Isaac Newton taught us about the nature of force. He said that force was the function of two factors: mass and acceleration.

Contrary to our natural fears, excessive force is rarely the result of that factor on which we fixate: mass (weight). The real bugaboo is acceleration.

We naturally tend to hear the word, acceleration, in a single-minded way. We say the word and think, accelerator, as that pedal linked to the throttle of an automobile. To accelerate commonly means to go faster. This restricted definition confines the more general meaning of the word.

Acceleration, as defined in physics, refers to any change in velocity. Velocity is a vector quantity. A vector quantity is any quantity that has both magnitude and direction. Therefore, if a body changes its direction or speed it is said to "have undergone acceleration." In other words, if the body starts, stops, slows, reverses, or changes its current behavior in any way whatsoever, it has accelerated.

Acceleration can be either positive or negative in the equation: F = MA. This reflects the fact that we have de-celeration or a-cceleration as defined by direction. And we have one or the other whenever we forcefully overcome inertia of rest or damp or arrest momentum.

I once believed that Newton had derived his corollaries of inertia/momentum and reactionary force from F=MA; and that other academics had separated them for pedagogical purposes. Respectively, these are commonly known as Newton's Laws #1, #3, and #2. A Newton historian corrected me, declaring that Newton himself had devised them as three separate laws for his own intellectual convenience. It is important, however, to appreciate that, strictly speaking, Laws #1 and #3 are merely corollaries of F=MA. Therefore, there is really only one law.

The dangers of acceleration are poorly appreciated by the medical community. Back specialists often recommend three rules to protect the back when lifting a heavy object:

• Get assistance.
• Use proper posture; use the legs not the back.
• Use appropriate lifting implements: crowbar, dolly, hoist, incline plane.

The most important rule - la Newton - is ignored. That rule is: "move slowly and smoothly, don't jerk."

This ignorance is illustrated by the common practice of lifting patients on and off the litter in surgery. Everybody helps: nurses, techs, physicians, anesthetists. Proper posture is adhered to. Each of the staff tries to keep his back straight. And the appropriate lifting implements - bed linens - are used. But what then occurs? Someone says, "one, two, three," and the patient is yanked. The patient - through dispersal of the forces - is well protected, but the surgery staff has more than a few members who have chronic back pain for their work.

Yes, posture and position matter. Yes, getting assistance is important; and the load and lever applied to the body is meaningful. But all of these factors combined are inconsequential compared to the forces that can be generated by sudden acceleration.

Intensity vs Force

Make a fist. As you sit at your desk, firmly press your fist onto the surface of the desk. Do so as hard as possible with no jerks, jabs, or stabs. Add additional muscular force with the other arm. Do this as hard as possible for about a minute. Keep breathing so that you do not pass out. Relax. Did you hurt your hand? - none other than some slight, temporary discomfort on the heel. Are your arms fatigued?¾yes. The muscles of the arms were significantly taxed with tolerable force to the hand.

Now imagine the next test: Raise your one fist high above your head and hit the top of the desk as hard and fast as you can. Did you hurt your hand? - most certainly; if you are a surgeon, your surgical career just ended. But are your arms tired? - not at all.

In the first example, you encountered high-intensity/low-force muscular contraction. In the second instance, we experienced low-intensity/high-force muscular contraction.

Most daily activity is not high-force. But we take for granted that common movement is low-force. A study of our movements reveals otherwise. We pay little or no attention to the suddenness with which we turn to look behind us while driving, jump to answer the phone or doorbell, grab to silence the alarm every morning. Once we are preoccupied, a slight change in our momentary environment takes us by surprise. Excessive forces are produced by the most innocent-appearing activities. And we are rarely aware that we have injured our neck or back or whatever until hours later and fail to connect the cause and effect.

Walking is not generally considered high-force activity. But to label it low-force activity smacks of a poor understanding of the potential of Newton's F=MA. Walking force can be increased without meaningfully-increased loading to the muscles by several means: walking on inclines, walking at an increasing pace, walking with backpacks, walking faster.

According to SuperSlow Exercise Philosophy, walking does not generally qualify as exercise. A movement or activity is not perceived as a stimulus by the body unless it is demanding. An activity that does not render a muscular failure - an inability of the muscle to continue, reached within one to three minutes - is not demanding. Again, walking can be continued ad infinatum because there is no meaningful muscular taxation. If walking becomes impossible, it is because the subject has become sleepy, hungry, generally fatigued, ridden with blisters, or dehydrated. The muscles, per se, do not fail. They can go on and on and on. And since they can go on and on; and since they are never meaningfully inroaded; overuse syndromes are proportionately probable.

There are exceptions. Walking may indeed be exercise for those for whom walking is all but impossible. In this instance of debility, walking is momentarily and meaningfully demanding. It is therefore exercise for these people. But is it indicated for such patients?

Notice the jerky, high-force movements that occur when the markedly decrepit walk. They plant their feet and crutches with tremendous force. And their risk of falling and sustaining greater injury is often as great as the possible benefits of the exercise stimulus.

I often hear the adjective, low-impact. This term is often used indiscriminately to imply low-force. I was surprised to hear Arthur Jones recently use this term this term in this context. On the contrary, low-impact does not indicate low-force. Relatively high force is encountered without an impact. Forces occur and vary depending on the rate of changing your movement. Thus, excessive force can be encountered merely by jerking your limbs around in the air. Just because you keep one foot on the floor while you perform dance aerobics does not necessarily indicate you are not jerking the hell out the rest of your body. Note that I subluxed a rib from my sternum by coughing as I sat and watched television on Christmas day in 1987. Sneezing or coughing often occurs with extremely violent forces. This is why broken ribs are a common result in elderly women. No impact is required.

