Today I want to "ramble on" about the growth of 'philosophers' concerned with fitness (sort of), and also the growth of 'fitness pro's" concerned with philosophy (sort of). When I started this blog The Fitness Philosopher(before the inevitable online copycats) back in 2011 it was kinda of a joke because a few friends referred to me as the 'fitness philosopher' which grew out of my study and writing in 'the philosophy of the body' which is related to 'philosophical anthropology' which is a special area of philosophy not found in many philosophical academic departments in NA. I have been in the fitness biz since the mid 90's and BA degrees in Philosophy and Psychology and a MA in Philosophy and now am finishing a PhD in Philosophy. SO while being a fitness pro and a philosophy student I noticed that most philosophers I went to school with or studied under, had either ascetic lifestyles (read alone a lot, information geeks) or hedonistic lifestyles (smoke, drink, drugs, argue a lot) but not really balanced and fit lifestyles. This was in direct opposition to my philosophical heros such as Aristotle-who ran a gym/school/sweet plot of land called the Lyceum. In fact gymnastics is the 'first' form of education for the Greeks before drawing, reading and music.
The actual Lyceum grounds! Not as big as I pictured in my head!
In contrast, most 'fitness pros' were either just into sports or into "science" but not philosophy, and what they did know about philosophy came from yoga or Mike Menzter. You see Mike Mentzer (who was a genius on amphetamines or just plain crazy) thought of himself as a 'thinking man' and a 'rationalist' but really he just was a fan of that pseudo-philosophy of Ayn Rand -which promotes selfishness as a virtue (really it does) and which was the basis of the failed Paul Ryan budget based on cutting off all forms of welfare.
Just google 'Ayn Rand sucks' for more info on "objectivism"- and so anyway Menzter thought of himself as the 'virtuous hero' compared to to the Machiavellian Schwarzenegger (and I won't get into the 1980 Olympia clusterf*ck now either) but the point is Mike took bodybuilding past plain old marketing (Weider, Arnold, everyone!) and tried to make people think about how to workout. While Bulgarians and a bunch of commies had been doing this for decades -the cold war was still on. So Mike put out some books (again just novel 'fitness products') with titles like Heavy Duty 2: Mind and Body. So Mike became the 'thinking mans' bodybuilder but did not really fill their minds with good philosophy.
Fat and Happy Buddha-looks very different then Sad and Skinny Buddha!
Having personal goals and all that is great but the first world is becoming obsessed with 'realizing potentials' -and while that is nice to an extent, it is not only a major first world luxury but can be a real source of discontent. Since some philosophers will argue that the root of suffering is in thinking that you still have to 'be' somewhere or something else before you can be happy. Be that richer, thinner, smarter, bigger muscles, enlightened mind, more connected, whatever... In Zen there are 2 main schools, the meditate until you get enlightenment version which is very popular in the west today and then version I prefer which asks 'how can you make a mirror out of a stone?' ALL THAT IS LEFT TO DO IS HAVE A GOOD LAUGH! enjoy the weekend! Here is a link to learn more about Japanese Buddhism and Rinzai and Soto Schools: GOOGLE BOOK LINK
Now that Spring is here it is a good time to re-think your fitness habits. One of my favourite old school bodybuilders Frank Zane was a thinker, a math teacher and quite philosophical. He talked about how it is easier to get in shape in the spring since there is a natural shedding in nature and a re-energizing of the environment that we can tap into to. Perhaps that is why so many bodybuilders flock to Sunny place to live! Here in Canada the lack of sunlight in winter puts a lot of people into 'hibernation mode'. When the sun sets at 5pm and there is 4 feet of snow outside it is hard to feel 'springy' and want to jump around. Now that spring is softening the environment we can use the opportunity to get outside more and play! Here is a simple plan to ease into spring!
Spring Clean Up Plan:
1. Eliminate all beverages except for water, herbal teas and black coffee. This will create an automatic calorie reduction in your day without changing your main eating habits. Water is funny stuff, if you don;t drink enough you will hold water and look puffier and so drink lots of water and to keep your system moving. Ask yourself does my blood seem more like a stagnant pool or a rushing river that creates all kinds of neat electrical charges!
2. Try and walk outdoors 3 x per week with someone else or alone. Go outside and walk for 10-20 minutes and then walk home for a good 20-40 minutes of fresh air and cardio. Don't wear a hat and let the sunlight hit your forehead!
3. Do some resistance training 2 x wee. Something like swimming, yoga or weight training to challenge your muscles. Squatting onto a chair for 60 seconds will get you started, add in some push ups and planks and your are doing great!
