The importance of being: educated

Last week, I wrote about the importance of being honest.  It was a spur-of-the-moment post.  One of those posts that starts from a spark and then suddenly downloads itself onto the page as you realise the importance of what you’ve just thought.

It came about as I was only half-listening to a conversation between friends and I thought I heard someone say “the importance of being honest”, when actually, of course, they said “the importance of being earnest”.

Oscar looking pensive

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It made me laugh at the time but as I thought more about it, I realised that being honest, particularly being honest with yourself, is much, much more important.  Especially when it comes to progressing in the gym.

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Being educated as the key to making your own decisions

Now, while I still hold that honesty is a key to making improvement in the gym, I have since been dwelling on the importance of other things that it’s important to be.   The thing that struck me this weekend was the importance of being educated.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I’m not talking about Boris Johnson-style education, where you allegedly read nothing but Greek and Latin for twenty years and are then somehow deemed to be capable enough of running one of the world’s largest financial centres.

In fact, the kind of education I’m talking about is part of the long list of really useful stuff they NEVER teach you at school.  Stuff that makes your life better.  Like personal finance, networking and people skills, public speaking, golf and cooking proper meals that don’t come in a box… 

I’m talking about understanding basic issues in relation to health and fitness.  I suppose I could just as easily have phrased education as “open-minded” but that always makes me think of the quip: “you don’t want to be so open-minded that your brain falls out” so I went with “educated” instead.  Hey, if you don’t like it you can always pretend I said “open-minded”…

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So what is the importance of being educated, anyway?

Well, if you aren’t educated then you can’t help yourself if you run into difficulty.  What kind of difficulty?  Well, there’s a lot of people out there who are overweight (or undertall) and have one or more nagging little injuries that make them unhappy.  Since they aren’t able to help themselves, they have to either:

• Put up with it; or
• Take advice about what to do.

And this is where it gets hard.  Because neither of these options is optimal.  Putting up with things makes you miserable and taking advice means that you are putting your health in someone else’s hands.  And while that person may have the best intentions, they may not have the skills to help you. 

Here are my top three points where I think that people would benefit from a little, well, educating… 

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Point #1: The first law of thermodynamics: eat less, move more and lose weight

Millions of people in the Western world waste millions of person-hours of time debating on the internet around an issue that can very quickly be addressed by recourse to the first law of thermodynamics: that energy can neither be created nor destroyed.

Broadly, for health and fitness purposes, this law means that if you are carrying too much fat and want to get thinner then you either need to move around more than you are doing at the moment or you need to eat fewer calories that you are doing at the moment.  Either or both will achieve your goal.

When someone complains vocally on a forum that they eat virtually nothing and do loads of exercise but still can’t lose weight doesn’t mean that I will suddenly think they are a special case.

If I’m inclined to feel generous about their motives, I will think they are self-delusional or can’t (won’t) count calories properly.  If I’m inclined to feel ungenerous, I’m going to assume that they are lying to me to make themselves feel better.

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Point #2: Lower and Upper Cross Syndrome: sitting is bad for you

Many people in the Western world (including me!) suffer from tight hip flexors and consquently weak glutes as a result of sitting for extended periods of time.  A series of further tight muscles and inhibited opposing muscles result in a range of muscular imbalances throughout the body that lead to the posture typically described as both Lower and Upper Cross Syndrome. 

Lower Cross Syndrome was first described by Czech physician Vladimir Janda.  He noticed that the hip flexor muscles of many of his patients were very tight and that their antagonist muscles (the glutes) were elongated and weak.  Many people suffer from the chronic effects of Lower Cross syndrome, which can be present in any age group, fitness level or occupation.

Common problems include shoulder pain (caused by the reduction in the space within the shoulder capsule), lower back pain, shortness of breath (caused by the collapse of the chest cavity) and depression.

I struggle with lower and upper cross syndrome enough to spend 30 minutes every single evening working on my soft tissue to prevent the tight muscles from getting any tighter and I include glute strengthening work in my gym sessions at least twice a week.

However, I notice that many of my work colleagues suffer from the same problems and do not have the same education that I have and consequently suffer continued pain and discomfort, eventually developing more serious conditions (including slipped discs in their lower back and chronic shoulder impingement). 

What’s more, most personal trainers don’t seem to know about these issues either…

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Point #3: The Western medical profession: they might not know how best to help

Many of my colleagues and friends who have suffered complications as a result of their appalling posture have been to see a doctor and have ended up having some sort of operation.  To the best of my knowledge, no mention was made to any of them that they could sort out their own issues using physiotherapy, soft tissue work and strength training.

While I suppose it is possible that their complications had got so serious that an operation was the only course of action, I do remain sceptical.  This is partly because of the way that I understand they have been treated and partly because of what I learned at university reading psychology.  At university, I read about the alarmingly casual way the medical profession used surgery and pharmacy again and again to “treat” the mentally-ill. 

So, in short, I have developed the opinion that the medical profession tends to recommend direct surgical or pharmacological action as a matter of course and ignores possible other options even when these options are less intrusive and more effective.  Physiotherapy, soft tissue work and strength training, which we know can help in a number of different ways, just aren’t recommended by the Western medical profession because they aren’t in their toolbox.  When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail… 

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To sum up…

So that’s my big three issues where I think most people could benefit from being a little more “open-minded”.  Did I miss one?  Do you violently disagree?

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