Is Exercising Selfish?
As i walk in and out of the gym i train at day after day, seeing people push weight and pump their legs on treadmills, i start to wonder at what point this exercise becomes compromising to other aspects of health. Fitness professionals spend so much time trying to get folks to exercise MORE and yet what about the other side of the spectrum? What about the personal trainers that work out two and three times a day? The weekend warriors that bodybuild in the morning before work and after work? What about he greenhorn entrepreneurs that spend 4 hours in the gym training, getting massages, and watching football in the locker room? Or perhaps you’ve heard of the ultra-marathon mom that trains obsessively 6-7 days a week for hours at a time?
At what point does all this “exercise” become selfish?
What if the obsessive exercisers out there figured out a way to get a “workout” in, while being more conscious of family, friend, and community health? What about replacing some exercise days with the following:
1) Donate your time: What about working a couple of weekends at a non-profit like habitat for humanity building homes for families? Anybody that’s worked construction knows that it can be back-breaking work if you’re not used to it.
2) Convince your friends to Join an intramural league: Some people like to exercise solo, which i understand being a partial introvert at times myself, however, one or two days a week playing with friends is a great way to exercise and maintain ties with close friends and acquaintances. It’s also great team-building for those who own companies to keep their employees happy and involved.
3) Family Time: For those with families, what about including them in some sort of active family activity like hiking, bike riding, etc. Involving other families in friendly competition could be a great way to connect with neighbors and harbor a sense of community.
Even those that are hard-core fitness junkies could definitely benefit from taking a couple of days out of their hard-core warrior routines to inject some sanity, recovery, as well as make life better for others. Even the fitness professionals, who may feel pressured to look and perform as the fittest people on the planet may be negating other aspects of health, such as emotional and relationship health. And since health is a continuum with all the branches connecting to each other, if one aspect of our lives goes down, it brings down the rest with it. And the best part is that more working out isn’t always better, and is most likely counter-productive in most cases.
A good point but, it’s not even so much selfishness as it is habit and fear. The fear that if their routine changes, they will fall backwards or lose their way.
The main issue is everything becomes a chore. One should never train unless they are ready to dedicate themselves to train. This does not mean you should not be active however. If today isn’t your day, go play. You can’t lose playing and you can’t feel like your falling backwards. It’s win win.
Charlie, I actually had a similar idea a few months ago. I wanted to create a “boot camp” where the group of people gathered would run from house to house and do chores, move furniture, take out trash or old refrigerators, etc.
Never could figure out how to get people to buy in though. People are too suspicious of helpfulness these days.
I agree with Erik, too. Habitual behavior is the downfall of the neo-cortex. Habits are safe. They allow you to create predictability in the world.
So the same issue you mention is the one that addicts of any nature face. Is it “selfish?”
“You speak as if you are here, and the Self is somewhere else and you had to go and reach it…But in fact the Self is here and now, and you are always It. It is like being here and asking people the way to the ashram, then complaining that each one shows a different path and asking which to follow.”
—Sri Ramana Maharshi
Everything’s “selfish.”
Is it mindless?