What Exercise is best for you??
With the amazing variety of different exercises around the world today I find many people do not do anything because they cannot choose what to do! Of course this is a form of distraction; keep people scattered and overwhelmed with too many things to choose from and one natural response is to withdraw and do nothing. I see this all too clearly in the modern social world.
Obviously this is not the case with everyone because there are millions of people around the world who exercise in one degree or another. The main question is what type of exercise is best for an individual. That alone is a question with many different answers depending upon who you talk to.
Personally I find that doing exercise that aligns with what you do in life is the best form. This also comes down to your blood type (which I will get to shortly). If you are a marathon runner lifting weights as your main source of exercise might not be the best thing. Likewise if you are a cross country skier doing yoga postures as your main form of exercise would not be the best choice.
I have people from all walks of life come to Ways Of The Wild Institute to take workshops and courses. What I notice right away is who does regular exercise aligned with the activities at hand and who does not. Guys with huge arms and legs, from years of weightlifting fizzle out after a full day of bushwhacking through the mountains building shelters and doing other outdoor living skills. I see people who are highly dedicated yoga practitioners also fail to have the full body endurance for ongoing outdoor survival work. Runners come through who have great lung endurance but have no muscle strength to move rock and drag logs. It’s no different with combat training. You get folks come in who have taken “years” of martial training, but when it comes down to it and they start taking shots you know exactly who has previous combat training and who has just been going through the motions of pulled punches.
From personal experience I have gained the opinion that the best exercise for any given individual must be based upon what they do in life. Do they run? Do the swim? Do they rock climb? Do they lift weights? Are they yoga practitioners? The best exercise for any individual is the one(s) that directly support whatever it is they do in life as far as physical activity goes. Just because you can run for 20 miles does not mean you can jump in the ocean and swim a mile or two. Just because someone can bench press 300 pounds does not mean they can endure hours on end of climbing through mountains and doing bushcraft work along the way in 34 degrees with rain. This of course does not make anyone less or more than another. It simply means that we should all training with exercise that best fits our passions and try to gear our exercise focus with that in mind.
Blood type also plays a huge part in what exercise is best for an individual; what lifestyle is best as well. It is a known fact that type A blood people are great thinkers and align very well with moderate isotonic exercises like bicycling, walking, hiking, swimming, etc. They also do wonderful with practices of easy meditative movement like Tai Chi, Bagua, Hatha Yoga, Dance, low impact Aerobics and other noncompetitive sports and activities. The Type A blood does very poorly with any type of stress and their kidneys and adrenals wear out quickly with stressful lifestyles and activities. Combative activities take a heavy toll on the organs of Type A people. So to counteract stress in life the Type A does best with light moving exercise that calms the mind.
Type O blood people are built for stress and competition. If these people do not get enough hard core exercise their bodies produce excessive amounts of hormones that get trapped in the muscles and do harm. Their bodies must engage in vigorous exercise to release this hormonal build-up to keep the body healthy. Type O’s who live a sedentary lifestyle normally suffers from weight gain, inflammation issues and even autoimmune disorders. Fast walking, calisthenics, martial arts, contact sports, cycling, swimming, jogging, weight training and any other high level exercise fits best with Type O’s.
The Type B person is a mix between the Type A and Type O. They work well with stress but fail to possess the heavy confrontational attitude of the Type O’s. Type B’s are group oriented people who do best with a balance between mental relaxation and aerobic. Hatha Yoga, Tai Chi, Bagua, weight training, jogging, fast walking, swimming, cycling, hiking, calisthenics, aerobics, martial arts that do not work with competition work well for Type B’s. The Type B’s can do similar exercises to Type O but in lesser amounts and less often…which is why they must be balanced with Type A oriented exercises.
Type AB people react to stress like the Type A’s but need more physical exercise with their mental engagement. So the Type AB a do the exercises of the Type A and B but need more mental activation and stimulation during the exercise than the Type B.
Basically speaking the Type A has the “flight” mentality in their blood when it comes to “fight or flight”. The Type O’s have the “fight” in the “fight or flight”. The Type A body reacts to stress by shutting down, thus the mind must save the body with highly activated thought processes. This is why calming and easy body movement exercises are best for Type A. Type O reacts to stress but dumping hormones into the muscles for direct and serious physical activity- fight. So the body must engage in physical activity that heavily works the muscles to get rid of that excess. Type is more along the lines of Type O but not nearly as able to withstand the constant heavy physical exercise because they need that level of mental relaxation more along the lines of Type A’s. The Type AB needs the metal relaxation like Type A because they react to stress the same, but also needs a bit more of a sweat breaking exercise to balance the mind and body.
Stress is not so much the issue and potential danger…it is how we react to it. Proper exercise for proper blood type and this should be geared to a lifestyle that is most beneficial to the person’s blood constitution. The simple fact is that an elk is and elk and cannot be or live the life of a hawk. We are no different.
2 Responses to “ What Exercise is best for you?? ”
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December 17th, 2011 at 10:06 am
Very interesting read, White Wolf! My exercise is Walking, Hiking, Bushcraft, and Golf. Mainly Golf. I play around 3 times a week in the Winter and 4-5 times a week in Summer/Spring/Fall. Hiking and Bushcraft are also great exercise e.g The Bowdrill and climbing a mountain! Golf is my main exercise though, each round is about a 5 mile walk and swinging the club requires Strength, Flexibility, and Speed. Also it’s 90% in the mind, thinking, planning, working out the contours of a putt e.t.c. Just yesterday i was playing in -2 celcius, which gets me use to and welcomes the cold
December 17th, 2011 at 10:12 am
Good for you! Like I wrote, do what is best suited for you. What you describe sounds like a good blood Type B, AB or even Type A routine. Not near enough for a Type O though…unless there are weak organ issues involved.