Spend 1% of your day on flexibility and mobility - but is it that simple?
The short answer - yes and no. The long answer - some of it I will attempt in this blog (I’ve set myself a 10 minute timer because I have a lot of thoughts today).
Firstly, my tip for the week, and something I’ll be implementing, is spending 10 minutes moving your body in a way that works for you. I will be doing some specific exercises I was given by Ange the osteopath at the A Life for my back and posture. I also add in some warm-up exercises from both the upper and lower body workouts I was given when I did the A Life’s strength training last year.
A new motivation for me is that I have been doing Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself meditations. When I started, my back often gets uncomfortable during the meditation, so I started doing the stretches afterwards and it did help. (It’s taken me a year to read to the meditation section of the book 'Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself’. I don’t always love the name as I fear it implies you need to change. However, I am currently in Week 2 of the meditations and every day I surrender my feelings of insecurity to the universe to solve for me and I must say it’s a nice way to start the day).
I digress. One TED talk that has stayed with me is Tim Urban’s on procrastination (watch here). Perhaps it’s one of his blogs where he says that if you’re awake roughly 16 hours a day that’s close to 1000 minutes so every 10 minutes can be considered 1% of your day. Zoomed out, 1% of your day seems like nothing to dedicate to movement.
But zoomed in, I know how many pieces of advice out there say ‘do this! it only takes 5-10 minutes out of your day’ and that can be overwhelming, especially if we’re having one of those days where getting out of bed takes mammoth effort.
I also don’t want to contribute to ableism and overemphasise that it’s important how our bodies function. Because there is so much that is outside our control, whether that is current physical limitations or differences, or mental health challenges that impact our ability to move or strength train.
One of my parents is currently strength training consistently for the first time I can remember because they are trying to slow the progress of osteopenia (low bone density) and prevent its progression to osteoporosis. Now, osteopenia and osteoporosis have many contributing factors, but lack of weight bearing exercise is certainly a big one. I see so clearly the sacrifices my parents made for us growing up, and regular movement was one of those. They were certainly active with us, especially on holidays, and neither of them have ever had office jobs, but I never saw them strength train. I certainly don’t judge their choices.
Something that has been on my mind a lot is that just because something is not accessible doesn’t make it untrue (even that sounds harsh). For example, eating a variety of plant foods is important for gut health, and sometimes that does upset me to see online because I struggle with my eating. But, even ‘as long as your child eats something that’s fine’ is problematic on many levels. For the parents struggling to put food on the table, that advice may be true but it’s going to potentially make them feel really shitty. And the other side is, sometimes it can lead to a downplaying of other nutritional concerns, such as nutrient deficiencies or gut dysbiosis.
I’m actually going to leave it messily there as I don’t have an amazing conclusion anyway. After I get this published I will roll out my yoga mat and do my ten minutes of movement.
