When people think of movement, they often think of hours on the treadmill, heavy weight training sessions or doing an exercise class.
But..did you know that you can get in a lot of movement by embracing simple, everyday chores?
See what biomechanist and movement specialist Katie Bowman has to say:
“Exercise is one way to be physically active, but there are other ways too, like walking or biking as transportation, mixing up your sitting positions, and choosing more active ways of doing your household tasks. Daily life has become mostly sedentary, with exercise being a short period set aside for movement. While exercise is beneficial, research shows this approach isn’t meeting our bodies’ needs for movement. We need to be more active throughout the day. We need to infuse movement into our everyday activities.”
This requires a bit of a mindset and perspective shift.
Instead of saying ‘Ugh, I have to go downstairs to change the laundry.” Think “More daily movement is better so I’m going downstairs to flip the laundry over.”
When you start to embrace more movement patterns throughout your day, not only do these ‘chores’ become more enjoyable but you’re also going to reap the benefits of more movement.
Daily tasks to start seeing differently:
Putting the garbage out
Emptying the recycling
Cleaning the house
Changing over the laundry
Setting a timer for every 20 minutes and go up and down the stairs
Taking the stairs instead of the elevator
Parking the furthest away that you can and walking
Getting off the bus one stop early
To get things started, use a step counter to track your daily movement. Aim for 5000 steps a day and work your way up to 10,000.
As Lao Tzu once said "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
Get moving!
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