Why don't we move more often? Part IV

Wow! I want to take the time to thank you for hanging with me through this series. I’m grateful for your participation. So on to more fun stuff.

We were looking at the place that movement and activity have in our culture and how that changes as we age. We left off with the focus on external goals and structured play during childhood, including high school. We saw that there are more limited opportunities to participate in regular activities in a school setting as well. Part of these disappearing opportunities tie into the emphasis on performance and winning competitions. As competition increases opportunities decline because of the level of performance expected and commitment to training. The focus on this type of development leads to burnout, physically and emotionally. For youth sports 80 percent of youth athletes quit after age 15. (Swanson, Beth; “Youth Sports Participation By the Numbers”, Active Kids: https://www.activekids.com/football/articles/youth-sports-participation-by-the-numbers.)

This pattern continues through young adulthood as well. There are even fewer opportunities to participate in organized athletics in college. Most colleges do have intramural sports and there might be a requirement to participate in at least one physical education class for the completion of their degree. Participation levels, especially on an ongoing basis, are relatively low.

Following graduation, a small percentage of young adults continue participation in team sports. Some pursue different opportunities for physical activity/movement. They are far from the norm. Looking at the number of Americans who do participate in regular exercise/activity at the levels established by the American College of Sports Medicine roughly 25% of us do so. That number hasn’t changed in decades. Other evidence of decreased participation includes steadily climbing obesity, increased type II Diabetes, increased heart disease, and more and more evidence showing these processes are occurring earlier in childhood. Hard to digest I know. That’s a discussion for another time and place. I’m just trying to highlight the pattern here.

On a more pertinent note the incidence of back pain increases by as we age. The rate increases…. More and more surgeries for joint injuries and replacement are common. It’s interesting, or more like shocking, to note that the rate of joint replacement surgery for millennials is the same as baby boomers. I don’t know about you but that is mind boggling to me. Part of that is their attitudes about how to take care of pain. They tend to look for the quick fix and instant gratification. They don’t seem to have a high tolerance for pain or much belief, or perhaps patience, for pursuing alternatives that don’t involve traditional medicine. I feel concerned and sad that they are willing to sacrifice their body and compromise its function. They seem disconnected from their bodies and therefore from themselves. The prevalence of arthritis, auto immune diseases and other body related maladies is also on the rise.

As a culture we really are impatient and tend to turn toward a medical fix and immediate gratification. Part of this attitude may result from beliefs about the natural process of aging itself. We can get stuck in limited beliefs and lose our open mindedness. It’s common to hear someone say that once you hit 40 it’s all down hill from here. While it’s true that some of us are aging differently, see celebrities who seem to never age, and comments like 70 is the new 50 that certainly isn’t well accepted nor objectively obtained by most people in our culture. We still tend to expect that we will continue to decline physically losing more and more of our capacity and freedom along with experiencing more and more pain. We seem to resign ourselves to that future, when it is only one of many. Ha. Ha. I got a comic book reference in there today. Or is that a SciFi movie reference. Anyway, I’m sure I heard it somewhere. Anyway, I think I’ve finally linked moving less to hurting more.

Well, better keep this short. Tune in next time for some radically alternative thinking. At least I think it is.