I’ve written at length on this blog about the benefits of regular physical activity and a simple approach to staying fit that doesn’t just rely on “working out.” To highlight this point from a different angle, I want to revisit a study that is now a quarter-century old.
Back in 2000, the US Army compared the fitness of its recruits to those who served during and immediately after the second world war. It’s worth highlighting that by the year 2000, the army had already long been a volunteer force. That meant that its recruits, by definition, had joined by choice, and many embarked on a fitness program long before even showing up for basic training. I myself have had several such patients over the years, typically a young man of 18 or 19 who takes up a program of weightlifting, running, or Crossfit for at least six months before showing up to boot camp, as they want to make sure to arrive in excellent physical shape and ready for the rigors that lie ahead. By contrast, the soldiers of the 1940s were largely civilians who were either drafted or who, inspired by the desire to serve their country in its hour of peril, abruptly changed their life plans and volunteered for service. The prototypical American GI went to bed on December 6, 1941 as a farmer, factory worker, or shopkeeper with no plans to ever serve in the military, and found themselves in the service just a few days later. Moreover, many of them were heavy smokers.
One would think then that the soldiers of today would be a lot fitter. But not so. The Army found that the soldiers from the 1940s outperformed the soldiers of the year 2000 on a variety of fitness metrics.
So it’s not your imagination: your grandparents really were tougher than you.
The lesson we can apply here is this: taking a fitness class or going to the gym is great. But it can never fully make up for a life of sedentary behavior. The “greatest generation” didn’t go to the gym, practice yoga, or drink smoothies. But they were raised on unprocessed foods, walked frequently, did a lot of manual labor, and lifted heavy objects in the course of their daily lives, and that turns out to have helped them to be in better shape than we are. And while you cannot turn back the clock to a different era, you can consciously recreate some of these same habits in your own life and reap the benefits.
