Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Daodejing, Verse 23

Daodejing - Other Voices
Too much of a good thing.
I’ve been off the gym with a heavy cold for the last week or so. I’d been planning to drop another workout or two into my routine, but after reading this article on the BBC, I’m not so sure.

So it looks like a lot of folks are addicted to exercise, with too much of it being very bad for you. Even from my earliest days, 15 years ago in back street gyms, I was always taught to take rest days. I know that a part of the early body building lore was training every day, but even back then there was dissent.

They’re right, too much exercise will pound you into the ground, you need to give your muscles time to recover and your energy reserves time to replenish. I feel I should add that this is an important consideration in any activity, not just exercise, if you check the dates on my blog entries, you’ll see that I occasionally take breaks from posting, for exactly this reason.

Coming back to philosophy, both Taoism and Buddhism consider moderation to be of top importance. I think this quote from the Tao Te Ching is relevant here, it’s usually held to go a lot further than just speech:

Sparse speech is natural
Thus strong wind does not last all morning
Sudden rain does not last all day
What makes this so? Heaven and Earth
Even Heaven and Earth cannot make it last
How can humans?
Chapter 23, translation by Derek Lin, provided courtesy of Truetao.org.
~from A Quiet Watercourse, author Richard Barker, original post date: 4/13/07 ~
This post is part of a series. For an introduction, go here.

1 comment:

  1. You're right, too much exercise is a very bad thing. I've suffered gym injuries from overdoing it and have learned the hard way that moderation is the only sure way.

    I know people who go to the gym every day, and admit to painful joints. I've heard exercise class instructors admit that they're like "old women" when they get home as they do so much.

    For me, the middle way is the only sure way.

    ReplyDelete

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