During the quarantine I designed 3 low-impact workouts for a client / friend (she has knee issues). We took pictures and I finally got around to putting them up on my site in 3 separate PDFs. They're a gift to you, and you can do them at home for no cost, or if we get stuck inside again they're a good option. If you have knee pain or arthritis, or just want to workout without bulking up, they'd be ideal. Click on the "Free E-Books" link. There are some other good free e-books on there, and my bookstore for published books.

or CLICK HERE 

Read next: Best of the Blog

And remember...there's never been a better day than TODAY to make it happen!
 
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​

I took a hiatus from writing about it, but soon I'm going to start finishing up my summary of "The Quest for Community", the seminal book by Robert Nisbet on community.   

I took a couple months off to digest what I'd read so far.  It really is a groundbreaking book and I highly recommend it.  Community, even though we need it to be healthy and live a good life, is a difficult thing in modern times.

Modern life is a struggle between individualism, billed as freedom, and community, billed as repression.  Is this true? Of course not, but that is the spin we here with mainstream propaganda.

Imagine trying to ride a horse, with no skills, no direction, no training, no purpose, and no control.  Just hop on and hold on for dear life.  This is a good metaphor for pure individualism and for where we're at as a society.  Sure you're "free" as an "individual" but there is no logos, no order, to what's happening.

Pure individualism is pure will, and the problem with pure will is that it can kill you if it's not restrained.  

On the other hand, pure community could go too far the other direction and give you no freedom.  

So there has to be a balance between the two. I've been exploring the relationship between the two the last few years and it's clearer and clearer to me that:

Individualism, as such, does not exist in isolation but rather true individualism can only form and exist in community, because it is in communities in which individualism is born, grows and flourishes through:

• Cooperation- The ability to partner with others to accomplish a goal. 
• Agency- The ability to actually do things in the world.
• Roles- Your relationship to other people and what you are responsible for. 
• Character- Your character is formed in community. 

Some great examples:

• A true judo player can only form in a dojo.
• A real estate investor can only invest and make deals with a seller and other team members like lawyers and bankers.
• A father can't exist without children, or mothers, or vice versa.  Same for a brother or sister. 
• A nation can't exist without citizens.
• A business owner can't exist without customers.
• A quarterback can't exist without a receiver and a team.
• A chess player can't exist without opponents, rules, and the historical game of chess.

What Has Happened

Over time, standards of community and church morphed and changed into individual desires for self-fulfillment, personal gratification, self-actualization, and psychological development.  These desires were based on a relatively modern view about the plasticity and pliability of human nature, and the impermanence of institutions of communities (families, nations, churches, states, villages, cities, places of work and socialization).  

Though these desires for freedom at times came out of a legitimate desire to be free of oppressive forms of community, they ended up not liberating people, but rather casting people adrift in a sea of ever-shifting values based primarily on consumption.  

People over history went from standards of home and community to standards of psychology and behaviorism (scientific control of human behavior), which turned out just to be another form of control.  Science replaced community, as science was seized upon by the powerful.  The major difference is that the older communal forms of control were based on action and reason whereas the new forms of control, through marketing, advertising, and stimulus-response conditioning are based on reaction.

Once marketing, advertising, and propaganda merged with behavioral science, we all became rats in a science experiment, so to speak.  When we removed community there was no hope for the least advantaged, because community was the only stability that the poor had to find a footing in life through cooperation, agency, character, and roles.  

This is one reason the modern poor in society have such a hard time making it out of poverty.  It's less about IQ or intelligence as it is about the lack of stability in society and the lack of community pushing the disadvantaged towards an improved lot in life.  The poor are essentially treated like rats in a cage, with those at the top of society pulling the levers of stimulus and response through:

• Debt, credit cards, high-interest loans.
• Fast food and junk food.
• Slickly marketed consumer products.
• Sexual desire, limitless pornography, and dating applications.  
• Self-defeating amorphous political quests.
• Promotion of victimhood as identity, as a strategy for political control and the diminishment of agency.  

Do poor people want to suffer more from high debt, poor diets, diabetes, obesity, broken homes and families, addictions, extremist ideologies, and learned helplessness? Of course not, but this is the modern form of anti-community except for those who can break free from it, and some do.  

The theologian CS Lewis called this dichotomy decades ago the:

"Conditioners and the Conditioned"  

The powerful of society are the conditioners who use science to condition others into acting the way they want.

In this sense, one can easily see how those who are easily manipulated, and we all are from time to time, could be caught up in the rush to self-defeating "individualism" whether it's in the attempt of buying a consumer identity, getting in to debt, sexual license, food choices, or various other rejections of the stabilizing forces of community.  Ironically enough, when we reject community, we become even less able to handle the modern world.  

Sure, the wealthy conditioners can do it, because they have teams of lawyers, doctors, psychologists, maids, assistants, and entertainments to help manage the HR meetings, the complicated jargon of PC, the despair of meaninglessness, and numb the mind and spirit from a reliance solely on a scientific rationalist existence.  

It's not all negative out there.  I actually think things have gotten better in some ways, as the internet has allowed many people to break free from the matrix.
​
I really do feel like we should work hard to build culture back up, to build community back up. I think it can be done and I see positive movements all around where people are stepping out of the "matrix".  So let's press on for a more positive and constructive individualism.  

A Navy Seal writer and Podcaster I really like, Jocko Willink has a great line I like:

"If you're helping them, you're hurting them."  

