We are at that time of the year when many of us who made some new year's resolutions are beginning to flag with our intentions. If one of those resolutions was to get fit, well done you. These days finding the time and the motivation to keep going whilst leading busy lives can be a challenge. Unfortunately, we are often undoing some of the benefits reaped in our exercise time by returning to our sedentary lives because our non- exercise time makes up a much much greater proportion of our day.
However, it's easier than you think to move more but does require a big mental shift to overcome inertia and choose new ways of doing things to get the benefits of more movement into your day. Movement that does not require more of your time, just new ways of getting life done. In particular, start taking note of the things that seemingly require you to be still. Increasing the diversity of your movement diet through changes in habit will go a long way to getting you what you seek in terms of health.
Take our hips. We spend huge chunks of our day at a 90 degree angle at the hip, almost never allowing our hips to experience greater ranges of motion because we rarely if ever, drop into a position lower than 90 degrees at the hip. Our bodies adapt to this position and we lose mobility around the hip joint because we don't take it through it's many ranges of motion. The pushes, pulls and loads that our tissues, including bone, need to thrive don't get tugged on as they simply don't receive the necessary mechanical signals and we become less mobile and weaker in the process.
Let's not get down about it though because honestly, there is so much we can do within the context of our day to day to change that. It does not have to be a downward spiral as we age. In the video below, I offer you another working position, one you may even do in an exercise class! This is one of many positions you could cycle through while working at a desk. All desk work does not have to take place in a chair or indeed at a desk. Get creative!
We would do well to take a leaf from those living within the so called "blue zones" where exercise hardly features at all. More on that in this article Why exercise alone won't save us written by Vybarr Cregan-Reid. Vybarr is the author of the recently published book Primate Change, How the world we made is remaking us.
Happy hips.
Michelle
