If you're new to my blog, then welcome and I'm glad you're here. I write about all sorts of health issues- fitness, nutrition and wellness.  This post is part of a series of long-form essays summarizing the classic work by Robert Nisbet, "The Quest for Community", please see previous posts for the prior essays.  Start HERE for the first one.  

I've been focusing on this because community health has such a big impact on individual health.  Just turn on the news if you don't believe me!

“ There is every reason to regard the State in history……. as a process of permanent revolution.” – Robert Nisbet
 
In this chapter, Nisbet squarely takes aims at the State, and states that the decline of community is to blame on the growth of the state.  His research shows in this chapter that as the power of the State grows it pushes aside other forms of community, causing “dislocations of social structure and uprooting of status which lie behind the problem of community in our age.  
 
Now you may be thinking: How can we deal with the “State” categorically, as a concrete organization and historical fact?
 
Nisbet’s answer: “not to deal with the State categorically is to risk losing, in the varied sequences of diplomatic, military, and political events the essential unity of the State as an idea system in the modern West and, more important, the powerful and cohesive nature of the State as an institution, as a system of human allegiances and motivations.”
 
So we can now move forward recognizing that the State is a concrete historical fact and organization which can be dealt with, just like the family, the tribe, the church, the guild, and  the corporation.  The State grew while all other forms of community were pushed aside.  I immediately thought of our own country where it’s been shown and proven time and time again that the social programs of “The Great Society” caused unforeseen consequences in family life of Americans, particularly African- Americans.  Fathers were no longer needed, and the State became a surrogate father.  This created growing divorce, single motherhood, fatherlessness, crime, unemployment, economic stagnation, particularly in minority communities. So even here in our time, in a process which began with this legislation in the 1960s, community in the form of family was marginalized by the State.  
 
This is a historical process of centralization which has been going on for some time, for example at least mentioned as far back as in Ancient Greece in the teachings of Plato, but which also picked up steam after the Reformation, and also even more during these social engineering programs of the 1960s. 
 
“If we look not to imaginary beginnings in the never-never land of ethnological reconstruction but to historically connected sequences of change in such specific areas as ancient Athens, Rome, or modern England and France, we discover that the rise and aggrandizement of political States took place in circumstances of powerful opposition to kinship and other traditional authorities.” 
 
Nisbet likens this process to culminating in the “people in unity ruling over the people as multitude.” Reading this made me think of many current debates over:
 
How much freedom people should have? 
How much group independence people should have? 
What constitutes the public space and what is allowed there?
Where do my rights end and yours begin?
 
Our founding fathers set up an ingenious system in its foundation. Government was to be limited, and subsidiarity (local control) was to be primary.  The idea that a colony of pagans in California, or that Mormons in Utah, or Conservative Christians in Alabama shouldn’t be left alone and left to live how they choose is foreign to the US founding.  Our forefathers were very intelligent.  They knew about this historical process of centralization and could see the dangers of an unchecked state.  Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, even envisioned an agrarian republic of small, independent communities.  We’ve strayed so far from even articulating that ideal now that it’s no wonder community is suffering, and people are dying of loneliness, drug addiction and suicide.  The State is in constant revolution against community.  

I’m going to do something with this principle which has never been done before.  On one simple page, I’m going to give everyone a formula for training.  This will cover most every goal you might have.  It will work for any sport, any goal, and any training situation. 
 
Basic Components- For any sport or training goal, you will need these components.  Give priority to what your goals are, as well as what you need to improve on.  

1. Aerobic conditioning – No matter the goal, your heart and lungs need to have a basic amount of conditioning.
2. Anaerobic conditioning - This is glycolytic interval training, your ability to maximally produce energy for 30 seconds up to 3 minutes, it combines aerobic conditioning and strength along with your body’s ability to rid itself of lactic acid (the byproduct of muscular exertion).   
3. Stability/ Agility- Balance and your ability to move in an agile way.  
4. Flexibility- Your range of motion and your ability to move dynamically.
5. Strength- Your ability to exert force.  
6. Power- Your ability to apply force with velocity (speed).

 
Specific Components

• Your sport or goal- What exactly is your primary goal?  This will determine how you train.
• Practice the skills for your sport or goal-  If you have a specific goal, let’s say golf for example, you will have to train specifically for that.  I don’t care how fit you are, you need to be specific.  If you want to hike the Appalachian trail, you better get out and hike!
• Health care, performance and fitness testing and retesting- Get your routine physicals, and also use OBJECTIVE performance and fitness testing to determine what you need to work on.  

 
Sample Schedule for Everyone
 
*If you have a sport, or hobby you’re training for, add in 30-120 minutes of practice, 5 days per week.  Play Saturday and Rest on Sunday. 
 