4. Maybe paint a room or clean out some closets to 'refresh' your living space!
5. Buy some new sneakers or comfortable shoes or even workout gear to motivate you to use it!
There is no really good philosophical argument for eating meat. Yes all kinds of people on the net "preach" paleo, caveman, carnivore, hunter/gatherer, as if eating this way will act like drugs and totally transform how you look and feel. Arguably the main benefits of these diets are actually from the increase in whole foods like fruits, vegetables and nuts in addition to the elimination of junk food, fast food, processed foods, flour based foods, sugar based foods, etc. The meat which gets emphasized (like Atkins did with bacon) is really just a kinda sales tactic to people already used to eating lots of meat and enjoying it and also in reaction to the whole low-fat phase the fitness world went through for a good 20 years. Ex. are you sick of low fat chicken and rice? Eat full fat buffalo and blueberries instead.
I have gone long periods of time without eating any meat, in fact years with no red meat but now I am back to being a regular old omnivore. I eat meat because I seem to crave it, but a moments reflection allows me to realize that I am not craving flesh but the nutrients I get out of it. So over the past few months I have been going crazy with full fat coconut milk and it seems to have fulfilled my needs for fatty meats. Coconut milk is high in fat and good calories, fibre, MCT's (a special medium chain triglyeride which I used to sell as a fitness supplement, but that naturally occurs in coconut) and loads of vitamins and minerals. So if you are trying to cut back on meat for whatever reason-there are many good arguments against eating meat- then start drinking and cooking with coconut milk (in cans) and cooking with coconut oil! Great alternative to saturated fats from animals!
Bob Couch – Pump Iron: Is this the best song ever written?
Not to be confused with the 1977 Arnold S docu-drama "Pump-'ing' Iron." Rather it is a simple song whose lyrics are a summary of the benefits of weight training or what the Ancient Greeks called gymnastics. Here is my philosophical analysis of this song/gift that speaks a timeless message which is that all humans gotta "pump iron!" My thoughts are in brackets and bold.
The Lyrics!
Well working real hard I’m just a middle class man, working for a man that I can’t stand. Clearly a Marxist critique, through Herbert Marcuse and Ardent, of man as one dimensional and 'the worker', alienated from the fruits of his labour in post industrial technological society, left to toil endlessly like Sisyphus with no sense of accomplishment. Furthermore a Weberian critique of the modern work ethic and capitalist psychology of the 'boss'.
Sometimes it takes all I got to get me through the day. Demonstrating the suffering at the heart of a life in which human potentials have been subordinated to the utilitarian ends of production.
So when I get home about half past five, I need to do something that helps me unwind. After a full day of labour the worker is still 'wound up' since the energy was not grounded or released in the artificial labour which cannot fulfill the basic human need for physical accomplishment.
I need to do something that keeps me from going insane. Here we find Freud's critique in Civilization and its Discontents of human instinct being subordinated to human convention causing mass neurosis.
I need to pump iron. (analogous for getting back in touch with the basic natural elements) I need to push out another set. (he needs to be self determined and push on) I need to pump iron. I got to work off all this sweat. (curious line, while working out makes one sweat, this new sweat of working out acts like a baptism and cleansing of the body covered in the 'sweat' of toil. You see but working out my muscles I’m relaxing my mind and after an hour or two I’ll find, my whole outlook on life is shiny and new.(key line of the whole song. Working out muscles causes a 'state change' in the body on many levels. Phenomenologically there is a opening of the way we are in the world, and to quote Heidegegger's, Being and Time 'a mood of elation, alleviates the manifest burden of being." This new mood, that results from 'pumping iron' transforms the world we find ourselves thrown into, and where we previously saw barriers we now feel communion, and where we felt threatened before, we now can courageously march into the unknown!
Now it’s saturday morning and I want to sleep in, but the nextdoor neighbor’s dog is barking again. The wife and the kid been bugging me to go for a ride. But a week’s worth of work is piled up by now, and I’m expected to get it done somehow. Then I gotta find the time to do what they wanna do.(while at first you think he is shirking his family responsibilities, instead he is making a rational decision to go first transform his mood with pumping iron and then the family will all have a much better day!)
Instead I pump iron. I push out another set. I pump iron. I got to work off all this sweat. You see but working out my muscles I’m relaxing my mind and after an hour or two I’ll find, my whole outlook on life is shiny and new.
If life’s little worries are bringing you down, you might want to try this thing I found. I think it will do for you what it’s doing for me. (Here he is speaking of the paradox of the universal and the particular and that since it works for him as a human being, it may work for you too!)