Acceleration involving impact, however, is much more obvious though still not observed by exercise buffs who should fear the results. Notice the deliberate heel strike of those on walking programs as they briskly march about the neighborhoods. And if so-called, march fracture, can put a soldier out of commission, just imagine the chain of events that might follow with an elderly man or woman: immobility, foot surgery to relieve bone spurs, increased danger of falling while maneuvering with crutches, infection subsequent to surgery, and on and on. Bear in mind that post-operative infection to the feet is a serious matter - life threatening to the elderly or diabetic and more probable than with surgeries to other body parts. It may at first sound farfetched to imagine such scenarios as walking programs leading to death, but we must appreciate the fragile health of typical program participants.

Something Sane

My father is a physician who has a blunt, crude, but often meaningful way of stating the truth. If he were to state what is generally believed about the need for exercise, he might say something like this: "People need to get off their butts and move around." But the logical emphasis of this statement is not "move around." Emphasis should be placed on the words: "Get off their butts."

Meaningful torque against the muscles occurs as one very slowly rises from a seated position in the typical straight chair. A typical person will tax the leg and hip muscles from the beginning position to about 20 degrees of knee and hip flexion. We should research sitting programs not walking programs.

More About Acceleration

In the spring of 1982 there appeared an article about osteoporosis in Family Circle magazine. The authors deemphasized the importance of strength training and emphasized the application of "pounding" activities to promote stimulation of the bones. Such activities collectively termed aerobic exercises and/or steady state exercises filled the bill. There were many misunderstandings perpetuated about harmful force resulting from strength training [Though they did not use this term.].

Try to guess who was responsible for this article. Where would we least expect to hear misinformation about acceleration/deceleration forces? Who do we consider the most rightful intellectual inheritors of the laws of mechanical motion laid down by Newton? Who knows or should know more about G-forces and acceleration effects on the human body? And who has more practical experience with the acceleration of machines and humans off the earth's surface and the moon's? You guessed it - the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. At least, if the magazine gave correct credit for the article, NASA is the perpetrator of these crass notions concerning danger and exercise. They may have put us on the moon, but members of their exercise physiology department probably believe the earth is flat.

Yes, their notions are partly corroborated by fact. Most myth is partly corroborated by fact. It is true that one possible explanation for bone adaptation is the piezo-electrical stimulation that occurs when bone is stressed.

"Piezo-electric" refers to a polarity of charges resulting when, for instance, a length of bone is flexed end-to-end as one would bend the shaft of a pencil. Opposite charges occur on either side of the bend as bone tissue is decompressed on one side and compressed on the other.

Animal research strongly suggests that high-force, gross compression of body parts is not necessary to elicit this phenomenon. Bony micro compression is possible and most safe with resistance applied perpendicularly to the bone, causing flexion of the shaft. And this application minimizes the danger of gross longitudinal compression. (Lance Lanyon, PhD, and others have shown that optimal stimulation for bone response occurs with the use of counter-rotational pulses of Steinmann pins placed at right angles to length of the shafts of long bones. This, of course, is not practical. This then leaves us with muscular force appled to flex the bones as the most practical approach.

Walking Programs: A Natural Mistake

Within recent years we have seen valuable collagen protein studies performed with animals. Tipton, Woo, and Albright have provided us with rat, pig, and beagle research where the animal runs on some form of guided treadmill.

Such studies have enormous value despite their limitations. The advantage of these studies is the ability to coerce an animal to run and then be sacrificed and most-thoroughly analyzed. Of course, this is not ethically possible with humans and social pressures are mounting against the use of animals.

The selection of activities to impose on a research animal for study is extremely limited. Treadmill running or walking is the simplest and most efficacious way to insure uniform results. Hence, treadmills become a natural fixation.

Also the application of backpacks to laboratory animals leads some to erroneously believe that this is a reasonable inference to humans. This is a silly non sequitur by such authors as Shoenfeld and many others, though it is a common mistake among would-be experts in exercise. Not realized is a far better possibility for muscular loading in humans with less force and problems than that with animals. The backpack popularity does symbolize something important, though. It straps us within the exercise limitations of a dog, cat, rat, or pig.

With humans, we have the possibility for meaningful muscular loading through the intelligent use of the body's levers. This can be accomplished with the crudest of tools - a partner resisting the subject with respect to muscular function; Time Static Contraction Technique, equipment homemade with milk cartons, broomsticks, straight chairs and soup cans. Or better devices can be applied: barbell equipment; universal-type machines; and of course, Nautilus equipment. These are all viable tools to apply to the human body with adherence to the SuperSlow Exercise Principles.

Motor Learning

Backpacking as a form of exercise smacks of another common misunderstanding. Most exercise enthusiasts and many supposed experts still believe in specificity training. Bear in mind that the word, specificity, can be used in several ways when speaking of exercise - a source of confusion in and of itself. Here we are referring to the notion that performance in an activity can be improved by overloading or adding resistance to the activity.

For instance, we should become stronger swimmers by resisting the skill through the use of drag suits and swim paddles. Or we will strengthen our throwing ar throwing progressively heavier and heavier baseballs. The possibilities for such applications are endless and highly popular.

