
Born to Rest - paulpauper
http://harvardmagazine.com/2016/09/born-to-rest
======
helloworld
_Harvard "needs to reopen a discussion about…a physical-education
requirement."_

It's been said that "love is a better master than duty," and requiring college
students to take a physical education course sounds like a duty.

If you want people to exercise without coercion for the rest of their lives, I
think you have to tap into intrinsic motivation, i.e., the unique things that
get _you_ excited. Depending on your personality and life experience, that
might be novelty, socializing, recognition, or competition.

Forcing college students to exercise will backfire, leading many of them to
stop as soon as the course is over.

~~~
cpr
Well, at least Harvard has the swimming competence requirement to graduate,
installed as a condition of the Widener Library family bequest (since their
son Harry Widener died on the Titanic).

At least they did in 1976. ;-) I wonder if they still do?

~~~
leodeid
Seems that the requirement being due to the Widener family donation is
apocryphal[0], but still an interesting idea. Also, that source suggests that
there was a swimming requirement for all students only from fall 1970 to
spring 1975. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that it wasn't officially
required in 1976 but was effectively compulsory for anyone without a
"legitimate" dispension.

[0]
[http://asklib.hcl.harvard.edu/faq/81791](http://asklib.hcl.harvard.edu/faq/81791)

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Jtsummers
I'm a fan of bringing back physical education. It seems that more of my
younger colleagues (~23-30 y.o.) are trying to be physically active/fit. But
exercise is a habit. If you don't build it up when you're young, it can be
hard to develop it later. And then there's the physical challenges of
returning to a physically active life after years or decades of inactivity.
Certain injuries are more likely (like back, knee, tendon injuries) which can
be debilitating, leading to months of recovery and more sedentary behavior.

And schools can always give several options to accommodate different interests
and capabilities.

~~~
jacalata
Bringing it back? Is it no longer offered?

~~~
Jtsummers
Speaking specifically of college, I'm unfamiliar with current K-12
requirements in the US. Physical education is no longer _required_ at most
universities. Not even one or two semesters. It is _offered_. But so is going
outside for a jog, or dropping to the floor and doing push-ups and sit-ups.
The issue is one of motivation. If students (really, people) aren't feeling
motivated to be active then they won't. Attaching a grade and a graduation
requirement to it gives them an immediate motivator.

The hope, then, is that this pattern of physical activity remains with them
throughout their life. Ideally also paired with courses on nutrition and diet.

~~~
CalRobert
Considering that gym class was hell on Earth for some of us fat people and we
greatly looked forward to the liberation of college, I think the idea of
mandatory PE is horrible.

PE is usually taught in a manner that's great if you're already fit, and
atrocious if you're fat. It's hard on the joints and exemplifies how much
weaker/slower/less valuable to society you are compared to the fit kids.

I know this because I WAS fat. Horribly so. I lost nearly 100 pounds in my mid
20's by doing something simple - ignoring the exercises I hated (running, any
team sports, etc.) and doing what I loved (swimming and cycling, which no PE
class had offered). Instead of agonizing knee pain I experienced the joy of
cycling, and instead of being a dripping sweaty pig I was in a nice cool pool,
where body heat was transferred away easily.

I also quit eating the poison that some call food on a college campus.
Remember that at this time people thought margarine was comparatively healthy!

(Note - I use the word "fat" because I think it's an accurate descriptor. It
has unfortunately taken on a lot of emotional overtones. But let's be honest,
the simplest word that describes the experience I had is "fat").

~~~
Jtsummers
High school and middle school PE were fucking miserable for me. I wasn't fat,
but I was slow and in a group with very fit (naturally or by practice) guys. I
was also uncoordinated as I had a _massive_ growth spurt and, being extremely
near sighted, wasn't active in any typical sport so my coordination lagged
behind for years.

College PE is different. It's not (usually) a general class. You typically
pick which one you want. Weight lifting, running, cycling, golf, swimming,
etc. This means you're working on a physical activity that you _enjoy_ or have
some moderate interest in, unless you truly despise moving and can't even find
one thing in the list that interests you (and somehow never fits into your
schedule over the 4 years of college).

And all those options were at a cheap, no-name state school.

