APPENDIX 4

MOVEMENT, GAMES, AND SPORTS

Throughout our time on the planet, human beings have been hunters, food-gatherers, and eventually, agriculturists. Traditionally, people have spent each day working at physical tasks, walking, and sometimes running. Entertainment as well revolved around vigorous exercise, primarily in games and dance. Physical activity is as natural to us as breathing.

These things are missing from most of our lives today. Instead, we exercise for its own sake, if at all. And yet, the intense use of one’s body in sport, game, or dance may give great satisfaction. So too may the simpler pleasure of a walk. Many of us allow little time for these things. Periodically, we may strive for regularity in our exercise in an attempt to “get in shape.” We may take an occasional walk or a run after work, or perhaps play a weekend round of golf, but everyday pressures on our time seem to preclude doing more.

Exercise that is enjoyed may most easily become a habit. Children may play until exhausted; time is suspended, and all life centers on the action of the play itself. Adults too may enjoy and benefit from vigorous physical play. The development of skills makes an activity fun, and commitment and practice lead to enjoyment. The play of games and the often solitary enjoyment of activities such as walking may work well together for those who make the time for both.

WALKING AND RUNNING

Walking and running require no team, partner, appointment, or court. The setting is outdoors and, for walking, street clothes are appropriate. A pair of shoes is the only equipment needed.

Regular walking keeps one fit for occasional running, and occasional running keeps one fit for occasional racing—as well as for most other sports.

People often ask if running is good for you. This depends on the individual. Approached reasonably and adapted to personal needs, running may be both fun and of lasting value.

However, all exercise initially fatigues muscles, tendons, and joints; when we stop, we are weaker than when we started. As the body recovers during the ensuing period of rest, strength returns. Given sufficient rest, the body’s natural response to exercise is to become stronger. This is the physiological basis for increasing strength and endurance. Thus a runner or walker becomes progressively weaker if he or she attempts so much at each session that the body cannot fully recover by the next session. Injuries eventually and inevitably result. In the excitement of getting involved, most of us begin in just that way.

For most people, the surest and safest way to become involved in running is to begin by walking. If interested in becoming a fit walker and runner, follow this plan: Begin with two daily walks of five to fifteen minutes each, depending on previous exercise levels. This is more exercise than it appears. The great marathoner Bill Rodgers wrote that even a trained runner can never increase the total workload by more than 10 percent in one week without risking injury. For most people, adding five to fifteen minutes of walking twice a day to the total current amount of steady daily walking represents at least a 10 percent increase. So ease into this. Don’t push the pace, and if you are ever stiff, sore, or just plain tired, skip a day and consider that too much may have been attempted.

Once ten to thirty minutes a day becomes effortless, with no stiffness or soreness, add five minutes a day to the total each week, building up to thirty minutes twice a day. The pace should keep you just short of breathing hard, with the pulse in the 90- to 120-beats-per-minute range. Even the athletic individual is wise not to push harder than this in the beginning, for if one has not recently walked or run regularly, the muscles and joints easily become sore in the beginning.

Most people start out moving faster, but for shorter periods of time—running a mile or two in ten or twenty minutes is typical. This may be quite easily done, but the risk of injury is usually high. The heart and cardiovascular system can in most people take more strain than the joints. A preliminary walking program strengthens and trains the muscles, tendons, and joints to stand the strain of regular running. This beginning period builds a foundation for enjoying injury-free running. The body adapts slowly but very surely. As soon as an hour a day of walking becomes easy, some light jogging may easily be intermixed. A gradual buildup to thirty to sixty minutes of jogging on some days may follow.

A principle well known among runners is that of hard days and easy days. The body does not fully recover from a taxing effort in twenty-four hours. Days when one puts in extra effort (in distance or speed) are best followed with a day of easy or no effort. And very hard efforts may require more than one subsequent easy day. A hard-easy pattern is more natural, more interesting, and more fun than doing the same thing every day, and more rapid conditioning results.

Hard running that leaves one out of breath (anaerobic running) is best avoided the first few months. Such running rapidly conditions the heart for faster running, but the musculoskeletal system at this early stage is rarely able to handle the strain. Injuries usually result.