But the discipline of motor learning says "No." Skills are extremely specific. If overloaded in the attempt to strengthen the body, three things occur.

• Skill proficiency is confused and compromised.
• Muscular loading is avoided, therefore meaningful exercise is avoided.
• Forces are increased dramatically, therefore danger is increased proportionally.

But such notions are the stuff of fairy tales. During the summer of 1984 there aired a television movie to exalt the first Olympiad Americans attended. As the story goes, we were ill-prepared, but our Skinnerean delusion that we can do and be anything married to a disadvantage-turned-advantage helped us to overcome all odds.

And what was our disadvantage?: Our sports equipment was inferior, too heavy and clumsy. But training with this poor equipment helped in disguise through overcompensation. When we handled the official equipment, we were stronger than everyone else. The motor learning people laughed at what they view as poppycock. [See texts of motor learning by Robert N. Singer and Bryant Cratty or read Chapter #9 in SuperSlow: The Ultimate Exercise Protocol.]

Running and dancing with Velcro®-attached weight bands and AMF®'s Heavy Hands® are the same nonsense as backpacks. They also attempt to place overload on skilled movements. This is graphically excoriated in the vernacular by Arthur Jones in the article, Specificity in Exercise, The Facts and Fables, Athletic Journal, May 1977.

But What About Cardiovascular Benefits?

For lack of space to cover such a broad topic, we will simply make some statements that are supported in chapters in The Nautilus Book by Ellington Darden, PhD, SuperSlow: The Ultimate Exercise Protocol, and in lectures by Ted Lambrinedes, PhD. [Since publishing this issue another issue, (Volume 2, Issue 4 - a combined issue for the 4th quarter of 1994 and the first quarter of 1995) is completely devoted to the detailed bashing of the Aerobics Exercise Philosophy.]:

No one yet has any idea what cardiovascular fitness is. Several esteemed cardiologists state that there is no such thing.

Cardiologists view the heart from a disease standpoint. They see the heart's purpose, in a sense, to feed and sustain the heart. The exercise community sees the heart in a totally different way. Its purpose in their model is to fuel the body for better performance.

A correlation between cardiovascular fitness as measured by VO₂^Max and cardiovascular health has not been shown by researchers to date. VO₂^Max is the test used by exercise physiologists to create a foundation of research, textbooks, course curriculums, and degree mills throughout occidental academia supporting their profession. This has led to the appointment of exercise physiologists to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Center for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, the United States Forestry Service, health maintenance organizations, major medical schools and major corporations. This creation has been led by several outstanding leaders such as Michael Pollock, PhD. Pollock now admits that "VO₂^Max is no test of anything."

All data collected to date by VO₂ Uptake test can be explained by either one or a combination of any or all of the following possibilities:

• Increased ventilation - most older women have never breathed hard in their lives. It has been discouraged as being unladylike in our culture until just recently.
• Poor maintenance and calibration of monitoring equipment.
• If maximum tests are required for standardization, we are at the mercy of the subject's ability to perform. Despite sound chemistry, the procedure cannot be standardized.
• An increase in the skill proficiency required to walk or run on treadmill.

The word aerobic has at least three meanings in common usage - scientific and vernacular. One refers to aerobic versus anaerobic metabolism. Another refers to activity that promotes a high sustained heart rate. The third refers to so-called steady state activities - activities that are continued ad infinatum. [Steady state should not be defined according to a particular and perpetual activity to be meaningful. It should be defined according to perpetual muscular work.] Properly conducted strength training satisfies all three possible definitions of aerobic.

The word aerobic is an adjective. It is a proper science term to describe a major metabolic pathway in biochemistry. Aerobics is not a proper science term. It is a noun first coined by Kenneth Cooper, MD, as part of his quasi-Christian evangelism to imply that steady state activity was strongly correlated with aerobic metabolism. Aerobic is science terminology. Aerobics is pop culture lingo. The uncritical usage of these two terms for over 30 years by unknowing medical professionals as well as by the lay public has permitted an assumption of synononism.

Improved performance - the distance covered on a treadmill as a part of a VO₂^Max test - is due, primarily to increased skill proficiency at walking on treadmills. This also contributes to increased VO₂ uptake as is explained by Keith Johnson, MD, in The Nautilus Book. Researchers, though they often acquiesce to the importance of skill enhancement in assessing endurance, when questioned, show little understanding of the subtleties of positive, negative, and indifferent skill transfer.

VO₂^Max is an individually inherited phenomenon that is improvable only about 20%.

Any metabolic endurance improvement - except, of course, those due to skill enhancement - occur in two general areas:

• The metabolic interfaces at or within muscle tissue.
• Outside the muscle -  example: thickening and strengthening of the heart wall and/or hepatic metabolic improvement.

Both are accessed through the application of mechanical loads to the skeletal muscles. This is obvious. But this fact is obviously not obvious to many so-called, aerobics experts.

Other Myths and Superstitions

We are led to chase a mirage. The mirage is the belief that our sedentary life style precipitates the number one killer, heart disease. More poppycock? - probably.

Do you know anyone that is sedentary by choice? - Perhaps, but most people stay active their entire life if for no other reason than boredom.

Almost all sedentary individuals are so by restrictions due to immobility. And what makes people immobile? Well, if we disregard genetically induced immobilities such as those in the form of diabetes, stroke, and rheumatoid arthritis, as well as others such as obesity and emotional depression; immobility is the result of injuries and degenerative arthritis. And what caused these injuries? - force. And where did the force come from? - an active life style that involved decades of violently accelerated movements: incessant wear and tear.

