2009 15 Nov

Is Fitness For You?

Just how essential is fitness? To read the newspapers lately one would think this country is on the brink of disaster because of a lack of fitness. These stories are headlined by such stern warnings as:

“FITNESS OF AMERICANS AT ALL-TIME LOW”

“TWO-THIRDS OF DRAFTEES REJECTED FOR MILITARY SERVICE”
“BE FIT BEFORE YOUR HEART GIVES OUT”

“U.S. CHILDREN LAG FAR BEHIND EUROPEAN
KIDS”

“AUTOMATION CONTRIBUTING TO SOFT AMERICANS”

In an era of world, national, economic, social, personal, and moral tension, the populace is further pressured to feel guilty about its poor physical condition.

Somehow fitness appears to have been elevated to the status of a virtue— something toward which everyone should aspire—like motherhood, justice, and freedom. Boiled down to its crudest negative essence, the logic of these national virtues implies that without motherhood there is extinction, without justice there is slavery, without honor there is swindling, and without fitness there is death!

Not only is fitness commendable, sensible, and good—it has been invested with a life-or-death aura. Keep fit and live longer—or else you will die!

On the one hand, a citizen is belaboured by government officials, health authorities, and almost everyone else who is not mute to get in shape.

But on the other practical and seamier hand, he knows he can expect an uncharitable ribbing from his friends, neighbors, and associates if he is caught exercising. He looks around at the people braying loudest about our decadency and finds them to be sad examples of fitness. He finds that many physical education instructors—the ones
who are teaching his children to be fit—are not exactly practicing what they preach.

He may ask himself why he should have any more respect for a fat and flabby phys ed teacher than for a clergyman who fails to live by the Golden Rule.

The bewildered citizen soon realizes that he faces roadblocks, not free access, in his path to fitness. At this point he may either lose interest in fitness or ask himself whether fitness really is necessary.

What Is The Effect Of Fitness On Longevity?
The medical facts are quite disconcerting—they fail to prove that longevity is increased by fitness. While fitness offers many other rewards, apparently a longer life is not one. It is true that former college athletes live approximately six months longer than their non athletic classmates. However, honor students live a year or two longer than do the athletes. Better brains than brawn!
More bad news is that violent death is more common among letter-winners. Among former high school athletes, for example, homicide, suicide, accidents, and war deaths occur more frequently than among the general population. Why this is so is not clear. Perhaps intelligence, judgment, type of occupation, and a sporting “willingness to take chances” account for this difference—but there is a difference.

Statistically speaking, people tend to die on schedule— when they are told to do so by the life insurance risk tables. The life insurance companies are acutely concerned about dividing people into various risk groups. And even they have been unable to produce fiscally incontrovertible data to prove greater longevity because of fitness alone. Sportsmen and athletes do not receive special “good risk” ratings nor do they pay lower premiums.

What has been said thus far is not intended to show that there are no advantages to fitness; it is only to state that fitness is not necessary. To be sure, many medical papers do purport to link physical conditioning with better life expectancy. However, critical analysis of these studies reveals obvious loopholes. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee of a longer life through fitness.

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