Today I walked into a Rec Center. For $5 a year I could get access to all their activities, but for $25 a month I could use their weight room. $25 isn't a bad price, but I wanted to see what they considered worth of that fee. What I saw was a lot of stationary machines and very few free weights. Disappointed, I walked out. Now that I've had lack of sleep to dwell on what I have seen I know why; we live in a world of unthoughtful movement.
Let me explain. Stationary machines are a modern strength training invention. The first machines were generic, the modern equivalent of a cable cross; you could use them for multiple lifts from multiple angles. One of the oldest machines is Joseph Pilates' reformer. It's a total body piece of equipment, even though it looks like it only slides back and forth. Why is it a total body piece of equipment? Because Pilates believed in training the whole body, not just pieces of it. That's why his original method was called Contrology. It emphasized thoughtful movement of the body. That's still the focus of true Pilates teachers, thoughtfully moving the body. Any machine Pilates built was built for thoughtful total body movement and training. Stationary machines restrict movement and make movements thoughtless.
Why? There's actually a good reason for this: safety. Each stationary machine is built to promote safe lifting habits and to target specific areas of weakness in the body. They are also designed to be fairly intuitive; anyone can use them. Machines have their place and they have been purposefully constructed, but there's a mindset that comes with a room full of machines: this is the best way to strengthen my body, my body can be broken down into specific parts and I can spot reduce parts of my body. As the body is a whole integrated unit, it takes more time to complete a machine based workout than to do functional movements. Functional movements require more thought and body awareness, while machines are route and fairly mindless. The mindlessness of the machines is to help keep the mindless exerciser safe. This is why they only work a single muscle group. The problem this creates is one of variety; we keep doing the same exercises and adding more weight but we're not really getting stronger, we're just improving one area of the body. That area may grow in muscle mass, leading us to believe that if we can grow our mass we can reduce our waistline. Which isn't how fat reduction works, the body picks and chooses no matter what exercises we do. To keep ourselves from dying of boredom in machine workouts, we build new machines with new approaches to the same muscle groups. These machines are expensive and they take up space. Hence the cost of access to the equipment goes up. The problem with machine based safety is that it reduces variety, the equipment is expensive and its not the most efficient way to build the body.
Efficiency is an interesting subject; what we consider efficient depends on our goals. When I consider efficiency I ask a few questions: how much of my body am I using, what are my long term goals, what do I need to do in the short term to achieve those goals? A machine's goal is very focused, workout this part of the body! Machines are great for strengthening injured areas. Machines are also good for the new exerciser who doesn't yet know how to move their body. They also are good for those who lack stability while exercising (the elderly). Outside of these areas I consider machines inefficient; the cost to space required to functional use ratio is low; too expensive for too little total body use.
But how is a new exerciser suppose to learn how to move their body/exercise? That's the million dollar question isn't it? Do new exercisers learn best on a machine or from a person? There are plenty of videos on Youtube of people using exercise equipment improperly. And there are still people in group exercises classes that don't realize they aren't moving in a health way. But who has the better opportunity to learn how to move correctly? A person working alone, or someone working in a group? I would argue that we learn best from other people, even though it takes time for us to become self aware of our movements. The more interactions we have with each other, the more opportunities we have to learn. And the more we move our bodies, the better we understand how our body functions as a complete unit. A machine does not have these capabilities. It's stuck being what it was designed to be; mono-dimensional, which is what we see taking up a lot of space in fitness facilities today.
Current fitness trends are moving away from machines and back into multi-use functional movement driven fitness: Crossfit, Yoga, Pilates, P90X, Camp Gladiator, Tai Chi, Boxing etc. I like this trend, as it means moving away from machines and back into personal interaction for body development.
I can't help myself asking the question, "What's the current trend in spiritual development? Is it machine based, or person based?" As I ask this question I look at my own traditions and the church I currently attend. When I read the Bible, which is the major teaching tool of Christianity, I conclude that we are supposed to be people based. Which means we take the time to teach each other how to move, by practicing movements together.
Is this how we live in the 21st century? Do we live with each other or have we prized independence over community? In my country, independence wins out, but I feel it wins out because it is machine based, which means that it doesn't fully develop the body; it spends too much time focusing on safety, stability and overcoming injury. This mentality doesn't win in the end because we lose the opportunity to explore ourselves in community. In essence, we get stuck doing the same activities with different labels and never make the forward progress we need because a machine cannot recreate the functional movement of the human body. It can support it, but it only goes so far. Eventually we have to step out of the machine and into functional movement alongside other people. At some point we have to say no to the big boxes with expensive machines because they can only take us so far; community takes us the rest of the way.
What does this mean for the church? Church is a word that's supposed to describe a community of people, not a building. But when I say the word church, images of friends and family don't pop into my head. I start seeing walls, buildings, signs, colored lights, projectors, musical instruments, candles, pews and chairs. There's something wrong with the way my brain has been conditioned to think about church. I don't think I'm the only one who's been conditioned to think this way. Its no surprise to me that people are giving up on the material driven church. Lack of personal interaction is more than likely the number one reason people leave the church community. I say more than likely because I don't have statistics, but I do know from a customer service perspective, the people we don't get to know are the people who go somewhere else. Part of the problem of the modern church is that we don't know each other anymore because we don't spend time together.
If church were just a social club, spending time together would be enough to fix our problems. But church isn't a social club, its a way of life. It impacts everything we do: the decisions we make, the jobs we take, the food we eat, the people we choose to live with, how we spend our money, how we save our money, how we spend our time, who we spend our time with, how we raise a family, if we choose to raise a family. Yet too often we only want to spend 3 hours a week thinking about church. We go to a religious service, we hang out with some Christian people and we go out into our community to do some kind of public aid program. Does something familiar with this 3 hour approach ring a bell? Use these 3 machines and you'll build health? Or learn how to do all of these with one functional movement? I'd say get rid of the machine and learn how to be functionally fit. Spiritually fit.
Does this mean I believe we need to jettison the modern church? No, but we need to renew our minds and transform our thinking. It starts with personal decisions and communal living. When I think about the modern church, I think its in a place of dis-ease. It's helping some with machine based practices, but the challenge to become mindful about our activities, to think and pursue our passions without being stuck in an inefficient and expensive setting is going unheard. Why? Because the literature being produced by the church is largely coming out of the expensive church settings. We're not listening to the small successful communities because they aren't materially driven. And we keep reproducing our expensive programs because we haven't accepted the personal challenge to live differently. To integrate our lives, instead of dis-integrating them.
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