Unless otherwise precipitated, we eventually become so immobile - too frightened to move or too painful to move or too fat to move or too varicose to move - that we quit moving. We then become progressively less capable of moving.

A typical course of events: We drive to grandfather's house to offer him a ride to a family outing - a picnic in the park, a hike in the woods, or a visit to the local zoo. He declines saying, "My joints are acting up today, you youngsters go on without me." As time goes on, this more-and-more becomes his response. He eventually retreats to his chair on the porch, then to a wheelchair, then finally to a bedridden state. And after a few years of progressive decay, the heart finally gives up the ghost. Cause of death on the death certificate?: Cardiac failure.

On the surface it appears that Grandfather died of heart disease. Ultimately, he certainly did. So what. Eventually, everyone dies of heart failure if not from something else. But look closer. Did Grandfather die of CHF (congestive heart failure) yet sooner because he was immobilized due to degenerative arthritis stemming from 60-70 years of violent joint trauma incurred working as a farm hand? Did all that healthy rural lifestyle - bailing hay, digging post holes, roping and branding cattle, building barns, slopping hogs, picking corn, breaking horses - ultimately lead to a prematurely compromised vascular system? "Living may be hazardous to your health." as my father sometimes says.

Dr. Michael Fulton worked with paraplegics at the Nautilus Complex in Lake Helen, Florida. There were hopes that artificial stimulus of the severed nerves could effect some muscular strengthening, although it was acknowledged at the outset that such from electrical stimulation in subjects of normal strength is an unreasonable expectation.

The purpose of muscular strengthening in paraplegia is not the unreasonable hope that practical locomotion can result. The purpose is much more important. These patients usually live a shortened life due to eventual vascular and bony decay. Strengthening the muscles may save their lives.

The notion that our society is sedentary is too simple - too much of stock folklore. Our society is not inactive. Study the life of the average housewife. After high school she marries. She raises a family. She works. She cleans house. She mows the yard. She car pools children, hauls groceries, and is physically very active. After her children are grown, she starts a new career. She joins civic groups, and embarks into a host of new projects. She is as active as her mobility will permit throughout her whole life, despite the fact that she has never experienced what we mean by exercise. Again we are back to the Exercise vs Recreation confusion.

It is romantic to pretend that the rustic life of our ancestors was superior for the purpose of exercise. There persists a wide-spread belief that we have become soft and weak. This may be true in some ways. Obesity qualifies, but obesity is not so much a result of a lack of exercise as much as it is a result of increased longevity, food quantity, and the leisure time with which to ingest the food.

We little realize that our ancestors never experienced meaningful exercise more than a few times during their life. They did, however, work long hours and sustained trauma to their bodies from their toil on the farm or ranch or in factories and mines. Properly applied strength training - the only real exercise, if then known, could have prevented many of the injuries they sustained during their activities. The quality of their life would have been greatly improved.

Recently, a New York exhibit contained Lucy, the 3.5 million-year-old hominid from Ethiopia. She is estimated to have been in her mid-twenties at death. And she showed profound evidence of degenerative arthritis in most of her joints. The cause: some kind of high-force activity.

Despite much activity in our society, very few individuals have ever encountered what the strict definition of exercise calls for. Our ancestors did not receive efficient exercise a century ago nor 3.5 millions years ago.

More About Our Ancestors

Almost any activity or movement carries with it some degree of exercise effect. This effect is marginal and incomplete in most human activity, including most of the activities popularly construed as meaningful exercise.

Apparently, these routine activities (daily chores, recreation, work or vocation) serve to maintain normal levels of function. However, this is mostly confined to subjects who are before their biological prime. Before prime, the biological imperative of growth and development is still ongoing in some regard. Before prime, routine activities will often foster improved physical health of a subject who has been ill or in a state of convalescence.

As the subject ages past biological prime this fostering remains so but becomes less marked. With each subsequent insult and further aging past prime, functional ability is eroded in spite of the resumption of routine activities.

Moreover, routine activity will not elicit any improvements beyond a minimal level of functional ability nor even maintain a level beyond this minimum after it has been acquired. The body is a conservative mechanism. Unless above-normal ability is justified, it will conserve its resources for other priorities. This has always been true, especially with regard to muscle.

And let it be clearly understood that muscular strength is, by far, the most important factor of functional ability. Other biological systems are vitally essential for human health, but it is easy to lose sight of the fact that they are subservient to the needs of the muscles enabling us to move. (This concept is the most important contribution made by anyone to the field of exercise. The contributor was Arthur Jones.)

It is all too easy to accept that activity, any activity, serves as meaningful exercise. This is partly instilled by the belief system from our parents and further reinforced by our experience.

With authority, my grandmother used to state that swimming was good exercise. I can remember one Christmas receiving a bicycle and grandmother proclaiming that pedaling a bike was also good exercise.

What did my grandmother understand about exercise? Nothing. She merely repeated what she had heard from her parents and contemporaries. And these beliefs were founded on experiential observations of daily survival - without definition, without systematic investigation, and without a knowledge or logical inference from classical biology and mechanical physics. My grandmother was the quintessential exercise physiologist.

To discuss science with my grandmother was a touchy affair. It appeared to insult her upbringing, her wisdom, and her life values. You can still see similar reactions in parts of our society, today.