Day 1- Stability (5 minutes), Flexibility (5 minutes), Strength and Power Training (30+ minutes) 
Day 2- Flexibility (10 minutes) Aerobic Conditioning Intervals (24 Minutes) 1 minute Intense, 1 Minute Moderate
Day 3- Stability, Flexibility, and Strength on the Floor (30+ minutes), Optional 20 Minutes Strength Training with Weights
Day 4- Flexibility (5 minutes) Aerobic Conditioning (30 Minutes)
Day 5- Stability (5 minutes), Flexibility (5 minutes), Strength and Power Training (30 minutes) + Specific Training.  
Day 6- Aerobic Conditioning Moderate Intensity (30-45 minutes)
Day 7- REST!

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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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“No approach to history and—to the problems of the present is valid that does not regard the present as the outcome, in varying proportions, of both advancement and decline.” – Robert Nisbet 
 
In Chapter 4, Nisbet lays out a simple premise, illustrated by the title of the Chapter:
 
“History as the Decline of Community”
 
This chapter argues that history can be defined as the “decline of community.” Ironically, this brings us back to square one, and full circle.  When I wrote a book several years ago (2015) about exercise and mental health, the questions I was trying to answer for readers were:

• How can an individual pursue of a meaningful life in the context of a broken communal life?
• How can we reassert the primacy of the spiritual in a world beholden to the material?  
• How can we who want to be active and take personal responsibility, reassert and free will and conscious thought and action in a culture dominated by pure materialism, scientific determinism, nihilism, and a sense of meaninglessness? 
• How can the individual be “free” and healthy, but also live in harmony with creation and with other people?
• How does exercise assert free will, consciousness, and a healthy type of meaning and individualism?

 
This book I wrote, called “Movement and Meaning: Building Mental Strength and Managing Stress through Exercise” inevitably led to grappling with theology, because theology is the “queen of the sciences” and it weaves the other sciences (psychology, sociology, physiology, anatomy, etc.) together into a cohesive whole.  These were difficult questions but what is now fully realized after having lived and learned a lot since writing that book, is that they were essential questions in the bigger picture of mental health.  
 
Our culture does have an unhealthy conception of individualism, and is beholden in an unhealthy way to pure materialism (absence of the soul) and scientific determinism (there is no free will, and humans are just clumps of matter).  Forming the backdrop of this shift towards materialism and nihilism is the decline in community.  Older and more communal forms of living had as their context a cohesive religious narrative.  There was a story in which people lived and belonged.  Even in tribal days, life had a coherence that we now lack.  That is why some philosophers characterize modern life as the “absence of being.” If the world has not be “founded” in other words, as it has not in secular and materialistic terms, it doesn’t exist.  
 
Nisbet is correct in his initial thesis in this chapter.  History from a meta-perspective could be seen simply as the decline of community.  In tribal years, before the Greco- Roman cultures emerged, people lived in tribal communities where the individual didn’t exist in the modern sense.  In the intermediate years, after the fall of Rome, through Christian European society and into the Reformation, individualism existed but in a limited fashion within a larger community context.  But slowly over time community faded quickly as individualism grew.  In the modern era, slowly beginning with the Reformation, individualism has been ascendant and in recent decades has begun to turn in on itself, despite the positives it brought about, resulting in a recent increase in suicides, depression, and other mental health issues.  Nisbet’s thesis in this chapter is helpful.  History can be seen as a decline in community, which would then lead to other problems in society.  
 
The questions then are why, how, and is this is a good or bad thing?  That’s what we will look at in summarizing this chapter.  Like most complicated historical questions it’s not easy to answer those questions.  Take a look at this succinct introduction.  Nisbet writes:
 
“The history of a society can be considered in many aspects. It can be seen in terms of the rise of democracy, the fall of aristocracy, the advance of technology, the recession of religion. It can be conceived, as Tocqueville conceived it, as the work of equality; as Acton considered it, as the work of freedom; or, in Bertrand Russell's terms, as the story of power. There is no limit to the ways of profitably regarding the history of any given society. Each mode of consideration is, as Whitehead has reminded us, “a sort of searchlight elucidating some of the facts, and retreating the remainder into an omitted background.”1 
 
History, the late F. J. Teggart insisted, is plural. It is plural in sequence of event and plural in result. There is no one general statement that can remain meaningful before the diversity of historical materials. For a long time the idea of progress was held capable of assimilating and making intelligible the diverse experiences of man's past. Today it is no longer so held. If there is any single general idea that has replaced it, it is the idea of decline. But the idea of decline is no more, no less, correct than the idea of progress. History is neither progress nor decline alone. It is both. What is determinative in the historian's judgment is simply that aspect of the present he chooses to illuminate. 
 
