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apparentparadoxI don't know if my mind & body need couples counseling or group therapy. I'm assuming that others are the same (but maybe that's a bad assumption?)
I don't particularly like lifting weights, but I do like the end result -- not only the muscles, but also that "I know that I did something because I can feel it the next day" feeling and the "if I keep my muscles & bones strong, then as I get older, I'm less likely to hurt myself if I fall down".
One problem I have, though, is the whole notion of when to listen to my body and when to ignore it. There are moments when you just know "I better stop now, otherwise I'm going to get hurt". Those are fairly easy to notice. There are also times when I feel like a slug, but I know that there is nothing really going on, so I should ignore that.
The problem is the gray area in between. The times when my body says "I don't want to do that", and I'm not sure if it really needs a rest day to recover, or if it's just being lazy.
This has gotten even harder as I get older. I know that my body doesn't recover as fast as it used to, so it's easier to believe that I really do need that extra rest day, or that doing another set really will be counter productive.
The whole "no pain/no gain" is stupid, but you do have to push your limits in any endeavor in order to see where your limits really are, and to push them further out as appropriate. Besides, what does "pain" mean? Different people have different pain thresholds -- some might be in agony when their muscles have hardly done anything while others may have gotten to the point where they have caused severe damage to themselves before they notice any pain.
And then there's the whole "push weights" vs. "stretching/flexibility" vs. "aerobic fitness". Intellectually I know that all three are important, but while I can make myself push weights, it's much harder to convince myself to do the other two.
Is this mis-communication between my mind & body just a microcosm of the whole struggle between brains and brawn that societies face all the time? Does ontogeny really recapitulate phylogeny?
I don't particularly like lifting weights, but I do like the end result -- not only the muscles, but also that "I know that I did something because I can feel it the next day" feeling and the "if I keep my muscles & bones strong, then as I get older, I'm less likely to hurt myself if I fall down".
One problem I have, though, is the whole notion of when to listen to my body and when to ignore it. There are moments when you just know "I better stop now, otherwise I'm going to get hurt". Those are fairly easy to notice. There are also times when I feel like a slug, but I know that there is nothing really going on, so I should ignore that.
The problem is the gray area in between. The times when my body says "I don't want to do that", and I'm not sure if it really needs a rest day to recover, or if it's just being lazy.
This has gotten even harder as I get older. I know that my body doesn't recover as fast as it used to, so it's easier to believe that I really do need that extra rest day, or that doing another set really will be counter productive.
The whole "no pain/no gain" is stupid, but you do have to push your limits in any endeavor in order to see where your limits really are, and to push them further out as appropriate. Besides, what does "pain" mean? Different people have different pain thresholds -- some might be in agony when their muscles have hardly done anything while others may have gotten to the point where they have caused severe damage to themselves before they notice any pain.
And then there's the whole "push weights" vs. "stretching/flexibility" vs. "aerobic fitness". Intellectually I know that all three are important, but while I can make myself push weights, it's much harder to convince myself to do the other two.
Is this mis-communication between my mind & body just a microcosm of the whole struggle between brains and brawn that societies face all the time? Does ontogeny really recapitulate phylogeny?