Perhaps, it is not that people are using gym equipment as chairs, but that at the gym, sitting can feel like exercise.

The gym can all to easily become a cruel place, where you do little more than still for an hour.

All the lifting we see at the gym, might have been an exercise once.

But the myth of sets and reps, and lifting heavy completely destroyed it.

If an older woman walking home with four bags of groceries, gets better exercise than you, you are not exercising.

And let me clarify that, you are doing less than walking home with groceries.

There are people who need machines at the gym, but if you can stand on your own feet you are not one of them.

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All of this would be OK, but occasionally, a person comes in, who is actually trying.

And horse shit fitness makes them mistakenly assume, that what everyone is doing is how is done.

They put their heart and soul into it, and it hurts.

It hurts their back, shoulder blades, their muscles, it hurts on top of not being able to afford protein for long.

It hurts on top of all the other lies between god and country, high school, GPA, debt.

And being tricked to think you aren’t smart, by shitty teachers who only think they could teach if they were only allowed to.

That precious soul will show up three times, and no more – the pyramid of lies is just too much.

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The gyms do not attempt to trick you, they appear to exist, because people are willing to pay the membership fees.

But they including the trainers will do nothing to show you the truth, and the result is the gym will greatly add to break you with lies.

Look at high school, how easily you were played to think you are not as smart, as the smart kids.

This is how easily you will be convinced, to quit your authentic attempts at fitness.

It is just not for you, it is too painful, it is crazy to add that to already hard life.

And worst yet, what you saw and copied at the gym was not a workout, you never even saw the real thing.

A real workout starts with walking with groceries, until you are fit enough to spends multiple weeks and wekkends a year hiking.

And finally able to very slowly jog for an hour, that hour of your endurance is your foundation.

With out that non-stop hour, of never sitting or laying down, though flexing and weighing yourself down with dumbbells your efforts will fail.

The trainer is not allowed to say: if you are not doing it for an hour few days a week, than it is not an exercise.

And which is worse they don’t know that making your way up to that hour, is easy, happy, detoxifying, and away from pretenders, creeps, and liars.

If you have to stop within that hour, if you aren’t flexing and dancing, then it is not exercise, it is not fitness, it is all just lies.

Those are such lies, that the crazy looking fitness fads that the gym-sitters always laugh at.

Like that lady with groceries, are actually a more powerful workout, that actually grows muscle.

What the gym sitters laugh at precisely is performing exercises badly, and misusing gym equipment in ways other than the labels state.

But correct posture, and muscle isolation, including equipment use, is knowledge of something that leads to nothing, knowledge of empty rules.

Think about what a poor exercise muscle isolation (by posture or machine), actually is, one or two muscles at a time, completely cut off from the rest.

The very drawings of musculatire on those false knowledge labels, show that muscles are not islands.

They are interconnected system that requires a full body dance, not the naive and rather-silly idea of muscle isolation.

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And joggers, you mighty warriors, ye, the keepers of what fitness actually is.

It is your responsibility, to run in a different natural wooded area (not a fake park) each day of the week.

If the weather makes that impossible, move.

Jogging is a sacred life long ritual, living in the wrong climate for it, guarantees to defeat you, you can’t fight brutal weather.

What you have is more important than you may ever realize, learn from the surfers, and follow the surf.

What you have is sacred, whatever stands in its way is worthless.

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The gazelle always beats the dreadnought, bodybuilding is a poor substitute for what you do.

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In closing - for there is no more to add, I sometimes imagine the trainer losing it.

Showing up with a rubber hose, and like in that one worthwhile bible story, chasing us out until we are willing to fight for health in the church of living.

In his incomprehensible apoplectic wails that oddly sound slavic, we recognize the words phone, and chair.

And as police drag him away in now a blood curling scream, we hear words that start with:

“yoooooou” and end with. “spoiled lazy old worthless faat” and then some more explitives.

We finally remember that we are animals, and by golly, animals sicken and die when put to sit in stable.

And that our bodies are adaptive, a wisdom we know from childhood, when we discover that we could run for a little bit longer every time.

That we merely need a persistent current that pushes us forward, precisely at the speed with which our bodies adapt.

We find that current in hiking adventures, that could not possibly be more pleasant or healthier, or father away from lies.

Do not let the gym trick you, earn your body wisdom.