For the Serious Runner

The challenge of competitive running is to discover what a concerted effort of body and mind can accomplish. Most people who race compete primarily against themselves; the other runners serve to spur one on to the exhilaration of one’s own best effort. It is a unique satisfaction.

The individual interested in becoming a runner capable of covering several miles quickly may have difficulty proceeding slowly in the early stages. The adult previously involved in other sports, and with the cardiovascular fitness to run at a rapid pace, finds this especially true. Distance running is unlike most other sports, however, in that continual stress is placed on the muscles and joints. Both the accomplished runner and the person seeking to become one should understand that musculoskeletal fitness lags behind cardiovascular fitness during the first few years of running

Most runners are thus capable of routinely running a given distance much faster than the muscles and joints can regularly stand. This is why so many runners hurt so often. The sports-medicine business has grown by treating injured runners with surgery, special shoes, physiotherapy, and a host of other methods, mostly because people insist on running too much too soon. We are built to run, indeed to run very fast, but not to run very fast continuously. The adaptations the body must make to do so without injury take time.

Many champion runners have never hurt themselves running, so we know it’s possible to reach one’s potential without creating injuries. Indeed, development proceeds most rapidly when the demands placed on the body are the maximum possible but remain shy of causing injury. Running that becomes a natural and balanced part of life will not cause injuries, especially if one eats a primal diet. Poor nutrition makes runners more susceptible to injuries.

HOW SPORTS CAN HELP YOU

We balk at the salaries of today’s professional athletes. But pay is determined by supply and demand; we collectively place a premium on their skills. Can we help but envy a bit the man or woman paid handsomely to play a game? Most of all, we may admire the winners, those who through some combination of gifts and hard work have become what we sometimes would like to be—rich, famous, admired, and successful.

Those of us with an interest in sports occasionally live vicariously through athletes. Their victories and defeats are to an extent ours as well. They know intimately the excitement of physical competition, the fear of injury, the thrill of winning.

For most of us, these things are a more subtle part of our lives; we miss the directness of sport. We compete instead for jobs, money, spouses, cars, prestige, houses . . . but inside we miss the more elemental competition of the athlete, the warrior, the primitive hunter.

Playing at a sport need not become all of these things. But personal sports and competition may fill a real and natural need. If we ourselves compete more in sports that we enjoy, we might have less need to compete so viciously (as we sometimes do) economically, and less need for millions-of-dollars-a-year heroes.

Athletic events may have marvelous moments. The way a person wins or loses may tell us a great deal about him or her. The way some teams work together like a family—or a tribe—calls to mind a not-so-distant past when survival depended on such cooperative but exhilarating effort. In our serious approach to the business of life, we often forget to laugh and have fun. Playing helps keep the child inside us alive.

SPORTS, FITNESS, AND RECOVERY FROM INJURIES

Ever since I can remember, I played baseball, basketball, or tennis. I loved baseball as a kid and played until I was fifteen. I played basketball until I was thirty-five or so. Since then, I’ve played tennis.

The basis for playing sports well is discipline in three specific areas—nutrition, fitness, and practice. Discipline in nutrition means carefully following the dietary principles I’ve written about on our website and in my books. The human body is built from the foods we eat. You can build a healthy, strong body and mind capable of optimal performance by eating only the best foods. Discipline in fitness requires both understanding and dedication. It’s critical to understand, as mentioned earlier, that cardiovascular and musculoskeletal fitness often operate somewhat independently. The cardiovascular system strengthens quite rapidly and often outpaces the musculoskeletal system. The musculoskeletal system is much slower to strengthen. The joints and muscles often can’t take the workout that the heart can take. Injuries result.

Recovery from injury, as well as recovery from surgery, is tremendously helped by using bovine tracheal cartilage (BTC) as a food supplement (see chapters 9 and 15 to learn more about BTC). Here is one very personal example.

On September 15, 2014, my wife, Elly, and I were in the water at the beach in Ponte Verda, Florida, when Elly was bitten on the right foot by a shark. The tendons to the four small toes of her foot were severed. That night she was in surgery for nearly two hours, receiving over 75 stitches to repair the tendons and close the wound. She was in bed and then on crutches for six weeks.

