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The Exercise Myth: Is It Really That Good For Us? Chapter 2

When my son was five years old he was obsessed with superheroes. One afternoon as we watched an old James Bond film he became puzzled by how an ordinary mortal with no obvious superhero powers could still beat the ‘baddies‘. Later when it came to re-enacting the scenes with me as the bad guy, he asked what was Bond’s secret power. My reply was intended to show that there is more to being a hero than just being strong. I explained to my son that because Bond was a clever man he could ‘use his head’ to defeat his enemies. He thought about this for a few seconds then proceeded to execute a perfect head butt right onto the bridge of my nose. As I conceded the contest he made a mental note that this was indeed a good method and worth remembering for future use. My good intentions had brought about the opposite effect.



We all interpret advice and information according to our unique view of the world. In our minds it all makes sense. Yet when we come to apply our wisdom, we may be surprised that others often view it differently. How we assimilate facts depends on our current level of knowledge and as this changes so should our understanding. Unfortunately this is not always true if we ‘close our minds’ to concepts that appear different to our own. When this happens we cease to develop because ultimately it is concepts that determine our actions – if these stay the same, so do we.

The Exercise Myth - Effort Is Good!

It has long been accepted that if you want to get fit or achieve success you will have to be prepared to do a lot of exercise. However, in place of blood, sweat and tears I believe we need to use a resource often ignored when it comes to sport and ‘use our heads’. In the process of trying to achieve an ambition, such as getting fitter, achieving success or shedding a few pounds, many seem to lose the ability to think rationally. We too readily accept advice and guidance from ‘experts’ with little or no credentials other than being a famous face or looking good on the front of a video sleeve. If you examine the majority of today’s popular exercise systems you may be surprised at the lack of scientific endorsements in spite of their impressive claims.

This is how the exercise myth is sustained.

Repeat something often enough and it will eventually become accepted as a truth. These ‘truths’ go on to become the foundation for the next miracle fitness programme promising spectacular results. Often these methods are nothing but old ideas re-packaged - big on marketing, but lacking in substance. Sadly these failings are present in many serious works on fitness and exercise founded on common misconceptions that refuse to die. It is quite possible that the philosophy in which you place your faith may be holding you back or even causing injury. Yet in spite of this we remain reluctant to question convention and are content to continue with the same routines and should therefore not be surprised to get the same result.

See Through The Exercise Myth
To Make Real Progress

Because you are reading this I assume you are serious about your sport and therefore owe it to yourself to explore the exercise myth and examine thoroughly the current advice on fitness training. We should not accept anything just because it appears to makes sense as it will only make sense if it fits in with what we already know. If what we know about our body is factually inaccurate, and lets not be too proud and admit this could be the case, it does not follow that we will arrive at the right judgement. The rationale of the popular methods may sound feasible because it has been reached by making the same basic errors we all commit when coming to a conclusion. First, if we do something that achieves a result we presume it must work and second, if it feels good it is doing us good.

Let us look at the first error - a result is no guarantee that it is beneficial for the individual in the long term. For example, if I perform one hundred sit-ups every day for two weeks I will notice a difference at the end of the period. I therefore make the assumption that the exercise works because I can see a result, but do I actually benefit as an individual from having stronger abdominal muscles? Or have I just created a stronger muscle that will put undue stress on my frame? What difference will it make to my performance? I feel stronger or am I perhaps just feeling tightness in an over-active muscle? This is the second fallacy. We do not have a reliable mechanism that informs us when something is right, later in this book there are a number of practical experiments to emphasis this fact (and I admit at first hearing it sounds ludicrous). The truth is we cannot know if we are performing an exercise or technique efficiently and therefore do not know if it is doing us good, note that absence of pain or injury is not an indicator that we are doing it well.

The exercises devised to achieve the ideal shape or optimum fitness are often at odds with each other because there is as yet no agreement on the definition of fitness or what is the ideal shape. We do not currently know, and possibly may never know, the exact function that individual muscles perform in relation to the workings of the whole body. How do we then go about achieving an unknown goal? Can we predict the effect exercises designed to develop specific muscles will have on the whole body? Is it possible to reduce our capacity for integrated, natural movement by targeting and working on individual body parts?

This leaves us in a difficult position, if we are unable to trust what we are told, what makes sense or even what we feel, how can we ensure our efforts are not wasted or worse still detrimental to health? The only viable solution is to go back to the basics to develop our powers of observation and reason to see through the exercise myth. This book contains the means for you to start your own journey of self-discovery that will ultimately lead to improvement. We should learn to appreciate sport or physical activity as much more than just a way to getting fitter, achieving success or just shedding a few pounds.

So why should we trust yet another method? I would like to stress at this stage the uniqueness of Alexander’s approach to improving performance. The Alexander Technique is not a method to improve posture as is commonly thought. Its radical approach is to empower the individual to recognise, through enhanced self-awareness, the subtle changes required if they are to improve. Whereas conventional coaching involves instruction on what to do, The Alexander Technique focuses on what not to do. Conventional training methods are based on the concept that we need to be doing something in addition to our sporting activity to force the pace of progress. In contrast, Alexander argued that before we think about training, we should ensure that the mechanisms we rely on for movement are functioning to their optimum ability.

Unfortunately, living in today’s fast moving world provides the conditions most likely to bring about a lowering in the standard of these mechanisms. If our movement is questionable, all measures to enhance performance using these unreliable mechanisms will have a limited or even harmful outcome. To complicate the issue we may not even be aware that there is a problem due to the nature of the condition. We can soon forget what natural, free movement feels like if repetition of poor movement becomes the norm. These actions corrupt our sense of effort and self-awareness that ultimately determine how we move. The viscous circle is complete – rubbish in, rubbish out. The methods used in The Alexander Technique therefore encourage the individual not place trust in our fallible sensory mechanisms - in short we are learning to use our heads to think and not to feel.

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Want to ask a question? You have just read the second chapter, 'The Exercise Myth', of my book The Performance Paradox online. If there is anything on this page that you would like to follow up please feel free to contact me Roy Palmer

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