EDIT: As well, you typically end up setting your own goals within the
constraints of the course. Usually an A requires: Be
fitter/healthier/faster/stronger than when you started.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Where I studied, there were indeed groups of choices, but they had to take you
for some reason (either be fast to apply or have good fit already). Most
people were raked into general class, where it was as bad as in school, under
the fear of dropping you out, since it was a required course.

Seriously makes me want to bulldoze the stadium (bonus points for frags) and
set a few extra dorms on top.

------
themartorana
_" But humans also “evolved with a very large stick: if you didn’t exercise,
you had nothing to eat.” Exercise was mandatory. For many humans today, he
points out, there are very few incentives and no penalties."_

Not entirely true - in fact further down in the article:

 _" Furthermore, says HUHS director Paul Barreira, the same surveys show that
students’ own sense of health and well-being tracks the amount of exercise
they report getting. Those with the most depression and anxiety also get the
least exercise. The happiest students get the most."_

So the penalties include depression, anxiety, and in future, propensity for
heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, etc., etc. So either we haven't evolved
enough to consider the penalty of dying young and having a more miserable
existence while alive, or is it just that evolution optimizes to the point of
reproduction and then doesn't care about much after successfully handing down
genes to the next generation?

(Edit: I might also ask, without putting forth a theory or guess, what
statistics say about obesity and likelihood of reproduction? If health is
poorer than non-obese humans, is there a lesser chance of successful
reproduction? If so, shouldn't that be considered the ultimate penalty?)

~~~
nxc18
Getting up and going to the gym sucks right now. It sucks in the 10 minutes it
takes me to get to the gym. It may suck for some time while I'm there. It
sucks after when I think about the time I could have spent playing videogames
or doing work ( I'm a notorious workaholic so this is big for me). It feels
great in 20 years if I do it consistently enough.

Eating crap feels great right now (endorphin release and whatnot). Sleeping in
feels great right now. I know what exercising feels like, I know what being
lazy feels like. I don't know what diabetes and hypertension feel like.
Getting the will to overcome that and make the right choices consistently
takes diligent practice and sometimes a little coercion.

As someone whose parents never forced me to play sports, exercise is a
particularly bad struggle. I stepped into the gym for the first time in
college. I've never really experienced being skinny (I would love to someday
and am working towards that). Motivation is slightly more complicated than
people like to acknowledge, especially when you consider that the environment
we experience now is so drastically different from the environment we evolved
in.

Also, in a social species, reproduction is a less acute need for individuals.
See: why condoms exist. Personally, I hate the idea of having children. My act
of "reproduction" will be making the world a better and more survivable place
for the other children of the world whose DNA is 99.99% similar to mine.

------
rubidium
Modern solution to campus exercise requirement: Put the dining hall 1 mile
away from the dorms.

~~~
Jtsummers
And remove cheap, high calorie, low nutrition foods. No reason schools ought
to provide students with tons of mac & cheese, they can do that to themselves.
Give them healthy, nutritious options with the meal plans, and let them spend
extra on the unhealthy stuff if they really want it.

~~~
striking
Isn't college where people are supposed to be responsible for their own
actions? Or have we extended the hand-holding that far out?

~~~
Jtsummers
Sure, they can be responsible for their own actions. Doesn't mean the schools
have to provide them the option to be actively harmful to their health.
They're adults (as mentioned in another comment). If they want to buy a few
cases of Coca Cola and drink that instead of water every day for 4 years,
that's their prerogative. No school should stop them from making such a
terrible, stupid mistake, but no school should present that to them as part of
the meal plan either.

~~~
striking
There's a little bit of cognitive dissonance going on here. If they're
responsible for their actions, and they're adults, why are you taking an
option away from them in fears that they're "making a mistake"? This is
universally seen as hand-holding.

~~~
thirstytho
So should the meal plan serve alcohol, too, to avoid reacting to 'fears that
they're "making a mistake"'?

~~~
cloverich
That's a bit of a straw man. You can choose alcohol or no alcohol. But you
don't choose mac n cheese or not -- you choose mac n cheese or some other
food.

~~~
thirstytho
You can choose alcohol or some other beverage.

------
justinator
Is there actually any evidence that ancient hunter gatherer groups didn't do
what we now call "exercise" on a voluntary basis? Some ideas come to mind:
dancing, walkabouts, spirit quests, right of passage rituals, ?ancient forms
of martial arts? I am compelled to believe that early man did things merely to
do them, including exercise.

~~~
kornish
Interestingly, all of those activities you list seem to have an underlying
purpose beyond merely "fitness for the sake of fitness" \- exercise (and the
fitness which follows) are incidental side-effects of completing those
activites.

Not sure what you mean by "actual" evidence, but we know a lot of what we know
from studies of modern-day hunter gatherer groups and it seems unlikely that
the ancients would have significantly different behavior around needless
calorie expenditure.

