The baggage people carry

11 June 2025
Adarsh Gopal

The baggage people carry isn’t funny.

A few specific cases worth spelling out:

My parents and grandparents had diabetes. Most diabetes is a lifestyle condition. Eating too much, moving too little, terrible body composition and too little muscle dramatically improves the odds that you too will suffer from diabetes.

No lifestyle disorder is genetically preordained or pre-destined. There are hereditary conditions for sure. But a lot of what we think of as inevitable is perfectly avoidable with some effort.

My mom had a knee replacement at 55. So the doctor told me not to squat. As things stand exercise and training illiterate doctors are the greatest enemy to an active population.

If I had a rupee for every time a doctor recommended a stretch instead of thoughtful strengthening, I would have at least 896 rupees at this point (made up number but magnitude is not too far off).

The tide is shifting and more doctors are strength aware. The recommendations are iffy and dated on occasion (slow eccentrics being good for tendons etc). But a long way to go.

My husband did deep squats and shredded all the meniscus in his knee. How stable was the client while performing squats. How controlled were they? How much volume did they take on? How much load did they take on? Did they do too much too soon and too poorly? By altering the joint angle, amount of support, degree of hip involvement, ankle position, controlling depth it is possible to get most people to squat productively.

There is little to no evidence that deep squats are bad for the knee unless they are done with poor planning and hideous implementation.

I don’t like this exercise.

Exercises don’t have feelings. Exercises are just names assigned to a movement that involves bending, straightening, rotating and making different joints articulate in a coordinated manner with control and stability. The hope is you get stronger and more robust.

We need not have any feelings about an exercise. You just need to do the exercise. And you might come to enjoy it if you become competent at it.

To have feelings about an exercise or movement you have never done is stupid.

Lifting in the gym is not natural.

Neither is living in a cement box hundreds of feet up in the air. Or eating eggs, avocados and sourdough sourced from 100’s of kms away. And nature has no email, CRM or chatbots. There are no lemurs playing tennis. Or tigers playing pickle ball.

The idea that you will only move in what you perceive as ‘natural’ is just contrived and asinine.

Gyms are the most efficient way to move, gain strength and muscle. Things that support quality of life and longevity. If you reject gyms, you should reject motor driven transportation, food from industrial farms and live far away from electricity, internet and urban settings.

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