Function is a moniker for ‘physical activity and how the body moves and functions’, and if you’re interested at all in how you look, how you move is of great importance because movement is what creates the body many people want.
- If you want to build muscle, you have to move.
- if you want to get faster, you obviously have to move.
- If you want to lose weight, you have to move.
- If you want to feel better about yourself, you have to move.
- If you want to get healthier, you have to move.
Improving health and fitness through improved movement is nearly unanimous and biological. Research indicates there’s no such thing as a non-responder to exercise. Movement has been a part of humans as long as humans have been around. In fact, movement is what allowed humans to flourish to the top of the food chain (in addition to a cunning brain).
As science has been pointing out, lack of movement leads to a host of metabolic disorders, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and mental illness to name a few. It’s also been pointing out movement is a way to reverse or manage many of the same diseases that a lack of movement can bring about, and there are many other disorders for which exercise is effective.
At this point, I don’t think anyone can really argue against the utility of exercise. What people can argue against is the actual necessity to do it. Do we NEED to exercise nowadays? And the short answer is, no. The long answer is, yes.
The fact that we don’t need to exercise to achieve many of our life’s goals. This is probably reason enough for people to avoid exercise.
“I want to live my life” is the common rebuttal to a plea to exercise more. Who can argue with that? With so many things to do, people to see, places to go, who has time to exercise, especially in a gym with a bunch of other sweating bodies? Nothing could be more painful or torturous.
We don’t technically need to exercise because the line separating fitness and survival has been blurring for the past few decades with advances in medicine and technology. Humans are living longer than ever despite poorer quality of life than our ancestors. With age, comes disease, because the body will eventually break down. It’s like constantly changing the oil to keep a car running when the engine is deteriorating.
But the fact is, we do need to exercise. My thought process is, if people didn’t need to exercise, why are they still complaining about the way they look, move, and feel? There has to be some intersection between ‘want’ and ‘need’, and if you want something badly and frequently enough, there’s an element of truth and necessity to it.
We technically need to exercise to keep the car as sharp and mint as possible. If you maintain the engine well, it can run longer with less hiccups, and the same oil changes. Who wouldn’t want to live longer, enjoy life a bit more, and not be in pain in the process?