reader the power to change their body in the precise ways they want to. We’ll do that by uncovering and understanding the principles of adaptation and their application.
The second-most important lesson I learned is that change - in your own life, or in society - does not start with “movements” or “trends.”
Change Starts With You
Change starts with you! Much of our culture is designed (intentionally or not) to mask the fact that only you can change yourself. Modern research in the field of motivation and psychology says much the same thing - when motivation is extrinsic, it fails, when it’s intrinsic (coming from within you) it works...and lasts.
Getting constant (and constantly changing) advice from fitness magazines, celebrities or science, might keep you moving because you’re confused, but ultimately you won’t get anywhere that you really want to be.
An important principle in personal evolution is the concept that nothing will fix you but you yourself. There is no external “cure” to anything happening with you. Some medicines will work with your internal systems to alleviate problems you’re having. But what they’re doing is helping you to come back into balance. Take any medicine or treatment in the world, get “cured,” and then go back and continue doing what got you into trouble, and guess what...you’ll be right back in “treatment” in no time.
So treat yourself! Once you have “fixed” yourself, you will not be the same you that started anymore!
Your Own Physical Culture
The purpose of this book is to provide you with principles behind exercise, and to offer a starting point for the development of your own personal and individual physical culture.
Of course, my ideas are embedded in my own culture (late 20th and early 21st Century USA) and subcultures (White/Caucasian, middle-class, college-educated, etc.), and in my own personal experiences. That’s why I think it’s important to explore the principles of physical culture, and of developing your own physical culture, first. Then we can apply those principles to various practices, and see their usefulness for us.
For me, Physical Culture is the greatest pursuit, the greatest calling, one can have. It is the individual pursuit of understanding of this thing called life that we get to experience for a limited amount of time. It’s a tireless curiosity and seeking. It involves reading, listening, watching, tracking, exerting, and feeling, on ever-deepening levels. There is no end-point to Physical Culture, just the continuing development of deeper understanding of and connection with our life within earth and society.
Chapter 3 - Adaptation - The Name of the Game
Not Seeing Results? Here’s Why
Any exercise program is ultimately aimed at creating adaptation in the human body. But how does adaptation happen? Many people go the gym, or outdoors, and engage in their own favorite type of exercise for hours, then complain of injuries, or complain that they just “aren’t seeing results.” Why?
Most of the time, it’s because people are ignoring the two most basic principles of physical movement adaptation - the Progressive Overload and SAID principles.
Progressive Overload and the SAID Principle
The two most basic principles of adaptation are the “progressive overload” and SAID principles.
Progressive overload refers to the fact that adaptation only occurs when there’s a stimulus that the body must adapt to. So if you do the same thing, the same way, all the time, eventually the body adapts to that level of stress - and then goes no further. In order to get the body to change, you must change the stimulus. It’s that simple.
SAID stands for “Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands.” The SAID principle says that the body only adapts to the specific demand placed upon it. So, if you want to gain a lot of muscle, and you go out running every day, you aren’t going to see the results you want. The body doesn’t adapt to long-distance running by gaining muscular bulk.
now that we understand that the body only responds to a challenge, and only responds specifically to that precise challenge, let’s understand how the body adapts to different levels of stimulus.