Salvation From Sitting

Word is out, sitting is the new smoking when it comes to health, though standing in place of sitting doesn't help much. However, the researchers who did the latest study on this don't strike me as physical rehabilitation experts. My favorite fitness guru on Youtube however has something to say about exactly what sitting does to decrease your mobility (and thus kill you):

"Anterior pelvic tilt" explains a lot. His remedy is building the glutes (butt) and abs (stomach.) How should we do that? I choose my exercises based on the following principles:

1. Ergonomics: low risk of injury. I especially like exercises that give good results with less reps, as I am concerned about repetitive stress injury on a number of my major joints.
2. Fool proof: the exercise should give good results even when not executed at the full range the fitness instructor on the video demonstrates.
3. Self-defense application: if it doesn't help me in sparring, I don't have time for it.
4. Efficiency: I want to work the maximum number of muscle groups with the least number of exercises, because exercises take away from sparring time.

Let's start from the ground up, with the glutes. I like squats for these because it is pretty easy to follow the instructions and not hurt yourself (1,) and squats give good results even when your squat depth is not great (2.) It's always helpful in a fight to be able to suddenly get lower than your opponent (in knife fighting it helps you target the back and inside of the legs, 3,) and squats also work most of the other muscle mass in your legs (4):

Abs are the other part of the solution to the Anterior Pelvic Tilt problem. I have a problem with most of the ab exercises out there (sit-up variations) because they violate all 4 of my exercise principles. But then comes the plank. A good basic front plank is simple to get right (1,) and is time based so adapts to the challenge level of where your abs are at (2.) It is a great exercise for practicing keeping your hands up while your body is under stress (3,) and unlike most ab exercises it works your entire abdominal wall (plus a bunch of other important muscles, 4):

The other problem caused by a sedentary lifestyle is a general weakness of the upper body, which limits our mobility as we get older. Good old-fashioned (Word War 2 era, probably done by Yoga Gurus for millennia, staple of traditional martial arts) Dive Bombers meet my criteria. Dive Bombers are pretty hard to hurt yourself doing (1) and give results even when done with less than ideal range of motion (2.) They have direct applications to grappling (sprawling and side control, 3,) and work most of the big muscle groups in your upper body (4):

To be clear I am no expert on fitness or medicine. It is my uneducated hypothesis that these are the exercises that will most efficiently save you from sitting on your ass 12+ hours a day. (I recently added these to my daily Tai Chi workouts and few visits a week to the MMA gym.)

Pomo Is Racist

Before you go judging my credentials on postmodernism or on racism, check out my two most important posts on these subjects:

1. A Diversity Of Whiteness
2. LA Pomophobic

The ultimate conclusion of Post Modernism (pomo) is that because all rational argument can be deconstructed, the only meaningful source of information is personal experience. This is far more destructive than being rebelliously narcissistic. Pomo is inherently and irredeemably racist.

One pomo platitude is "patriarchy for me may mean something different than patriarchy does for her." In other words "dictionary definitions don't matter, only our personal perspectives." This means that the ONLY value of any idea is the IDENTITY of the person who originated the idea. All ideas from white people are then white ideas, all ideas originating from gay people are gay ideas, and so on.

This means that every idea coming out of the brain of a person who happens to be black is a black idea. No matter how ingenious or earth shattering the concept, we must first consider and evaluate the idea's author's identity. That is just about as racist as you can possibly be.

As I described in A Diversity of Whiteness, I ran into grad school students who wanted to work on projects that were not associated with their ethnic identity. They expressed this concern with me on many occasions: "I am Mexican, so does that mean every time I come up with a new idea, we have to talk about how Mexican I am? When do I get to just be a student, and have my ideas evaluated on their own merits?" Pomo idealism was the most racist threat to their well being in grad school.