Thus, if we value the emergence of the individual from ancient confinements of patriarchal kinship, class, guild, and village community, the outcome of modern European history must appear progressive in large degree. For, plainly, the major toll of modern social change has been exacted from such communal entities as these. From the point of view of the individual—the autonomous, rational individual—the whole sequence of events embodied in Renaissance, Reformation, and Revolution must appear as the work of progressive liberation. There is nothing wrong with this appraisal of history. It is undeniably illuminative. But it is inescapably selective.
 
If, on the other hand, we value coherent moral belief, clear social status, cultural roots, and a strong sense of interdependence with others, the same major events and changes of modern history can be placed in a somewhat different light. The processes that have led to the release of the individual from old customs and solidarities have led also to a loss of moral certainties, a confusion of cultural meanings, and a disruption of established social contexts. We cannot, in sum, deal with the progressive emancipation of individuals without recognizing also the decline of those structures from which the individual has been emancipated. Judgments of progress must always be specific and selective; they cannot be disengaged from opposing judgments of decline and disruption. 
 
A preference for the emancipation of the individual and for the advancement of secularism, mobility, and moral freedom may well be sovereign in our total moral appraisal. We may regard these developments in modern history as worth whatever has been exacted from moral certainty and social interdependence. But such preference, understandable though it be, is no warrant for omitting from consideration the historical facts of decline and disintegration. No approach to history and—to the problems of the present is valid that does not regard the present as the outcome, in varying proportions, of both advancement and decline.”

​Hypertrophy-  biology : excessive development of an organ or part
specifically : increase in bulk (as by thickening of muscle fibers) without multiplication of parts
e.g cardiac hypertrophy
                        2 : exaggerated growth or complexity”
 
                        *Source: Mirriam – Webster dictionary
 
Hypertrophy, or building muscle mass, is a good thing, a VERY good thing.  It can even save your life.  It's sad when I see people over 50 or 60 start to shrivel away, all hunched over with loose skin and no muscle tone.  Because I know they could look and feel so much better!
 
In high school, I read a great book on bodybuilding called “The Bulgarian Training System”. It was a fairly simple concept, a 6 days per week workout on a two day split.  It went something like this:
 
Monday: Chest, Back, Biceps, Calves
            5 sets on each, 15 reps per set, LIGHT TO MODERATE WEIGHT
            Rest time between sets – 30 seconds
 
Tuesday: Thighs, Shoulders, Triceps, Abdominals
            5 sets on each, 15 reps per set, LIGHT TO MODERATE WEIGHT
            Rest time between sets – 30 seconds
 
Wednesday: Chest, Back, Biceps, Calves
            5 sets on each, 10 reps per set, MODERATE WEIGHT
            Rest time between sets – 60 seconds
 
Thursday: Thighs, Shoulders, Triceps, Abdominals 
            5 sets on each, 10 reps per set, MODERATE WEIGHT
            Rest time between sets – 60 seconds
 
Friday: Chest, Back, Biceps, Calves
            5 sets on each, 5 reps per set, HEAVY WEIGHT
            Rest time between sets – 120-180 seconds
 
Saturday: Thighs, Shoulders, Triceps, Abdominals 
            5 sets on each, 5 reps per set, HEAVY WEIGHT
            Rest time between sets – 120-180 seconds
 
Sunday: Rest 
 
Repeat for 12 weeks, then change exercises and again every successive 12 weeks. 
 
If your goal was to get bigger, gain muscle mass, and experience hypertrophy (muscle growth), then this would be a good basic program to follow.  
 
In many cases, we can benefit from growing muscle.  Having some muscle helps us look better, helps us be more metabolically healthy, decreases our risk on some injuries, lowers our insulin levels, and generally speaking it’s a very good thing to have some muscle size.  You don’t have to be a bodybuilder to want to put on muscle.  As a matter of fact, because of changes in hormones and the natural aging process, older adults can perhaps benefit the most from training specifically for hypertrophy.  
 
The challenges are unique in this type of exercise.  It’s not as simple as it might seem to gain muscle.  That’s because we can actually get a lot stronger, and never gain much in the way of muscle size. For example, Olympic weightlifters will often be relatively light and still be able to lift a ton of weight because they’ve gotten excessively strong compared to their bodyweights.  This is because gaining strength is largely neurological and adaptive versus changes in muscle size, it’s a process of coordination, of gaining the ability to recruit more fibers, and to exert more energy and power through fibers through the muscles you have.  Hypertrophy definitely helps with strength, but you don’t always need hypertrophy to get stronger because it is not always the primary cause of an increase in strength.