In addition to the bedrest and crutches, we started Elly on BTC, 12 daily, the day after the surgery. She began physical therapy once she was off the crutches, including a regimen of gradually walking more and more. Elly is a talented and dedicated tennis player, and we weren’t sure how long it would be before she would be able to play again. In December, just three months post shark bite and surgery, she began playing doubles. By January 15, she was playing singles, fully recovered just four months after the tendons were severed. This is a remarkable recovery. Credit a highly skilled surgeon, our nutrition, and bovine tracheal cartilage.

Rest after any injury or surgery is critical. Too often, we begin stressing the injured area again far too soon. Healing takes time, even under ideal conditions of rest and superior nutrition. Begin movement again with slow walking, just 50 or 100 feet at a time initially. Good judgment is required. If it hurts at all, don’t do it. Allow the injured tissues to heal. A sprain or severe strain, even when ligaments are not torn, may take weeks or months to heal completely. A gradual resumption of activities allows the healing to take place while slowly building the body back to full strength.

I can’t emphasize enough the value of walking in building the basic musculoskeletal fitness needed to avoid injury, facilitate practice, and play an active sport like tennis well. The older you get, the truer this is.

Cardiovascular and musculoskeletal fitness form the physical basis for the disciplined practice necessary for good performance. Disciplined practice means regularly working on the basics using the techniques taught by an expert coach. Before you do things your way, learn the right way first. Later, make it your own. Whatever your age and whatever your sport, there is no substitute for a good teacher and a disciplined approach to nutrition, fitness, and practice.

GREATNESS IN LIFE AND IN SPORT

Have you ever thought of someone you knew personally as “a great person?” I’ll bet most of us have, and not because that person had fame or fortune. He (when I use “he” in this section, I mean “he or she”) might have been a parent or other relative, a teacher or coach, a friend or co-worker. He was there when he said he would be, and he did what he said he’d do—always, and to the best of his ability. He had time and kindness for all the people in his life. When he made mistakes, he owned up to them, and learned from them. He stood firmly for what he believed in, but he respected those who respectfully disagreed with him.

Anyone can choose to live that way. Being a great person, not in the conventional sense of measuring greatness by worldly accomplishments, fame, and fortune, but rather in the sense of character—is a choice anyone can make. Greatness is a matter of character. Choose to live by ethical principles and you will become a great person. The people in your life will see this. Rewards will be yours in more ways than you might imagine.

Greatness in sport usually is measured by more conventional parameters—titles and trophies, records, championships. Such greatness is no easy task, and we rightly admire great athletic achievements. We recognize the dedication and discipline required, the thousands of hours of practice and hard work that even the most gifted individuals must endure to bring their gifts to world-class fruition, to greatness. Often there are elements of physical courage in the face of danger and pain that make the greatest athletes excel as they do.

None of this makes a great athlete a great person. We know this is true at an intellectual level, as time and again we see the disconnect between sport and life when athletic heroes very publicly reveal their character shortcomings in various ways. But there is always a sense of disappointment when that happens. The letdown is strongest for kids—“How could my hero do that?” But when this happens, we’re all disappointed to some degree. We want our great athletes—and our great artists, musicians, actors, writers, politicians—to be great people. Like that special parent, teacher, or friend was.

So how does a great athlete transcend his or her sport to become a great person? The same way you or I can be great, by making that choice. Some athletes do this. If you watch for it, you’ll see it: the great athlete who is also a great person.

Several years ago, I clipped a small, very unusual photograph out of a newspaper. Then twenty-four-year-old tennis player Rafael Nadal had won his fifth French Open title a short time before. In the photo, he is surrounded and being carried aloft by the grounds crew staff, ten or twelve older men smiling excitedly, flashing victory signs, and congratulating Nadal. The trophy had been presented, the awards ceremony was over, the TV cameras turned off. But a photographer had captured this moment wherein the grounds crew spontaneously embraced the young champion and he responded graciously in turn.

A ferocious competitor on the court, Nadal has long had a reputation as a kind, humble, and sweet young man liked by everyone with whom he has come in contact. This picture says everything you need to know about how a great athlete may transcend his or her sport to become a great person. When the grounds crew loves you, you know you’re doing something right.