If you have ever argued with a conservative in social media, backing up your facts with links to credible sources, you very probably have heard the following comment: "Why don't you think for yourself and do your own research?" Stunned that they weren't going to take any links to Snopes, Wikipedia, University websites or even peer reviewed articles seriously, you begin to realize that what they are literally saying is "I was on food stamps once. I saw some ethnic people in the office who I think were acting very lazy and looked like they used drugs. So in my personal experience, I myself as a concrete witness know for sure that most ethnic people on food stamps are lazy drug users." Notice how extraordinarily pomo this racism is: your facts don't matter in the face of their personal experience.

And again, as I mentioned in A Diversity of Whiteness, this pomo discrimination alienates the oppressors in society from enlightening conversations that could help the oppressors not oppress. When the rich have to be excluded from conversations on poverty because all their ideas are rich people ideas, then the main power holders in that situation have been invited to never give poverty serious thought. In this way pomo perpetuates racism by excluding whites from conversations on ethnic diversity.

Racism in our world today may be completely dependent on pomo. Pomo is racist. 

Martial Morals

Many a famous martial arts master took on criminals as students - especially Triad gangsters in China being trained by Kung Fu masters, and Yakusa gangsters in Japan being trained by Karate masters. The most famous of these masters, Oyama, founder of the most influential of these traditional Japanese & Chinese boxing systems in today's sports world (Kyokushin Karate,) was known to believe that training in martial arts improved the character and morality of the trainee. These martial arts masters were essentially ministering to those who needed character and morality development the most - the criminal element. Professor Kano, the founder of Judo, was a leader in physical education and had similar beliefs about martial arts training, that it led to not only increased health, but increased morality:

Why would training to become better at hurting other people make you a better person? Why risk teaching delinquent elements in our society how to become more effective fighters? My hypothesis is that they witnessed first hand this moral development, and that this is a natural side effect of full contact martial arts training (as well as other certain types of athletic activities.)

In the documentary "A Mind to Crime: A Dangerous Few" explains that chronic criminal behavior is largely associated with an under stimulated prefrontal cortex, so that a recidivist has problems empathizing and forming long term strategies based on obvious consequences. Treatments that stimulate the prefrontal cortex - basically turning the life of a child into one big game of good behavior, or getting an adult to use a computer game to intensely focus their ability to concentrate their prefrontal cortex for extended periods of time - have shown to be effective treatments, stimulating the prefrontal cortex and leading to drastically less criminality.

In the classic Frontline documentary "Inside the Teenage Brain" explains that another part of the brain, the cerebellum, builds both coordination of ideas and coordination of the physical body. (I can't emphasize this enough: learning to coordinate your thought helps you coordinate your body, and learning to coordinate your body helps you coordinate your thoughts!) Teenagers mature not only as their cerebellum and prefrontal cortex grow and mature, but as the connections between those two parts of the brain solidify and strengthen.

Full contact martial arts demands your concentration. A brief laps in concentration while sparring leads to almost guaranteed physical pain, stimulating your prefrontal cortex. It also forces you to develop your physical coordination as it is an athletically demanding activity. No wonder boxing in the inner city of the USA and Mexico has been used to lead many wayward youth into a law abiding lifestyles as adults. No doubt wrestling has helped numerous middle class youth abate their own narcissistic tendencies, not only as the wrestlers learn to develop sympathy so that their sparring partners can avoid injury and continue to train with them, but also simply because of the stimulation of their prefrontal cortex and cerebellum!

We have assumed the YMCA created basketball primarily for fitness, but this achieved their over all goal of improved moral behavior, and basketball continues to be used throughout education systems today, partially because it is known to improve behavior of athletes long term. Fail to concentrate for even a moment in basket ball, and the consequences will be obvious - "keep your eye on the ball!" - prefrontal cortex stimulated, and all the while physical coordination is being developed.

I believe that full contact martial arts develops the brain's ability to coordinate and concentrate much more intensely than other athletics like basketball, because of the psychological and physical intensity of martial arts training. This is part of why martial arts masters have found martial arts to be an effective way of growing people into better human beings.