Exceptionally Mediocre

This is a paper I wrote for my english comp class. Im not sure if it counts as an article but I think its close enough. Tell me what you guys think of it. Some of it might seem obvious to DB members, but remember I was writing for a professor who might not be "the workout type".




Exceptionally Mediocre
Problems are considered serious if solutions are not easily achieved. The reason problems are elevated to a crisis level is because the solutions are difficult or especially unpleasant. This allows some clarity regarding the American fitness crisis; the average level of fitness decreases daily. The causes of this issue are clear. It is obvious that people’s lives today do not demand an adequate level of physical activity; it is also obvious that people have poor diets. There is no national cooperation or national goal; the health of ones peers really does affect him. There are solutions that have been offered, and all of these solutions have the same goal: get people to a barest minimum level of physical fitness. The problem most Americans have with getting in shape is a lack of proper motivation, its not there is not enough pressure on them, it is the improper application of pressure resulting in an obfuscation of the correct fitness goals and desires. People need to change their fitness goals in order to have a chance at reaching and maintaining them. Aiming to be adequately healthy is only delaying poor health; people should aim to be exceptionally fit because they will be putting more distance between their current state of fitness and a poor state of fitness. Americans should lay more importance on health and set more ambitious physical goals, this will improve the overall fitness of the nation.
            Before the solutions of poor health can be addressed it is necessary to assess the severity of the nation’s fitness problems and what will happen if it is allowed to continue. Youth obesity is reaching the highest levels in history. Parents are desperate to get their kids to do some kind of physical activity or to have them eat healthier foods. People are trying to pass laws against trans fats, take children from parents who do not keep them at a safe body weight, and almost all restaurants accommodate one of the strange new fad diets. Health is on everyone’s mind now but few are taking effective action, or are willing to take effective action. Over half of America is overweight and, without a proper national strategy, this can only get worse. The only large-scale solution that has been offered so far is telling people that they need to workout and giving them some knowledge of diet and exercise through health classes in grade school. Much of the information kids are being given about working out is very watered down because it is thought that an advanced workout will make working out too unpleasant. The situation with adult fitness is even worse. As the body gets older and the metabolism slows down, it is even more critical to maintain your body. The fried foods and the morning donuts are acceptable if the physical activity is there. Unfortunately, it isn’t. Daily living doesn’t require this kind of activity. A workout is required to eliminate the health problems and achieve a desirable level of fitness.
            People tend to see someone else’s poor health as a problem for only that person, and that can be true in milder cases. But overall, society will suffer as a result of people’s diminishing fitness. The most immediate problem is healthcare. Health insurance is getting more expensive as a result of the aging baby boomer generation. Since that generation has lived relatively healthy lives, they have not seen too many severe health problems. With every passing generation, however, people become less physically active and new risks arise. If the baby boomers are falling into bad health around age 60, then the next generation could see the same problems at age 45 due to less physical activity. If the current health trends continue then hospitals will be hard pressed to care for the increased number of unhealthy geriatrics. Insurance costs will also rise because it will no longer be cost effective for insurance companies to offer the same rates, they will be paying out much more money to needy customers. What should concern people the most is the success of the species, it is conceivable that life-spans will decrease for the first time in centuries as a result of decreasing fitness levels. This issue may seem like it is only skin deep but it is already changing our society negatively and things cannot improve with the current American attitude towards physical appearance.
            The current attitude toward fitness is that it is really only necessary to maintain one’s health so that they will not suffer any immediate maladies. There is no reward in this, just the threat of health problems. People will not turn heads by having a healthy heart and good cholesterol, there are no bragging rights in being able to climb a flight of stairs, and for this reason people will not stick with a moderate fitness plan. Anyone who has been to a gym has seen the healthy elite, the people with less than eight percent body fat and rippling muscles. Most of these people are not genetically gifted and have had to work for years to attain their current level of fitness. They are motivated by their desire to be exceptionally healthy; they face no threat of immediate health problems and know only the constant reward of looking in the mirror and liking what they see. They are a dying breed. The current attitude in America is that looks don’t matter and people should compete only with themselves. This attitude has been incorporated into gym classes across the country with disastrous results. Encourage competitiveness in gyms, and encourage people to try for an unattainable fitness goal; even if they fall short of this goal they will still be well above the minimum health standards. It is very easy to become hooked on something if there are visible indicators of progress that come relatively frequently, people do not get frequent indications of progress if they are doing laid back workouts that are aimed staving off severe health problems. No doctor has told a patient to try to get washboard abs but all the people that push to attain them do not usually end up with health problems. Look at societies varying fitness levels as a bell curve if more people aim to be at the positive end of the bell, then the center of the curve will move more to the right. Looks should matter again, and if this becomes the case then the overall fitness of America will increase.
            Physical attraction is strongly linked to romantic interest and some people are still unaware of what this obviously implies. Physical fitness is a strong indicator of overall health; people are attracted to a healthy looking partner because this person is obviously in good health. If someone looks exceptionally healthy then they appear to be a virile and suitable mate, working out for aesthetics is not shallow, it gives people an easily identifiable goal with a desirable outcome. The position people now accept is that looks do not matter as long as everyone is happy with who they are, and anyone who pressures people to look a certain way is seen as the enemy. Right now people are being sent a mixed message, that message is: Be healthy but don’t stress too much about physical appearance, being happy on the inside is what matters. The thing that is intrinsically wrong with this is that if a person is truly healthy it will show on the outside, looking at one’s exterior is a surefire indicator of health. Measuring changes in physical appearance is a very effective way to measure overall fitness progress. So as soon as people start paying attention to physical appearances they can start to realize just how much progress they are actually making. Millions of years of evolution have left the human race with the ability to recognize fitness when they see it, people can use this acquired skill to measure their own progress.
            There have been many past instances of competitiveness effecting positive changes. A benchmark system known as “keeping up with the joneses” was popular in 1950s America, this system encouraged people to compete with friends to have better possessions and a better social standing. This system motivated many people to work longer hours in order to stay in competition with their social competitors. The reason this system worked is because people can very easily become addicted to a competition. This can be applied to all fields of human endeavor including physical fitness. What motivates professional bodybuilders to maintain extremely time-consuming workout routines is their desire to look better than their competition. Even casual bodybuilders compare themselves to people with similar builds and try to surpass or at least keep up with their rivals. People are being told that the healthy attitude is to compete only with one’s self, but the beauty of competing with another person is knowing that stopping a workout program will mean the competition is gaining an edge.
            The poor health of the American populace is caused by a liberal approach to fitness. Relativism is not the answer here, there is a wrong way to look, and people can only move away from that by aiming for the opposite end of the spectrum. There is much more reason to workout if one can see constant progress in the form of physical improvements. People who do moderate workouts to maintain an acceptable level of fitness are not being adequately rewarded because they are not seeing many visible gains. It might sound easier to just try and look healthy but working to prevent a disaster is much less rewarding than working to improve one’s appearance and preventing health problems at the same time. Go to the gym with a goal, do not approach it expecting the workout to be a reward in itself.

A healthy body is a guest chamber for the soul: a sick body is a prison.

-Francis Bacon

ORIGINAL: Yet

Usually when I get to the top of my deadlift I'll do a reverse-grip curl.