Originally Posted by
Lemond1985
I'm mainly playing devil's advocate, because I had someone make that argument to me recently, a sedentary 65 y/o woman with bad knees. And while I don't totally buy into it, there may be some truth to it. Maybe if I were to refine her argument a bit, I would phrase it, "Doesn't a person need to be in reasonably good health to begin with, in order to be able to get optimal benefits from an exercise program, and aren't the benefits obtained directly proportional to how healthy the subject was before beginning the program?"
That would be difficult to disagree with. And even though it's still no excuse for not exercising, I think it's at least logically-sound.
My own view is that you take the first step, whatever condition you are in, ride a bike 20 feet if that's all you can do. And you keep building on that base, all the while improving the state of your health. Improved health allows greater and greater exertions, which boost health, allowing greater efforts, and so on. It's a synergistic process, so to say "only people who were already healthy exercise" really misses the point somewhat.
My aunt's case argues for a synthesis of viewpoints. She was in terrible health and getting worse fast. Her gains started slow, but gathered impetus as her health improved. It took her maybe 3 years to reach the point where additional gains started to come much harder. Increasing age has made it difficult for her to stay even, much less make more strength and agility gains. Nonetheless, she still has her trainer, she still works out, she's still way ahead of where she would have been had she not chosen health over comfort. Now she has both.
So no, one doesn't need to be in good health to start exercising and if anything, the benefits are greater for those in ill health. Those already in good health would find it impossible to make percentage gains as great as was done by my aunt.
I think that what's really hard for those who are, shall we say, "lifestyle unhealthy," is to make the profound changes which would bring better health. My aunt struggled with that a lot. She had the advantage of liking her trainer personally and allowed her to hold my aunt accountable. That made all the difference. We've been gym members since 1979. We always laugh about the new joins in January whom we will not see again come March. It's not easy, or as it's said, everyone would do it. It took us 30 years to sell it to our aunt.
To your point, there was a very, very heavy guy on BF a few years ago. We advised him on how to get a bike which would hold his weight. He got the bike, rode it around the block once. Then twice, then 3 times, etc. and started losing weight riding further and was OK.