Therapy should integrate exercise better than it does, and exercise should integrate therapy better than it does. If you're not moving as much as you'd like, that's a problem. Have you tried solving it?
"In particular the state of having done cardio exercise has a lot of overlap with anxiety. This means that being familiar with how your body behaves in these situations makes the feeling of anxiety a lot more tolerable."
In a totally similar vein, lowering resting heart rate also means that you can absorb more stress before getting your heart rate over 100 or 110 or whatever starts to feel uncomfortable to you...i.e. not only is discomfort more bearable, but you're baseline further from it as well.
That uncomfortable-ness is often interpreted mentally as anxiety, even though it may have specific physiological causes tied to sympathetic NS activation.
also, just curious, when do you post on Substack vs Notebook?
Yeah, it seems extremely plausible that there are a bunch of specifically physiological benefits. I don't understand these that well yet, but can well believe them!
> when do you post on Substack vs Notebook?
There's no really hard and fast rule, but stuff on the notebook tends to be less polished, and Substack is for pieces I want to be broadly read.
Exercise is great and all, but most of what I've gotten out of therapy has been about finding better ways of doing things, rather than doing something I wasn't doing at all. Or about working through where responsibility for something lay. Not about unblocking my ability (or wish) to do things.
"I fact checked the book and found the exercise claims solid, but when I gave the book to 6 people none of them exercised more."
I think there is definitely something general here. Therapy and exercise are great examples of some phenomenon where you know what the right thing is but knowing the right solution isn't the problem. And as you've pointed to, it seems like the only solution is to use some level of proprioception/meta-cognition to recognize why you don't want to listen to your own advice
Really love your writing, by the way. Excited to keep reading more
> I fact checked the book and found the exercise claims solid, but when I gave the book to 6 people none of them exercised more.
and you have the same sentiment more or less. I'm genuinely surprised that anyone thinks a book will make people act differently. In my mind this sounds like "I gave the dude The Bible, he read it, and he's still not nicer."
Books are good at ideas. Books that are written as instructional manuals sometimes can get action, but even then, only if its written in such a way that it has low value if not practiced (and obviously so), and with a motivated reader/user.
I think it's not unreasonable to expect this book to be unusually effective in context: These people were all presumably at least willing to be persuaded, the book has good arguments as to why you should follow its advice, and goodish strategies for how to follow its advice.
That being said, unusually effective for this sort of book still turns out to not be super effective and this isn't very surprising.
I wonder what percentage of people actually find exercising hard. The author seems to assume everybody? To the extent of saying you’ll probably need therapy to go the gym?? Maybe i’m in a gym rat bubble, but that was very surprising
Certainly there are surveys showing that few people exercise as much as public health orgs recommend, but i would guess that most of the sedentary people are not trying.
Nope. I just generally write assuming people who won't find my writing useful aren't going to read it. Everything has a set of preconditions, I don't always know what they are.
That being said, there's a major public health crisis of people not exercising enough, so my guess is it's quite a lot.
> To the extent of saying you’ll probably need therapy to go the gym?? Maybe i’m in a gym rat bubble, but that was very surprising
Maybe I'm in a therapy rat bubble, but most problems benefit from therapy-type tools and using them isn't a big deal!
But I do think most people have a dysfunctional relationship with exercise and it can help to do therapy to that.
> Certainly there are surveys showing that few people exercise as much as public health orgs recommend, but i would guess that most of the sedentary people are not trying.
Generally "not trying" isn't a helpful diagnosis and is what having emotional problems around a subject looks like from the outside.
I think this is a case of me stumbling across something that is not for me. When you say “you” it sounds like you mean me, or people in general, but actually i think you’re writing for a very specific audience of adhd people who have problems establishing healthy habits and where trauma is somehow involved.
So just a reminder that that is not everyone! I’m sure you know that there are lots of people out there who can join a gym and start going to the gym without a lot of struggle, or people who don’t care about exercise and who are really not trying, but it doesn’t necessarily come through in this post.
You might like and/or find useful Frank Forencich's _Exuberant Animal_. It's got a bunch of annoying hippie shit in it, but also several insights that have stuck with me. One is that the exercise routines recommended to regular people are weak sauce versions of ones originally developed for elite athletes to optimize particular rather artificial movements for their particular sports, so they are extremely repetitious, hardcore, and directed at those specific movements, which most people don't or shouldn't care about. These are no fun and likely to injure you. Instead regular people should want to exercise in ways that are fun (therefore motivating), safe, and that develop basic natural human movement patterns instead of sport-specific ones. He has a bunch of examples. The book led to a wider "natural movement" movement that I find inspiring (but, I regret to say, have not seriously pursued).
Oh yeah, I should reread this book for ideas. I've read it previously (possibly on your recommendation?) and I enjoyed it despite the annoying hippy shit, but it didn't actually result in any behaviour change on my part. It might do now that I've got a better handle on the desired end state.
For a while @Charlie Awbery went on runs together where we’d toss an oddly shaped rock back and forth, inspired by the book. This resulted in several minor injuries, which I was too much of a girl to enjoy, so we stopped. It was fun, though!
Erwan Le Corre's *The Practice of Natural Movement* sounds like a book in a similar vein that might be of interest. Less hippie-ish probably.
Pavel Tsatsouline's books are also pretty good for niche physical training ideas. YMMV though when it comes to his style, which some find grating but I find amusing.
And the crow pose in yoga is but a step in the process towards progressing to a planche in gymnastics, so if you're still interested in that, Steven Low's *Overcoming Gravity* is excellent.
Barbell training for general strength and mobility is still underrated by most people though. Following a sensible training program with good enough technique is probably the most effective way to effect substantial change in one's quality of life.
Thanks! Yes, I found Le Corre's work shortly after Fromenich. I haven't read his book, but his youtube videos were inspiring. They're much more hardcore than Evolving Animal. I was in my 50s at that time, and his stuff didn't seem feasible for me, which I regretted.
I like Tsatsouline, but yes tastes differ :)
I have always done barbells, because I am boring. Yup, they work.
Good post -- thanks.
"In particular the state of having done cardio exercise has a lot of overlap with anxiety. This means that being familiar with how your body behaves in these situations makes the feeling of anxiety a lot more tolerable."
In a totally similar vein, lowering resting heart rate also means that you can absorb more stress before getting your heart rate over 100 or 110 or whatever starts to feel uncomfortable to you...i.e. not only is discomfort more bearable, but you're baseline further from it as well.
That uncomfortable-ness is often interpreted mentally as anxiety, even though it may have specific physiological causes tied to sympathetic NS activation.
also, just curious, when do you post on Substack vs Notebook?
Yeah, it seems extremely plausible that there are a bunch of specifically physiological benefits. I don't understand these that well yet, but can well believe them!
> when do you post on Substack vs Notebook?
There's no really hard and fast rule, but stuff on the notebook tends to be less polished, and Substack is for pieces I want to be broadly read.
Exercise is great and all, but most of what I've gotten out of therapy has been about finding better ways of doing things, rather than doing something I wasn't doing at all. Or about working through where responsibility for something lay. Not about unblocking my ability (or wish) to do things.
I mean, this *is* an article about how therapists don't commonly do the thing I'm advocating for, so this seems like expected behaviour?
"I fact checked the book and found the exercise claims solid, but when I gave the book to 6 people none of them exercised more."
I think there is definitely something general here. Therapy and exercise are great examples of some phenomenon where you know what the right thing is but knowing the right solution isn't the problem. And as you've pointed to, it seems like the only solution is to use some level of proprioception/meta-cognition to recognize why you don't want to listen to your own advice
Really love your writing, by the way. Excited to keep reading more
> I fact checked the book and found the exercise claims solid, but when I gave the book to 6 people none of them exercised more.
and you have the same sentiment more or less. I'm genuinely surprised that anyone thinks a book will make people act differently. In my mind this sounds like "I gave the dude The Bible, he read it, and he's still not nicer."
Books are good at ideas. Books that are written as instructional manuals sometimes can get action, but even then, only if its written in such a way that it has low value if not practiced (and obviously so), and with a motivated reader/user.
Is this only my experience?
I think it's not unreasonable to expect this book to be unusually effective in context: These people were all presumably at least willing to be persuaded, the book has good arguments as to why you should follow its advice, and goodish strategies for how to follow its advice.
That being said, unusually effective for this sort of book still turns out to not be super effective and this isn't very surprising.
I wonder what percentage of people actually find exercising hard. The author seems to assume everybody? To the extent of saying you’ll probably need therapy to go the gym?? Maybe i’m in a gym rat bubble, but that was very surprising
Certainly there are surveys showing that few people exercise as much as public health orgs recommend, but i would guess that most of the sedentary people are not trying.
> The author seems to assume everybody?
Nope. I just generally write assuming people who won't find my writing useful aren't going to read it. Everything has a set of preconditions, I don't always know what they are.
That being said, there's a major public health crisis of people not exercising enough, so my guess is it's quite a lot.
> To the extent of saying you’ll probably need therapy to go the gym?? Maybe i’m in a gym rat bubble, but that was very surprising
Maybe I'm in a therapy rat bubble, but most problems benefit from therapy-type tools and using them isn't a big deal!
But I do think most people have a dysfunctional relationship with exercise and it can help to do therapy to that.
> Certainly there are surveys showing that few people exercise as much as public health orgs recommend, but i would guess that most of the sedentary people are not trying.
Generally "not trying" isn't a helpful diagnosis and is what having emotional problems around a subject looks like from the outside.
I think this is a case of me stumbling across something that is not for me. When you say “you” it sounds like you mean me, or people in general, but actually i think you’re writing for a very specific audience of adhd people who have problems establishing healthy habits and where trauma is somehow involved.
So just a reminder that that is not everyone! I’m sure you know that there are lots of people out there who can join a gym and start going to the gym without a lot of struggle, or people who don’t care about exercise and who are really not trying, but it doesn’t necessarily come through in this post.
You might like and/or find useful Frank Forencich's _Exuberant Animal_. It's got a bunch of annoying hippie shit in it, but also several insights that have stuck with me. One is that the exercise routines recommended to regular people are weak sauce versions of ones originally developed for elite athletes to optimize particular rather artificial movements for their particular sports, so they are extremely repetitious, hardcore, and directed at those specific movements, which most people don't or shouldn't care about. These are no fun and likely to injure you. Instead regular people should want to exercise in ways that are fun (therefore motivating), safe, and that develop basic natural human movement patterns instead of sport-specific ones. He has a bunch of examples. The book led to a wider "natural movement" movement that I find inspiring (but, I regret to say, have not seriously pursued).
Oh yeah, I should reread this book for ideas. I've read it previously (possibly on your recommendation?) and I enjoyed it despite the annoying hippy shit, but it didn't actually result in any behaviour change on my part. It might do now that I've got a better handle on the desired end state.
For a while @Charlie Awbery went on runs together where we’d toss an oddly shaped rock back and forth, inspired by the book. This resulted in several minor injuries, which I was too much of a girl to enjoy, so we stopped. It was fun, though!
Erwan Le Corre's *The Practice of Natural Movement* sounds like a book in a similar vein that might be of interest. Less hippie-ish probably.
Pavel Tsatsouline's books are also pretty good for niche physical training ideas. YMMV though when it comes to his style, which some find grating but I find amusing.
And the crow pose in yoga is but a step in the process towards progressing to a planche in gymnastics, so if you're still interested in that, Steven Low's *Overcoming Gravity* is excellent.
Barbell training for general strength and mobility is still underrated by most people though. Following a sensible training program with good enough technique is probably the most effective way to effect substantial change in one's quality of life.
Thanks! Yes, I found Le Corre's work shortly after Fromenich. I haven't read his book, but his youtube videos were inspiring. They're much more hardcore than Evolving Animal. I was in my 50s at that time, and his stuff didn't seem feasible for me, which I regretted.
I like Tsatsouline, but yes tastes differ :)
I have always done barbells, because I am boring. Yup, they work.