In the summer of 1972, I went to Odessa, Texas to work as a rough neck on the oil rigs. Over a period of several weeks, I observed that most of the roughnecks were born of families who had worked in the oil fields for several generations. Most of their friends and many of their high school classmates worked in the oil fields as roustabouts, tool pushers, or roughnecks. They worked at the rigs 7 days/week for 30 years of their lives.Work at the rigs was a way of life. Between connections and trips and routine duties, roughnecks often played baseball, worked on their cars, or pursued other recreation. (Even the high school took the name, Permian, reflecting the geological importance of the area as a Permian Basin.)

If you were to even faintly imply that working on the rigs would not make a man rough and tough and strong - and that such work was, therefore, not exercise; you should not be surprised to find a knife in your ribs. You have just insulted the roughneck's whole way of life - his entire value system.

Such experiential influences are not easy to avoid - even for the disciplined researcher. Life experiences are often valuable but must be carefully scrutinized within a controlled framework of scientific principle. The following is a stark example of what misleading experiential information can result from a trip to the zoo.

Early insights into human behavior were premised on the observations of primates in zoos. These observations took place during the last decades of the last century and the early decades of the present. Researchers observed that primate society was based on sex and others then extrapolated the antithesis of this notion to be the case with human society. Sigmund Freud based his conclusions on the same observations. Current psychology and sociology is colored by these non sequiturs and popular exercise notions are inferred from much of the same trash.

Early primate studies were later formalized in the publication, The Social Life of Monkeys and Apes by the prestigious anatomist, Sir Solly Zuckerman. Few scientific books of the century have commanded such wide or lasting authority. But its conclusions were based largely on zoo observations. Please consider what Robert Ardrey said about this matter in African Genesis, 1961.:

Disastrous for your life and mine were the philosophical consequences of Zuckerman's conclusion. Anthropology - the science of man - accepted zoology's word that primate society is based on sex, and reasoned most logically that since human society is not, then society as we know it must be of human invention owing no allegiance to biological evolution. Then sociology - the science of society - accepting anthropology's word that our society is of human invention, reasoned logically that the more unpleasant aspects of our social life, such as war and crime and a general reluctance to love our neighbors, must arise from special conditions of the human circumstance. And so you and I, accepting the word of a variety of authorities who should know what they are talking about, tend to reason that if the pressure of economic want, for example, could be erased from the world scene, then we should witness a marked diminution of crime, an inevitable relaxation of warlike moods, and a release of social energy for love's harmonious purposes. The hounds of our anxieties bay at old, cold traces, while nature's foxes watch amused.

But artificially sequestered animals in zoos are preoccupied with sex for only one reason - boredom. They are missing the natural preoccupation of animals in their natural habitat - fear.

Any truly demanding and therefore meaningful exercise effect that our early ancestors experienced in their relatively short life was the result of fear. Instincts dictated that they conserve energy and resources for that moment when it was eat, escape, kill, or be eaten. Unless in the midst of a momentary emergency, early man's wary pastime was spent by living and acquiring sustenance with as little expenditure of energy as possible. A practical person learned to pace his life.

And bear in mind that real emergency conditions do not qualify as productive exercise even though they might elicit a meaningful exercise stimulus. During a real emergency, frightened animals - including human - tend to get hurt. They react violently because of their fear. Instinctive reactions are totally out of intellectual control. The probability of physical injury is at least as great if not greater than any forthcoming physical benefits.

Meaning

You may still wonder what these insights into natural history have to do with exercise? - Just Everything! That man performed any activity with a mixture of purpose - to hone survival skills; for movement; for play and recreation; to acquire food and to prevent becoming food; and yes, to some degree, for exercise (unknowingly) - it is little wonder that we come down to a twentieth-century man who confuses exercise with any and all activity. And notions perpetuated by the early natural scientists such as Zuckerman sustain our confusion of exercise essence. These notions are subtly rooted in romantic literature, psychology, sociology, education and politics. It is difficult to escape their effect on the shaping of our attitudes.

It is unlikely to be appreciated that we are the first. For the first time in man's history, modern, late-20th-century Occidental man is the only member of his kind to have the affluence, the time, the principles of mechanical physics, and the religious/social atmosphere to potentiate an interest in exercise for our entire society. Before now, either one or all of these factors were missing for a majority of any society's population. Though we delight in relating the plausible belief that the rustic life of our ancestors was superior especially with regard to exercise; we are the first to have the opportunity of exercise, not they.

Along this line, we easily forget that despite our current environmental hazards and the threat of Nuclear extinction, we have the best life ever. To condemn our food supply as poisonously processed or bemoan the loss of the agrarian life is to deny the benefits of air conditioning, the washing machine, the automobile, the elevator, and manned flight. We have an available food supply that is the safest, the best in quality, and the greatest in quantity and variety ever in the history of man.

Only within the last century - and only in part of the world - the brutality of human existence has been eased. We have nearly obtained a heaven on earth, so-to-speak. There remains a fiendish paradox: We privileged few affluent members of society who have the opportunity to escape the brutality are seemingly compulsive. We appear to insist upon dangerous high-force activities regardlessly. We jog, run, and dance aerobicize our skeletons to match Lucy's. Lucy had no choice. We do. Is it really worth the price?

We are it. If we, the privileged few to possess these opportunities, can not put it together; If we can not distinguish the difference between exercise and recreation; If we can not make practical use and value of applied scientific principles to stimulate muscular strengthening and preservation of functional ability; If we continue to insist that walking and other routine activity is meaningfully efficient for these purposes; then it is unlikely that the rest of humanity or future generations will get the point either.