One other thing that I ought to mention, working out your muscles you’ll be drawing attention from the opposite sex if you know what I mean. (no real explanation need here except to being a testament to human beings and our animal nature with basic instincts that still have powerful effects on our decision making to this day-an of course the most powerful is that of reproduction!)
You need to pump iron. You need to push out another set. You need to pump iron. You got to work off all this sweat. You see but working out your muscles you’re relaxing your mind and after an hour or two you’ll find, your whole outlook on life is shiny and new.
You see but working out my muscles I’m relaxing my mind and after an hour or two I’ll find, my whole outlook on life is shiny and new.
I have previously written on this blog about a modern cultural phenomena I have noticed, and that is the division of 'jock and nerd'. The problem of the 'jock vs nerd' is basically a re-hashing of the old mind-body problem that pops up in philosophy, historically. One can point the finger at Descartes and his Cartesian dualism as a source of the modern division of mind and body. And although modern medicine works on a monist model, popular thought tends to still divide the body and mind as separate and so I wanted to talk about philosophers of history who were concerned with physical fitness and for fun recount what they did to stay fit and keep thinking big! 1. Plato: a true philosopher in the Greek sense of having both the social/political status and the intellectual potential to philosophize 'all day and night.' This is real philosophy in the Greek sense and not limited to our modern understanding of reading philosophy after work or being a professor of philosophy as a job. For Plato, philosophy was a way of life which included physical exercise as a pre-requisite for living well. Plato was a good wrestler, and the name Plato in fact means "broad shouldered' and so we can assume that he was a big and strong man and not just a 'skinny, bearded old man'. In fact, Plato's school 'The Academy' was in fact a gymnasium made up of some gardens, stoas and exercises spaces like wrestling rings. Philosophy was discussed around exercise and music and certainly was not like our stuffy classrooms of today. Walkers: these great thinkers of history all thought walking was awesome. Walking is one of the best forms of aerobic exercise for fat loss and has many of the benefits of tai chi and so I always recommend daily walking of 20-60 minutes. But don;t take my word for it. 2. Aristotle: Plato's best student but not the successor to The Academy. Aristotle set up his own school, again a gymnasium set up outside the city walls. Half way in nature, half way in society the gymnasium was known as the Lyceum or the 'place of the Wolf'. Again the gymnasium was made up of various gardens and exercise spaces and Aristotle was known to 'walk and talk' for his lectures. This led to his specific school of followers to be called the Peripatetics or 'walkers'. 3. Nietzsche: In his book, "Twilight of the Idols" he writes: "All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking." He also writes that a good cup of oil-less cocoa (fat free hot chocolate) after a walk is good for thinking too! It would take the fitness industry another 100 years to start selling post -workout shakes. 4. Kierkegaard: this guy was big influence on Nietzsche, and wrote:
“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.”
5. Adorno: another German philosopher after Nietzsche writes in rather dramatic language, "The body's habituation to walking as normal stems from the good old days. It was the bourgeois form of locomotion: physical demythologization, free of the spell of hieratic pacing, roofless wandering, breathless flight. Human dignity insisted on the right to walk, a rhythm not extorted from the body by command or terror. The walk, the stroll, were private ways of passing time, the heritage of the feudal promenade in the nineteenth century."
Taking a warm bath will 'take you back to the womb' and to the place you peacefully existed before you learned about stuff like sales quota's, income tax and that you are going to die sooner then later. So 'model' the womb by taking a warm bath, in low light, as quiet as possible (maybe use a sound machine or fan as white noise) and you can even add salts like epsom salts or oils like 'Clary Sage' or 'Lavender' essential oil which will help calm your mind. You only need about 20 minutes to get the mood relaxing effect.
2. Take a 20 minute nap.
While meditation in its many, many forms can be helpful for stress reduction, most of the physical benefits can be had by merely napping. Since there are many forms of meditation and it takes time to learn, if you want some of the benefits just lie down for 20 minutes and close your eyes. This will give your brain a much needed break from the hustle and bustle of daily life and refresh you for the rest of the day. Don;t worry about 'doing it right' or falling into a deep sleep or anything, just relax and enjoy the silence.
3. Watch or read something funny.
We all to often take our lives way too seriously and sometimes watching or reading comedy can give us a 'higher' perspective on how we fit into the human situation. So don't write off cartoons or comics as 'for kids' since the most cutting edge social commentary is often found in comedy and shows like the Simpson's actually go over most people heads with many of their 'intellectual' jokes- for me anyway.
