Douglas Schorr

To get healthy again, I didn’t just exercise—I did resistance training. The distinction matters.

Training automates. We train animals, people in jobs, people in sports, and young folk in ideologies. Well trained, your brain and body set you up to become that particular expert. It works—productivity and ease of doing are up. That’s what the IT folks base their codes and algorithms on—once programmed, it stays that way until someone is authorised to change it.

Our eyes show this perfectly. Once a scene’s recorded, only changes are reported to HQ. No change equals “relax fellows, auto on.” See a change of concern—there’s a pothole now—and the alert sounds, the brain interrupts you, and your feet act out of the ordinary.

Two key points. First, two teams are engaged: me and my will on the outside and inside, the brain-mind and their team—my muscles, organs, stomach, mitochondria, and all. Secondly, to get healthy and stay healthy, exercise absolutely has to break the tedium. It’s the way we were made. 

Automation shapes everything and adds nothing. Walk the same path every day? Your brain yawns; the body sleeps on. Worse, “helpful” governments have replaced natural trails with paved paths, removing every little challenge that might wake up our bodies.

Consider the difference between someone casually, and looking good too, easily doing their regular three-mile looping run at the same comfortable pace versus a marathon runner. The “I’m fit” runner is just reinforcing patterns. The marathoner is trained—highly—but in competition strives to break barriers by pushing beyond what their partnership considers “normal.” Now, if “I’m Fit” adds suddenly weaving through the park trees, jumping the drain, and breaks into an all-out sprint for 50m, it forces every part of her or him to wake up and recalibrate.

Get out of the comfort zone; be like the old-school plumber who constantly broke resistance barriers wrestling with stuck pipes in awkward positions, applying maximum torque while balanced precariously, the whole body straining at its limits as it solved problems. No automation possible there!

When you’re doing the recommended walk, your feet, legs, arms, and heart send the same signals day after day, your brain switches to screen-saver mode. You’re parroting, not exercising for health. Breaking patterns makes change. Skip suddenly. High-step for ten meters. Really scandalize fellow walkers showing seniors can sprint too—just a little, okay. That makes your brain shout, “Good God, Mind, call action stations!” Now you’re not training or, more accurately, being trained—you’re challenging yourself to grow. And it is not just the body. Mental health benefits are huge; fuzzy thinking fades and moods calm as testosterone rises.

Modern terminology is “resistance training.” Nice. But it is not the brain whining, “Please guys, let’s go beyond normal. It’s willing a conscious attack on personal barriers. As everything has become easier, we’ve lost that once-innate burning desire to be better today than yesterday. Our ancestors coded it into our core. It was a duty, not some airy-fairy “I’ll see.” Living among lions and crocodiles, we had to be top dog.

Recent heart health research suggests that monotonous cardio sessions likely train the heart to be more like just another steady-state muscle than the responsive pump it needs to be. Your heart has to be ready for anything—traumatic news or a need for immediate physical action. Training it to maintain one pace is like teaching a security guard to only walk in circles. Take bodybuilders conditioned to look (err) great. But what can those trained, rippling muscles do? They dare not challenge a much plainer-looking MMA type. Nor should a much bigger, 30-years-younger iron-pumper have challenged me at shot put! Back at the gym, I showed him how I spend 90 minutes every five or six days.

I engage THE partnership: me and conscious will on the outside, brain-mind and the body cartel on the inside. Take my signature move: With 400 pounds on the bar of a squat machine, I dip into a half-squat position, holding the shoulder pads at chest level. Then, with my wrists, shoulders, and lower back taking the strain, I explosively drive upward as if putting a massive shot two-handed. My brain isn’t just sending signals anymore—we’re having a conversation: “Do you think we can? Sure we can! Heeeeevv. Lungs, what’s up? We’ve started; we uuggh have to. Breathe in! Not enough oxygen here, damn it!”

I chose seven exercises by asking, “What would Tarzan need if he met a strange lion?” The explosive squat thrust we just covered, plus leg push, pull downs, bench press, deadlift, half squats, and barbell work for the lower back. After a warm-up set, I push, pull, or lift for a minimum of 3 repetitions for 3 or 4 sets. To struggle with the 3rd or 4th rep is grand. 6-7-8 reps, and it’s, “Been here before, guys—leave it to him.” When my watch screams, “Alert! Maximum pulse exceeded,” I rest. But the partnership keeps jabbing, “We didn’t come all this way to be normal, Doug.”

This isn’t about training new patterns—it’s about breaking free from automation. Each session is as conscious a conversation as you’ll ever get with your defining inner self. We’re working to become something more than our programmed limits.

The experts tell us that what I did in the gym (or walking and running with a difference) was to manufacture building supplies. The real health work comes when I’m resting. Now the internal engineers are working overtime to use the bricks and cement.

While training has its place, health growth comes when you stop programming yourself and start challenging yourself. That’s when your will, brain-mind, and body turn off the autopilot and start working together—even if it scandalizes a few people on the walking path along the way.