Corroboration From the Orient

Of the three human races - Caucacoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid - the Negroids are affected very slightly by osteoporosis. Concerning the oriental Mongoloid, we share recent observations (1984) by Greg Smits - a Japanese interpreter, Guild member and once-premier Nautilus instructor in the United States.

Greg spent a year in rural Japan. It is important to appreciate that industrialized farming is very new to Japan. Only within the last two decades has the farmer seen the time- and labor-saving devices that we assume to be replete throughout Japanese society.

Most farmers and rural peasants in Japan still lead rather crude, backward existences. Much of the labor is performed manually. Travel to market is by foot or ox-cart.

The severity and incidence of osteoporosis is dramatic among the elder Japanese peasants. Their kyphotic deformities are commonly 90 degrees. These men and women, especially women, walk and stand bent at a right angle, facing the ground.

These extreme kyphotics walk great distances nearly every day. They have done so all of their lives. One mode of walking is to use a short cane as a third leg. It is used in front of the body to support the forward imbalance due to kyphosis. Its upper end is held with both hands just under the chest. Another technique used -- especially needed to carry a jug of water or bag of groceries -- is to support a parcel behind the back, using no cane. In this manner the forward imbalance of the torso is counterbalanced by the parcel.

It is remarkable that such dramatic osteoporotic deformities exist in situ with a rustic culture of manual labor and transportation. That walking construed as exercise does little to thwart such deformities is strongly implied though, of course, not proved. We may still raise questions concerning nutritional and hormonal deficiencies. These notwithstanding, the walking myth as well as the agrarian-life-style myth appear to corroborate the specious nature of such popular arguments in Occidental medicine.

Greg Smits likes to leave the reader with another example of myopic perception. He tells of overhearing the comments of an elderly Japanese woman. This woman was as kyphotic as the worst deformities we witness in the United States. She was not, however, as kyphotic as many women in Japan. Her kyphosis was not yet 90 degrees like theirs. She was active and alert for her advanced condition. She delighted in repeatedly and proudly stating that "I stand up straight . . . I don't slump over like other women."

Note two parallel inconsistencies in popular medicine: American epidemiologists expect us to emulate the Japanese low-fat diet to lower the risk of heart disease while the Japanese suffer from a markedly higher incidence of colon cancer and stroke. And the osteoporosis experts suggest preventive walking programs while the Japanese peasants stare at the ground amidst life-long walking regimens.

Something Positive

Walking may indeed serve as exercise for some individuals who, for whatever reasons, are so weak and who present such low risk for trauma that walking qualifies as exercise at least temporarily. Identifying these individuals may be difficult.

To an artificial heart recipient like the late Barney Clarke or a William Schroeder, walking is meaningfully demanding. After a bedridden state of days and weeks, crawling down the hospital corridor to go to the bathroom is high-intensity work. But after the first few efforts, crawling becomes too easy to qualify. The same is true for walking.

And though William Schroeder was productively participating in a walking program when this article was being written, he was actually being done a disservice. He was wasting valuable time. His very survival depended on regaining and developing muscular strength.

Walking is obviously required from an occupational therapy standpoint. From a physical improvement standpoint, however, a properly applied strength training program would accomplish in two workouts what the walking improves in six weeks. What is more, the very real danger of Schroeder falling would be all but totally removed. It is unfortunate that neither the heart specialists nor the present crop of physical therapists understand the simple basics of these approaches.

The real and general value of walking programs is mental health. We encourage individuals, couples, or entire families to walk together for recreation, to get a breath of fresh air, to clear the mind, and to warm the body. A diversion from our hectic life is emotionally healthy. But do not ascribe to a walking program because you believe it is exercise.

It is only proper to add that outdoor activities expose the human body to sunshine, and a moderate amount of sunshine is a healthy thing. This is an argument, albeit weak, usually used in favor of walking programs. It is entirely possible to get adequate sun exposure with almost any degree of activity or inactivity in daylight.

Dr. Lawrence Lamb wrote his syndicated columns in the 1980s extolling walking programs. He shared a common and plausible justification. He recommended walking as a means to "weight control," stating that one hour of walking would burn 60 extra calories per hour and this results in an expenditure equivalent to 13 pounds per year.

After reading Dr. lamb's column, one Gainesville, Florida resident quipped: "You mean that every time I eat a single Oreo®, I am sentenced to walk 1/2 the width of the entire city of Gainesville (approximately 2 miles)? If anyone does that, their time can't be worth much."

Exercise has six roles in the control of obesity. Contrary to much popular belief, the extra expenditure of calories directly due to exercise is the least important. And compared to the importance of the other five, hardly worth mentioning. These factors are elaborated in the article, Proper Exercise and Its Contribution to Fat Loss. It is available from SuperSlow Systems, Inc.

As a last desperate resort, walking enthusiasts fall back on their last argument of popular stock: Surely walking is something and something is better than nothing. Our reply: "When people don't understand what they are doing or the consequences, then nothing may indeed be better than something."

Balancing the Score

It may appear that this diatribe is too one-sided. This may be so, however, plenty is written and spoken positively about walking programs. Few arguments have yet been advanced against walking. The whole affair has been far too positive. Either opposing arguments were not realized or unarticulated misgivings had not developed into explicable arguments. The result: unable to explain their doubts, the nonbelievers simply acquiesced to the fervor. This article is weighted negatively to balance the positive imbalance.

