MYTH: A daily standardized repetitive schedule of exercise is necessary for good health.

TRUTH: Young children get enough exercise by moving around all day and they don’t have to run to stay healthy. Teenagers don’t need daily exercise if they move during the day and they don’t have to run. We no longer need to hunt and chase wild animals so running should be necessary in the near future. The best kind of exercise would be to have teenagers work for about 4 hours a day in a safe job in the real world at less than minimum wage. They will get plenty of exercise on the job especially in a fast food outlet or urban farming and don’t need to participate in an exercise routine on a daily basis.

The truth is that one 15 minute open source exercise video can be used to teach basic body conditioning routines for humans who are not athletes.

An exercise routine does not need artificial workout aids such as resistance machines since exercising the body without help from mechanical devices is the most natural and best exercising.  Few people get a kick out of going to gyms and that is their right but the majority of people don’t have to formalize their exercise routine and can do just as well with their own private exercising routines at home. Selfmotivation is essential but this can be indoctrinated in elementary school and by parents who promote selfexercise by example.

One room in the house or a six by six foot free space in a room can be an exercise room where natural human exercise movements can be done without the aid of most artificial devices which build up the body in unnatural ways.  Such movements as pushups and/or squat thrusts and/or sit ups and/or deep knee bends and/or running in place and/or spinning in place and/or jumping jacks and/or jumping up and down instead of jumping rope which limits the degrees of freedom that your hands can exercise during the jumping and/or chin ups and/or an assortment of aerobic moves and/or weaponless martial arts moves should be popular forever.

When doing jumping jacks or jumping up and down don’t stay in one place but move around the room even spinning around while doing them and flex your knees a little and move in many patterns over the floor. Feel free to jump to different heights while doing jumping jacks and make it a nonboring real blast of a cardio workout. Also during the jumping jacks feel free to bend at the waist and twist the torso too and flail the hands around at the joints and bend the elbows. Be a wild and crazy gal or guy and enjoy yourself. That is true utilitarian personal creativity which is so rare in society!!!

Climbing trees is the best way to exercise the body in a natural way but this can be  hazardous and unnecessary to build good body coordination and fitness.

The truth is that nonathletes can exercise thoroughly at home or playing cotennis so there should be no physical education in Public Schools for all students.  Cotennis is covered in this book and is a form of agility training which is one of the best exercises in the world to develop all round health for the whole family.

Team sports are highly overrated as a form of exercise for individuals since most people do not have the luxury of gathering enough team players for two teams when they need or want to exercise.  Exercise is most practical when it can be done alone.  Team sports mostly glorify the athletically talented while most of the other players feel like losers or very incompetent.

Why should most of the student population go through feelings of athletic inadequacy playing team sports when they can be taught to successfully exceed personal fitness goals by gradual improvement and feel that they are truly making personal bodily fitness progress.  I can now do 100 jumping jacks instead of 50 is an objective desirable increase in physical fitness which achieves a sense of real individualized accomplishment which no relatively rare team goal scoring can achieve.

If you are an affluent teenager and have a tennis court available then do some agility exercise by playing cotennis with a family member and/or friend and/or partner.

Adults get enough exercise on the job unless they have sedentary jobs at a desk or computer. Here the recommendation is a speedy walk for about 20 minutes about three times a week. If you skip a week or a month without exercise it will not damage your health if you resume the speedy walking after the long duration. Some people are so healthy that they can go for years without any exercise regime because their lives are active enough with (caring for children and/or doing housework) and/or (shopping and/or visiting friends) and/or (going to public events and/or gardening) and/or etc.

Older people have to exercise their joints moderately if they sit around much during the day and do not walk but mostly sit all day and don’t depart the house for a leisurely walk once in a while. The muscles connecting the joints get stiff if not exercised and begin to atrophy which is a natural result of aging and the body can’t stay in shape without or with minimum movement.

If you begin to feel stiff in old age begin to moderately exercise those stiff joint muscles until the stiffness goes away.  If the stiffness does not go away with exercise then you are really getting old and you should exercise the stiff joint muscles every day to delay the beginning of even greater stiffness.

In old age we will all eventually be chair ridden or bedridden but even then you should not stop exercising the stiff joint muscles which you have so you will still be able to move around in the chair or bed to stay in the best shape possible.

When you are old the best form of exercise is utilitarian exercise. Do the dishes by hand and clean the floors and do the laundry by hand and try growing organic food in your garden if you have one to eat when the food is harvested. Stay as active as you can but don’t devote your time to trivial behaviors which are pointless and waste your time and energy and probably much money if it is an expensive hobby or pastime.

If you liked this article and would like to know more about cotennis buy my book COMMON SENSE and get a bonus of many more awesome articles for only $3. Enjoy!!!