I couldn't agree more.  When someone can help themselves, they should.  But community is a non-negotiable. We can't live and we can't be human without it.  

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And remember...there's never been a better day than TODAY to make it happen!
 
Read Next: The Quest for Community- The Call to Public Health
 
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I saw a list recently of foods that Dan John liked (http://danjohn.net) and added some of my own favorites to it.  I thought I'd share it with you:

Foods that Make You Feel Good
 
The Superfoods

• Eggs
• Almonds
• Salmon
• Yogurt
• Beef
• Olive oil
• Water
• Coffee
• Green Tea
• Berries
• Green Veggies
• Beans

 
Most Digestible Foods

• Rice
• Pears
• Lamb
• Kale
• Salmon (and other deep sea fish, like halibut and sole)
• Trout
• Turkey
• Rabbit
• Sweet potatoes
• Honey
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Cauliflower
• Broccoli
• Apricots
• Beets
• Squashes
• Olives
• Olive Oil
• Cranberries
• Herbal Teas 

 
Best Polyphenol (A Type of Anti-Oxidant) Foods

• Dark chocolate

• Blueberries
• Olives (green and black)
• Black currants
• Plums
• Cherries
• Blackberries
• Cloves
• Hazelnuts
• Pecans
• Orange juice
• Red wine
• Dark coffee

 
Common Fermented Foods

• Coffee
• Kombucha
• Sour Pickles
• Sauerkraut
• Tofu
• Kefir
• Beer
• Tea
• Cheese
• Yogurt
• Wine
• Kimchi
• Vinegar
• Probiotics
• Salami
• Miso
• Tempeh
• Sourdough

 
My Favorites

• Coffee
• Water
• Salmon
• The Olive Family
• Greens
• Brown Rice
• Oranges
• Greek Yogurt
• Almonds
• Oatmeal
• Tomatoes 
• Watermelon

 
Foods That Can Cause Allergies (In Some)

• Peanuts
• Fish
• Egg
• Milk
• Wheat
• Soy
• Dairy
• Shellfish
• Red Wine / Apples / Peaches

 
What are your favorites?

And remember...there's never been a better day than TODAY to make it happen!
 
Read Next: History as the Decline of Community
 
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​It can get very confusing when it comes to figuring out what to do when it comes to fitness, exercise, and training.  So here ya go.

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The 4 Types of Movement 
 
I was on a family trip recently and was talking with some family members about fidgeting.  You don’t think of fidgeting as having much benefit, but when it comes to weight control and health, it makes a surprising difference.  You only have so much time to formally exercise, and fidgeting, or moving around more on a daily basis, can add a lot of metabolic activity outside of more formal and planned movement.  Fidgeting would be a type of physical activity, albeit a very light one.    People who fidget more have higher metabolisms and are usually leaner.  
 
This brings me to a bigger topic.

When it comes to basic health, more movement of any kind is better than less.  Keep that in mind.  
 
We covered this before, in separate posts, but I want to reiterate something else really important.  
 
When it comes to human movement, there are basically 4 things you can possibly do:
 
The 4 Types of Movement
 
1)Physical Activity
2)Exercise
3)Training
4)Practice

 
Physical Activity- Any type of movement, such as fidgeting, strolling, cleaning the house, but also exercise, training, or sports.  There are countless ways to move.  

• The 3 More Below are Types of Physical Activity

 
Exercise- Purposeful physical activity, done to accrue health or fitness benefits, like walking 3 miles, jogging, lifting weights, doing a spin class, or jumping rope.  There are countless forms of exercise.   Most of the time when you go to the gym, you’re doing exercise.
 
Training- Training is more specific than exercise, and has a physiological, adaptive or performance goal in mind.  If you are attempting to Bench Press twice your body weight, run 2 miles in under 12 minutes, hike up a mountain, or do a plank for a full minute, then ideally you will train specifically for that goal.  Most of the time, training is done to improve strength, speed, flexibility, endurance, or power.  Whereas exercise is usually for health, training is done to achieve a specific goal.  Keep in mind though, training does have health benefits, but these are not the primary focus. 
 
Practice- Practice is engaging in specific motor skills to try to improve your ability and performance.  Great examples of practice are golf swings at the driving range, drills on a tennis court to work on backhands, or shooting sporting clays with a shotgun.  
 
Exercise, training, and practice are all forms of physical activity and all activity has health benefits, but that’s not why we train or practice.  
 
Key Tips

• People take functional training too far.  You can’t mimic tackling, golf swings, or tennis serves in the weight room.  When you train, try to get stronger, try to improve your flexibility, and your power.  When you practice, get in to your sport and practice and the transference from training will happen.  Trying to bring the sport into training isn’t smart, it’s a waste of time.  
• For sports keep things separate.  To be better at a sport, you have to both a) Train and b) Practice.  One major mistake many athletes make is to conflate the two, but they are different and both are very important.
• Exercise and physical activity are mainly done for health and for practical day to day activities, whereas training and practice have a specific goal.  
• To be healthier move more, to perform better train and practice.  

 
 Major Takeaways

1) Practice your sport, if you have one.

2) Move more for health.

3) Train for specific things like speed, power, and flexibility which will
a) improve your physical fitness but also .....
b) improve your sport performance.  
 
And remember...there's never been a better day than TODAY to make it happen!
 
Read Next: 2020 Update
 
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