More About Backpacking

One plus sometimes mentioned for backpacking is the notion that this leads to improved posture. It may indeed, but the people who are alluding to this do not understand the principles involved for postural improvement to occur.

Improved posture -- referring specifically to the attitude of the shoulders and straightened back -- are the result of two things -- improved muscular strength and the volition of the subject to retrain himself to stand and sit. The most important of the two factors is strengthening. Though one case does not prove anything, the following case study does illustrate the principles used by Nautilus for many years in various applications:

Ellington Darden supervised a woman who had a marked postural deficiency with her upper back and shoulders. To correct this Ellington put her on a general strength-training regimen with emphasis for the neck and upper back -- most particularly the trapezius. She became worse! At first this greatly perturbed Ellington. He then realized that her job kept her constantly fatigued to the point that her trapezius could not support her arms. Ellington then resorted to bracing her shoulders. Bracing is usually overused by many practitioners, therefore his tendency was to frown on such practice. This bracing supported her shoulders when she was at work, and was removed only for sleep and for her exercise bouts. The trapezius responded quickly and dramatically. After a few weeks, she could continue to gain strength though she no longer wore the brace. Her posture slowly corrected itself as she retrained her carriage.

The purpose in relating this case study is to show that the shoulders and posture do not improve simply by imposing more work on the involved musculature. Doing so may result in just the opposite.

Weightbearing Activities

Proponents of walking programs often mumble ill-conceived gibberish regarding the importance of weightbearing activities. My late father recited this progressive-sounding jargon not realizing my experiences with its questionable origins. Like a racy rumor, it seems to have come full circle back to me.

We are not at all sure exactly what is meant by this term. And we are even less sure that the so-called experts in osteoporosis/exercise research know what they mean by this coinage. We cannot be sure, but we rather suspect that weightbearing is an intellectual holdover from the art of setting and immobilizing fractured bones. And since it is difficult to confront an argument which is ill-defined by either controversialist, our criticism of such semantics is necessarily an oblique explanation.

Well-deserved attention has focused on the fact that astronauts lose bone mass rapidly due to their weightless experience in orbit about the earth.

Obviously, weightedness serves as a stimulus to bone tissue to either increase or maintain itself. If we remove the body from a weighted environment, then this stimulus appears to be removed also. If an astronaut remains in a weightless environment too long, then structural integrity becomes so compromised that his skeleton is unable to support his body. Unchecked he becomes a virtual human amoeba.

It is possible that weighted existence carries with it some yet unexplained benefit to the body. It may be true, for instance, that a continuously weighted environment is required to maintain bone even in the presence of optimal exercise.

The effect of weight is reduced by buoyancy in fluids, notably water. And a plethora of cross-sectional studies suggests that swimmers have lower bone density due to their existence in water. Such studies are also used to show that other sports activities can be correlated with differing degrees of bone density. One major point is usually unappreciated: swimmers do not possess unique bodies because they swim; they are swimmers because they have unique bodies endowed to excel at swimming. And the same is true for all other activities that people enjoy on a regular basis. People tend to become infatuated with activities at which they excel and tend to avoid those they perform poorly. And their ability is determined by genetically pre-determined physical characteristics. Part of an elite swimmer's genetic advantage may well and probably be lower bone density.

[Researchers are often careful to discriminate between bone density and bone mineral content. Since I am not qualified to discern this distinction, I use only the phrase, bone density, and only to represent whatever the factor or factors effecting optimal bone integrity.]

Weight is the effect of gravity force on the mass of a body when its force is countered oppositely and equally by another mass. Such is the case of our bodies against the surface of the earth.

Weightlessness is considered as a special condition in the esoterics of physics. Physicists employ the convention to always italicize or in some way set off this term to discriminate its dubious usage. Throughout this section, we adhere to this convention.

Note that we proceeded through all kinds of semantic machinations in the previous paragraphs to avoid reference to zero gravity. There is no such thing, even though the advertisement by Walley Shirra says, "Sinuses don't drain in zero gravity."

A weightless environment is possible by suspending the human body between gravitational fields or, more likely, by orbital free fall. But note that orbital free fall around the curvature of the earth is caused by gravity. Weightlessness results from free fall into the earth as well. Being in outer space to achieve a weightless effect is not required. Jump off the ground or dive off a diving board. Briefly, you are weightless. The actionary force of gravity on the mass of your body temporarily encounters no reactionary force form the mass of the earth.

Though there is no such thing as zero gravity, zero net gravity is possible. As already alluded to, this can occur as a perfect and unlikely suspension between multiple gravitational fields. This occurs, for instance, at the gravitational center of the earth. The equal pull from equal masses produces a three-dimensional, omni-directional equality of forces.

The medical community often refers to a bone as weightbearing or non-weightbearing to distinguish between bones that support the majority of the remainder of the body during locomotion AND those that support only themselves. But all bones are weightbearing to some degree. The radius and ulna may not appear to support the body, but they support themselves. They have weight and they support weight.

This application of so-called, weightbearing, has now been borrowed and stretched by those exercise enthusiasts who strive to make a bridge with the medical community. [If they achieved this duplicity with aerobics why not try it again with weightbearing?] Since this term -- in a sense, medical jargon -- is on the tip of the physician's tongue, what better opportunity to cross reference medicine with exercise than through misunderstanding.

