Bare Bones Exercise

Bare Bones Exercise Okay people, we all know we need to exercise. Let’s see if we can’t manage to do it with some common sense, a few simple facts, and a minimum of guilt. Heck, we might even get to like it..

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Why do we need to exercise?  That’s actually pretty simple.  Our bodies were designed to move and, through that movement, build and regenerate.  Our ancestors needed to farm and hunt and occasionally run away from tigers.  These days, not so much.  There’s almost never a tiger on my way to the grocery store, and if there were I’d probably just stay in the car.  Since we don’t use our bodies daily in the way they were designed we need to replicate those stresses in a consistent, methodical way.  We need to exercise   What are the benefits of exercise?  Oh come on, you probably know all this by now.  Better health, less stress, fewer diseases, perhaps a longer life or at least a higher quality old age.  Plus there’s ego gratification, weight loss, better sex, and improved mood.  I could go on but I’m sure you get the idea   All right, so what do you have to do?  First let’s look at what you DON’T have to do.  You don’t have to go to the gym.  You don’t need to suffer or be in pain.  You don‘t need to be shamed by some screaming harpy.  You absolutely don’t need any stupid contraption bought from a TV commercial.  Look, if you could really buy a great, sexy and healthy body on television it would cost $100,000 and we’d all buy one.   What you do need to do is build a personal program consisting of cardio, stretching, abdominals, and some weight lifting.  That’s all.  An hour a day in your own living room will be more than enough to accomplish everything you need to do.  And I’ll show you how I spent more than 15 years as a personal trainer and most everything I know is in this book.  No bullshit, no profit motive, no shame or guilt, just simple information and illustrations presented in a light hearted, informal way.  The book covers everything you need to know to build a lifelong program.  Cardio workouts, basic and advanced weight lifting, injury prevention, and general cool stuff to know.  It even includes an introduction to meditation, yoga and internal martial arts.  So resist the hype and get back to the Bare Bones Exercise

About Angus McIntosh, author of “Get Off Your Ass" I grew up in KY, TN, MI, and NY. I got thrown out of SUNY Purchase for drug use and failing grades. I kind of graduated from Hunter College 3 years later with a double BA in History and Psychology. (I never filed for my diploma.) I considered attending grad school but studied martial arts and Zen instead. I earned black belts in both Aikido and Tai Chi Chuan and studied other arts less seriously. I read voraciously and can hold my own on most topics, except maybe math. I've washed dishes, worked in a warehouse, spent 4 years at IBM, managed and then bought for a chain of independent bookstores, been a personal trainer specializing in mind-body relationships, started and closed a dojo, founded a nonprofit, worked with high need kids, and started the Temple of the Circus Monkey. As an adult, I've lived in NYC, Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Francisco. I like Asian girls, sex, motorcycles, rum, cigars, eating out, Coca-Cola, hard boiled detective stories, bad movies, and game shows. I have the attention span of a teenage gnat. Follow Angus on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/ArchbishopAngus Or his blog at http://avoidingthesquirrels.com/