~~~
justinator
Modern day hunter gatherers do not "play"?

~~~
kornish
"Play" isn't exercise for the sake of exercise.

~~~
dansze
Which leads us to the current situation of the only people who stuck to
exercise long term are those for whom "exercise for the sake of exercise" is
play.

------
Fifer82
Let me die in peace. For some reason, it is always assumed that everyone wants
to live as long as possible. If you don't have a cola each day, you can
dribble into a towel for another 3 years when you are older.... No thanks, Ill
take the coke. put it on the reapers tab.

~~~
Floegipoky
It's so strange to me how people in this country seem to share a common
expectation that an adult should be a productive member of society, but have
no expectations about being a healthy member of society. The amount of
taxpayer money spent on providing treatment for type II diabetes alone is
staggering, and even the amount that isn't paid by the government is paid by
insurance, so still amortized across the population: "The total estimated cost
of diagnosed diabetes in 2012 is $245 billion" "Most of the cost for diabetes
care in the U.S., 62.4%, is provided by government insurance"

[http://www.diabetes.org/advocacy/news-events/cost-of-
diabete...](http://www.diabetes.org/advocacy/news-events/cost-of-
diabetes.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/)

~~~
kiba
The cost is so high precisely because our healthcare toolkit is so poor.

If we could restore our systems to full functionality, our healthcare cost
will drop like a rock.

Though we will be faced with new questions. If everyone are fully healthy,
then our mortality rate will also drop like a rock, destroying social security
as it currently exists.

~~~
srtjstjsj
Solution: Extreme sports.

------
sliverstorm
I've noticed that, at least in photos & videos, it seems cheetahs are
exclusively either sprinting at 75mph, _or_ lounging on the ground like a
housecat.

It certainly makes sense for them, considering how much energy they expend to
run that fast. So perhaps there's precedent.

------
BasLeijdekkers
If we have always been lazy, why is there now an obesity epidemic? It seems to
me that means the cause of obesity lies elsewhere.

~~~
Jtsummers
Prior to the 20th century (depending on where you live, but this is for the
areas hit with obesity epidemics):

1\. You had to walk most places (often miles a day).

2\. You had to physically labor. Most people didn't have desk jobs or the
period's equivalent.

3\. Food was relatively scarce, and harder to transport.

4\. Social activities (we are social creatures) required physical effort
(walking to, dancing, walking around). We can now be social while being
remarkably physically passive.

5\. Entertainment options were more scarce, so boredom meant you _did_
something. Now, you can entertain yourself by sitting on a couch or at the
desk playing a video game or watching a movie. You could make a case for books
being similarly physically passive, but that requires widespread literacy and
access to books which wasn't true of the general population.

~~~
Finnucane
The expansion of ranching and farming in the great plains of the Americas was
sufficiently bountiful to lead to the first 'health food' crazes of the early
20th century--more people had enough to eat, and increasing automation was
already reducing labor. So the roots of our current problem were already being
planted, as it were. But in the last 30-40 years, there's been a noticeable
uptick in average caloric consumption, even more reduced activity, and more of
those calories (at least in the US) coming from processed foods with ever-
larger quantities of sugar.

------
Ganz7
Delightful cause behind muscle atrophy. Annoys me on a daily basis because I
have to keep working out to maintain my shape, but makes so much sense once
you see why it is the way it is.

------
Floegipoky
I was very frustrated by PE. At my college, you could take a class about
making maple syrup for a wellness credit. It's a joke. But how many people can
brace correctly, or squat, deadlift, and press with proper form? These are
archetypal movement patterns that we repeat 100s of times a day without
thinking about it, and most people don't even know what they're supposed to
look like. How many people know how to use a foam roller? How to read a
nutrition label? Forget about trying to impart healthy habits, most people
don't know what healthy habits are and wellness classes, whether they're
making maple syrup or playing soccer for 2 hours a week, aren't going to fix
that.

