What about exercise?

Two things make muscles weak: under-use and over-use. Over-use doesn’t just mean going too hard at the gym. Chronic tension is over-use, even if you don’t work out. Strained muscles don’t function well.

So, if you move in a way that messes you up, mistakenly equate the resulting muscular underperformance with muscular underdevelopment, and then try to fix it with exercise, you'll probably end up moving in the same way that messes you up, but harder, and make the root problem worse. This is tricky to notice because it occurs at the same time you're reaping many of the expected benefits of exercise.

Exercise and fitness are good, and I recommend them both. At the same time, increasing your tolerance to your own abuse just so you can keep abusing yourself is stupid. It’s better to stop abusing yourself by learning to take the strain out of the way you do things.

So, exercise can be wonderful, or really, really dumb, depending on what’s going on. It’s frequently both at the same time.

It was Walter Carrington who said, “You can use as much force as you need to use, just don’t pull yourself down to do it”.

Strengthening a poised, naturally coordinated system is a whole different ball game than beating yourself up regularly “for your own good”. At the same time, you will never, ever be perfectly coordinated, so get moving, if a doctor and/or common sense says it’s ok. Just know that exercise won’t fix a system strained by the manner in which it does mundane, routine activities.