The issue in exercise is not weight. We are concerned with resistance. And weight and resistance are not necessarily the same. Weight can serve as direct resistance -- longitudinally against the bones; but torque against bone and/or muscle is the product of force and lever. The origin of force can be a source totally divorced from any condition of weightedness.

Imagine yourself in a weightless environment. Is there resistance against the muscles when you move? -- Yes. As the brachial biceps contract they do so against the tonus of their antagonists, the triceps. Tonus is the strength (tension) of a muscle when it is at rest. This internal tension of the triceps exerts straight-line force against the olecranon producing torque at the elbow axis. This torque is countered by the torque resulting from the straight-line force of the bicipital aponeurosis at the radius. Any movement, therefore, encounters resistance. Of course, this resistance quality is poor -- so poor that meaningful overload to maintain the strength and size of the muscle and bone are absent.

A popular term for strength-training activities is resistance exercise. Another term is progressive resistance exercise. The use of the word, resistance, here is redundant and shows the ignorance of its users. All movement encounters resistance, therefore all exercise must involve resistance. And the quality of exercise is directly proportional to the quality of the mechanical resistance -- which resistance can be imposed on the body in a weightless environment. Examples: infimetric Nautilus machines, manual resistance exercises, timed static contraction (isometrics).

Popular activities misconstrued as good exercise fall into two categories. Most common are so-called, aerobics or steady state activities such as jogging and dance aerobics. They offer significant movement against insignificant resistance. In the other category is isometric contraction. It offers insignificant movement against significant resistance. Neither category is ideal for most of the healthy population. We desire significant movement against significant resistance.

I admit that steady state activities may be worthwhile in the case of dramatically debilitated patients who cannot perform reasonably meaningful strength training, however, I have never encountered this situation. Also, isometrics are extremely productive for some patients with joint conditions or motor control problems that obviate full-range movements. In this relationship, the inability to perform full-range movements does, indeed, obviate the use the steady-state activities.

Why is Walking So Popular Among Physicians?

Some historical reflection is now in order. If we had lived and studied medicine at the time of Hippocrates, we would have had very few hard facts on which to rely. Medicine was based on a knowledge of the four humors and other specious academics, a few surprisingly successful herbs, and a generalized wisdom of what to expect from the body.

The most useful of these resources was the latter and from within this general wisdom was the ancient understanding that when ill the body needed rest which usually was followed by a gradual recovery including a return to normal mobility. After all, sick animals as well as humans become inactive through no real choice of their own. But if the patient does not start to move around -- intentionally or inadvertently -- after a reasonable length of rest, then he usually gets worse and dies.

So, early man became distraught if a cohort stayed inactive too long. After all, early man depended on his cohort for his own survival. Reviving the dead became a rite of desperation. Seemingly, death could be defied if the patient was just dragged about the campsite to feign lifelike walking.

[Note the conceptual relationships here. In the view of an unsophisticated, early man, a fellow hunter often becomes inactive due to illness. If he stays down, he dies. If he eventually stands and is active he lives. If the unsophisticated assumes that death is the consequence of inactivity, a cause and effect is concluded: Inactivity causes death. Also, a reverse cause and effect might be concluded: Forced activity defies death. Therefore the consequence of inactivity and death is prevented, even reversed by forced activity.]

There is some validity to this nonsense. As already mentioned roundabout, there appears to be a vague and minimal threshold of activity that the body requires to maintain status quo. It is often helpful for a patient to begin moving about after an acute episode of some illnesses. Physicians have become quite adept over the centuries at estimating the proper time to regain activity after particular types of illness. This is probably the specific meaning of the reference to the healing art.

But bear in mind that this art was practically all that the physician had at his disposal until little more than a century ago. Walking . . . walking . . . walking . . . walking. After bed rest, progressive walking was all medicine knew for thousands of years -- with few exceptions. Of course, it had a less common, more professional, pedantic-sounding name: ambulating. You are probably aware of how the medical artist uses the phraseology: "Is the patient ambulating yet?"; "Nurse, do not permit ambulation until the sutures have healed."

A Scenario of Prescription

To reflect on the notion of walking programs leads to an important question: How did walking come to be held in such high regard by physicians? The following is an at-least-plausible chain of events:

When exercise became a national fad beginning about 25 years ago, the family physician was placed in a rather awkward position. With anything and everything coming under the broad heading of exercise, he was then expected to recommend activity for his patients. My father, a general practitioner for over 30 years, knew practically nothing about exercise. He started his practice in Conroe, Texas, just 15 years after the rough and dangerous period of oil boom. He built his practice by working the emergency room. This experience left a permanent impression that people get hurt when they do anything but tantamount to locking themselves in a rubber room. He saw the most numerous and exotically violent injuries on weekends and during the holidays when patients were not confined to the workplace but actively engaged in hobbies, sports, and past time activities. He collected endless stories of snakebites, gun shot wounds, diving accidents, fish hooks in the scalp, gorings by cattle, tramplings by horses, horse bites in the face, falls from deer blinds, and on and on.

Now, if you as one of his patients were to sit in his office and ask my father if exercise were important to a healthy life style, he would immediately affirm that it was. But then if you said, "Dr. Hutchins, I want you to design an exercise program for me," he would balk and stammer and hesitantly reflect on all the violence he had repaired in the ER. Although he might never actually go through these intellectual steps, doctors have collectively passed through the following reasoning:

What are the natural biological functions of the body that will occur regardless of my intervention?: