Interconnectivity and a pain in my ass...

So, in my last blog, I wrote about how despite my age, I’ve gotten relatively few injuries from learning Capoeria and Gymnastics. Naturally, it would have to follow that I would get my first major injury after writing that. I was attemping a gainer (a backflip done jumping off of only one leg) , and I ended up coming down on my head. Thankfully, I was smart enough to have extra mats out when I tried it, (again, the ‘older = wiser’ thing), but that still wasn’t enough to stop my head from being pushed back farther than it’s supposed to go on impact, and I ended up pinching the nerves in the back of my neck.

Since then, for the past month and a half or so, every time I use my neck to look down or bend over to tie my shoes, I get the sensation of a giant toothache in the left side of my ass. Beyond that, if I push into, or massage other parts of my back, I get the same sensation in a different part of my leg. Fascinating. It’s like I accidentally installed a ‘push here for pain’ program into my dome-piece for a ninety day trial. (As injured nerves heal at a rate of about a millimeter per month, I’m going to assume I’ll have at least that long to deal with it.)

At any rate, given just how many times I have to ‘push a button’ while going about my daily activities, I couldn’t help but awe at the interconnectivity of the nervous system… and consequently wonder why it is that it people never seem to realize the importance of interconnectivity in searching for answers to things.

Eastern philosophy and religion (Buddhism and Taoism in particular) have always spoken of the fact that everything is tied to everything else, and Quantam Physics has, in this century, finally given that jewel of knowledge to the western mind.

At the same time however, the idea of constantly applying that knowledge to problem solving doesn’t seem to have permeated societies on either side of the globe and most people still seem to see their problems (and more importantly the solutions) as being disjointed and separate things. As a function of that, we all continue to create a multitude of elaborate solutions to all of the problems we face instead of simply looking to simplify.
Let’s take three common problems plaguing the average American citizen right now. 1) Managing one’s money, 2) environment degradation, and 3) dieting. How do most people solve these problems? 1) Trying to cut one’s spending, (or worse borrowing to pay off debt) 2) taking time to recycle and 3) paying for an expensive designer diet meals, diets plan or exercise machines. Three separate problems, three separate solutions.

Now let’s look at some simpler solutions:

Get a water purifier, and stick to drinking water from it.
1) It’s a relatively small investment, and the money spent will will soon be recouped in the savings from not buying soda (or even bottled water).
2) Time will be saved as one no longer has to recycle their bottles or cans
3) Energy will be saved as there will be that many less bottles to be recycled.
4) One sleep will sleep better,(and as a function of that, create more fat-burning chemicals while they sleep), be less hungry (half the time you feel hungry it’s just because your slightly dehydrated, and your body can’t tell the difference), exercise much more efficiently, and in general wake up more energized, and more likely to want to exercise in the first place.

Ride a bike or walk whenever you can.
1) Saves money on gas
2) Doesn’t pollute
3) Great exercise (Despite how many different forms of exercise I do, and how much time I spend training, I still find adding a mile or two walk to my day is still the very best way to consistently lose weight).

Snack on fruit.
1) Except for the exotic variety, most fruits are as cheap or cheaper than junk foods.
2) They also have considerably less packaging than snack foods (or if you buy them fresh, no packaging at all) and whatever waste left over is totally bio-degradable.
3) As carbohydrates, fruits are fast-burning, and snacking on them in-between meals is a good way to curb one’s appetite and speed up one’s metabolism without having to worry about it being stored as fat.

Eat less meat with every meal.
1) As I currently live in Japan, I can’t comment on the prices of meat in the states, but given the skyrocketing of oil prices, I have to assume it’s only going to get more expensive- in Japan it already is.
2) Meat production in general requires an incredible amount of oil. Beyond that, the amount of animal waste (in particular pig feces) that is produced is enough to make the rivers that they are fed into toxic; and as we’ve seen with Mad Cow (and the fact that no one wants to buy American beef anymore) businesses cutting costs in feeding the animals is facilitating the growth of all kinds of diseases we’ve never even seen before.
3)As Americans, we consume considerably more protein then our body ever really needs anyway. (Particularly in one sitting.) Much like anything else, our bodies can only use so much of it at a time, and the rest will either be excreted or stored as fat. (Which again, just goes back to wasting money.)

Eat smaller meals, and shoot to completely clean your plate every time.
This is something that I learned from eating with Japanese people. (And there, looking young and trim well into one’s late 30s is the norm-not the exception).
1) If you are exercising a lot, you should be eating a lot. This doesn’t mean however that your meals should be very big. Again, your body only use so much of the nutrients you take in, and excretes the rest. If it stores anything, it stores the energy as fat. Once again, you are just wasting your money. Keep your meals small, snack on fruit, and drink more water. (All of which is relatively cheap).
2) Even organic, bio-degradable waste is still waste. If one cleans their plate, there is none.
3) Smaller meals mean not giving your body any extra energy to store, and as aforementioned, if one gets hungry, they can always snack on fruit, and drink more water. (Both of which will help burn fat).

These are just a few examples of a methodology of problem-solving that seems to me to be way more efficient than trying to solve problems one at a time, and given how many smart people there are out there, I have to wonder why more problems (particularly global ones) aren’t being solved this way.

One nice solution that I came up with myself is the idea of community compost piles for organic waste. For one, it would greatly cut down on the amount of waste that we have to dispose of. Secondly given the fact that rain forests in Austrailia, Brazil and South America are currently being desertified, it would give the average individual or the average community the ability to contribute to the solution by constantly creating fresh soil, and then profit those communities by both getting rid of that waste AND making money by selling it to desertifying countries for a slight mark-up from the cost of transporting it to them.

I have seen a few other solutions like this proposed, but far less than I think there should be. I don’t know why that is… but I think I’ll ponder it further whilst I walk of the toothache in my ass.

Success and Age

Not too long ago, I was watching a Japanese variety show involving of a bunch of contestants from a myriad of gymnastics backgrounds. They all had to walk a plank placed across a body of water that was about 60 meters long (180 ft.) and about ½ a meter (1.5 feet) wide- and here’s the kicker- they had to do it on their hands.
The youngest of the contestants was only 20. He was a member of the Japanese national gymnastics team, and was without question the single most muscular Japanese guy I’ve ever seen. The oldest was 38- almost twice his age- and a former member of a Chinese acrobat group. In-between them were a multitude of other contestants of different ages and gymnastics backgrounds (including a Japanese Capoeira master I know in his late 20s).

As the contest progressed, virtually every contestant fell near or before the half-way mark; not because they didn’t have good enough balance, but simply because their arms and backs always became too fatigued to maintain it. After watching so many contestants fall, slip and slide of the plank, I began to wonder if it was even humanly possible to do- until the Chinese acrobat stepped up to the challenge. He started off along the plank in much the same way that everyone else did- albeit a bit slower. As he went along, I thought nothing of him… until he had passed everyone else’s falling point. Briefly after that however, his arms started to shake, and I thought that he too would soon fall- but he didn’t. Instead, he lowered his body down, locked his arms, and then used his stomach to hold his body off the ground while the fatigued muscles in his back and arms rested. Eventually, after a while (30 seconds or a minute or so), he raised his body back into the handstand and continued on, slowly, but surely. The break he took was costly for his time, but even so, he was the first one to actually make it to the finish line.

After that point, the other contestants seemed to shift focus- it had been established that the finish line could actually be reached, so the remaining contestants’ objective was no longer simply to make it- but to beat his time on top of it. With that, all the remaining contestants made it considerably farther than those who had gone before him, but in order to beat his time, no one else stopped to rest, and consequently no one else made it to the end.

Finally, the time came for the 20 yr. old gymnast. The guy’s muscle mass and agility were simply amazing- and he showed it as he quickly and easily progressed across the plank. As he, like everyone else hadn’t stopped to rest, his time was half of that of the Chinese acrobat- and as he reached the last 2 meters of the stretch it seemed fairly certain that he would be victor of the day- until he too became too fatiqued and fell- with less than a meter to go.

As my 29th birthday passed last week, and I reflected on the few injuries I’ve gotten while spending the past 7 months learning to do both gymnastics, and Capoeira, I noticed that they were considerably fewer and farther between compared to all the injuries I got when I started taekwondo training at 15. I came to realize that with age comes a certain understanding of not just the things around you, but of who you are as well. As a athlete this translates into knowing your body well enough to know what you can do, and know what you can’t. The Chinese acrobat won the competition because who knew he could never walk the length of the plank without resting, while everyone else assumed they could.

Perhaps this is why most athletes peak in performance in their late 20s- despite the fact that their body’s learning curve is slowing down, and injuries take longer to heal- they simply make less mistakes to begin with.