What is "Fitness as a Lifestyle?"
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Healthline
To many people, fitness means stopping your "real life," changing clothes, driving somewhere else, and doing uncomfortable things without similarity to movement in daily life. Then they go back to "real life" - slouching, bending wrong, walking heavily, sitting rounded, leaning back to carry packages, taking elevators, and avoiding movement.
At the gym, people do squats with a trainer, paying to learn proper form and upright back, then bend over wrong to put the weight down when they’re finished. They do proper lunges for their legs in exercise class, then bend over wrong without using their legs to pick up their things when they leave. They work with weights to isolate arms but never learn how their entire body stabilizes a weight, then hurt their back opening a window at home. They work on a treadmill or elliptical trainer but sprain their ankle when out walking because they haven't trained balance and stabilization. They sit hunched in bad posture waiting for exercise class to start. In modern life, exercise is something you go and specially "do," then destroy and ignore your health the other 23 hours a day. Fitness has become “fast food” – stripped of value, sweetened up, and mass produced, even when unhealthy.
Changing your real life into healthy movement is a big and inspiring area of rethinking and retraining. Instead of sitting slouched then stopping to stretch because your back hurts, sit and stand well so that you do not get stiff and sore in the first place. Instead of lifting packages, babies, groceries, laundry, and everything else wrong all day, then stopping to do back exercises because your back hurts, lift properly. I will show you exactly how in posts to come. You will get built-in exercise, strengthen your knees, and save your back. You don’t need to go to a gym; move, balance, and reach in healthy ways in order to do your real life. Instead of thinking you must stop your life to get health and exercise, fill your life with built-in healthy movement.
Photo: National Cancer Institute, Linda Bartlett (photographer)
Labels: aging, ankle, balance, children, fix pain, injury, knee, lower back, lunge, nutrition, performance enhancing modality, posture, sitting, spirit, strength, stress, stretch
3 Comments:
At Tuesday, January 02, 2007 11:03:00 AM,
Eddie said…
It appears that the lady is hunching slightly forward while carrying the child behind her. Don't you consider this improper?
At Sunday, January 07, 2007 10:57:00 PM,
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD said…
Welcome Eddie.
Good eye for spotting that. You are correct, she is leaning slightly. When you carry, you get more exercise by standing straight. When you are stronger, it is easier to do. The good news is that doing it makes you stronger and reduces pressure on your joints.
Keep up the good work spotting ergonomics. Send in your photos and stories.
At Thursday, January 11, 2007 7:08:00 PM,
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD said…
To comment on if her slight lean is "improper," she is doing several good things. She is not rounding her upper body against the load and she is not jutting her chin and neck forward. Her upper body has fairly good positioning. The child is not a small baby, and the lady is carrying a good amount of weight with only a small lean. She may also be leaning to keep the child feeling safer and not falling backward. The lady is getting a large amount of functional, happy exercise with a child who is also benefitting from the contact, instead of being isolated without exericse in a carriage.
Keeping healthful body positioning and ergonomics for as much of the time as you can builds a "health bank" so that for times when you need to go past limits, for example, to make a rescue, it is not "the last straw" for your joints.
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