~~~
shanusmagnus
In my opinion the maple syrup class could be a fantastic wellness opportunity
-- making maple syrup involves hiking around the woods, often in the snow,
carrying heavy buckets full of sap around. It's this kind of real-world,
ecologically reasonable movement that most people are so profoundly deficient
in. To say nothing of spending time in a beautiful natural setting, which is
often quite restorative and de-stressing.

It would be awesome if everyone knew proper lifting form, but it's just not
going to happen. Getting people to engage in an activity that they like, and
that involves lots of real-world movement, is the biggest win you can hope
for, practically speaking.

~~~
Floegipoky
>> It would be awesome if everyone knew proper lifting form, but it's just not
going to happen

I'm not talking about proper lifting form, I'm talking about proper human
movement. We perform these archetypal movement patterns every day throughout
our entire lives. Every time you sit down in a chair you're performing a
squat. Every time you pick up your bag off the ground, you're performing a
deadlift.

And to say "that's just not going to happen" is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
We're not teaching people these skills, therefore we wouldn't be able to teach
these skills.

I completed a minor in music and I still had to take more general liberal arts
classes for my CS degree. They can afford to include a class that teaches
about how to correctly use and care for one's body.

~~~
shanusmagnus
It's less a self-fulfilling prophecy than drawing on a bunch of professional
experience with trying to get people to do things that would be vitally
important to their health.

------
revelation
That debate is already extremely toxic due to the diet craze nutjobs, it
really doesn't need any of the unscientific hunter-gatherer lore that
extrapolate bits of data to romantic premedieval fantasy novels.

------
ars
This explains why I am unable to bring myself to exercise without getting
exhausted instantly.

But if I need to do something like fix a car, build something, whatever, I'll
work myself to utter exhaustion and not even notice.

------
pnathan
Interesting.

This thread is a good argument that many people don't choose effective health
without coercion.

It's probably a good idea for public health for the government to sponsor to
the point of "effectively free" adult sports such as running/soccer/swimming,
along with requiring such each semester for state-sponsored schools.

It's probably past time for me to put on my running gear and take regular
evening jogs, myself. :-)

------
guard-of-terra
Can we just turn off those "lazy/slacking" mechanisms on genome/cell level? A
pill will be nice.

Make your organism always maintain optimal muscles and circulation system
while burning a lot of calories? Seems like a win/win to me.

Some people are strong and healthy without excersice, I think we are all
entitled to same package?

I had PE in University (and before that school), hated it and now I'm turned
off from any excercise.

~~~
sliverstorm
Could be upsides to that, but cranking up the global food requirements
(remember, a muscular body requires a lot more energy to maintain) would be a
negative.

Also, what's optimal? Your body adapts to what you are doing, something we
take for granted today. E.g. If you like bicycling, a permanent linebacker
build may be undesirable.

It would probably be more ideal to set some kind of fitness "floor", rather
than remove the mechanism completely.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Most people already eat much more than they need, might as well make use of
those calories.

Of course there should be a "floor", we don't want to grow into blobs of
slithering muscles and veins, just well-built.

------
neaanopri
If they think it's a good idea to require physical education for the students,
why not require it for the faculty?

------
Ericson2314
The part of making exercise more fun is interesting. I remember growing up and
being shocked that adults did not play team sports in such a team-sport
obsessed country.

Also, probably could to have some sort of multiple-person activity in ones
schedule that isn't work (c.f. church attendance dropping faster than
religiosity).

------
jessaustin
It is odd for a piece like TFA to fail completely to mention the role of
internal combustion engines. Harvard has many shuttle buses, which might make
sense when the snow is deep but seem actively harmful while serious
consideration is being given to a phys ed requirement. A less coercive and
cheaper solution might be to scale back the shuttle buses and introduce some
sort of bike-sharing scheme. They could make uphill rides like Mather to the
Yard free, and charge a nominal fee on the fun downhill rides. (Otherwise all
shared bikes would end up in the river forever.) I guess they'd want to
subsidize both directions for those poor souls stuck in the Quad.

[EDIT:] It occurs to me that this is the sort of amenity that would be
basically free for Harvard to provide. Because it would be a highly visible
part of students' lives, hordes of donors will line up to sponsor individual
bikes (with donor nameplates), pay stations (likewise), named chairs for bike
mechanics, or even the whole program.

------
wahsd
Quite interesting that Harvard Magazine would publish something like that.
Doesn't that pretty much imply that Harvard is unnatural and abnormal

