From iPhones and artificial intelligence to cars, light bulbs, and refrigerators, modern technology is pretty awesome and amazing. There’s no doubt that our lives have become easier because of advancements both large and small.
But that’s a double-edged sword.
On one hand, it’s given us more time to pursue other hobbies besides, well, gathering food. On the other, it’s enabled us to lead far more sedentary lives than even just a few generations ago.
Considering humankind’s physically active history, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that research shows we’re mentally healthier and happier, more physically capable, and less susceptible to disease when we’re active.
But how much activity qualifies as “enough”?
Levels of activity
According to the most recently published CDC guidelines, adult targets are 2.5–5 hours (150–300 minutes) of moderate-to-vigorous aerobic activity and 2 days of muscle strengthening activity per week.
Unfortunately, they don’t offer any recommendations on strength training duration or suggest that there might be ways to combine the two. There are. But I digress.
If you fall within or above that range — and, apparently, only about 23% of folks in the U.S. do — then you qualify as active or highly active, respectively. If you’re like the majority and fall below it, then you’re categorized as inactive or insufficiently active.
As I referenced in this tip about the long-term benefits of exercise (and the CDC agrees), any intentional activity, including as little as 75–90 minutes per week, produces some positive benefits. And we each certainly need to find what’s reasonable given our individual goals, circumstances, and responsibilities.
But most fitness professionals and medical practitioners would likely agree that aiming for as much activity as possible within our individual ability to recover (an important requisite) is the best target if health and longevity are a priority.
And that leads me to the main idea behind today’s tip: According to biomechanist, Katy Bowman, in her book, Move your DNA, we can still potentially be considered sedentary even if we’re active.
Active and sedentary?
If your “skeptical bone” starts tingling at the idea of an individual author (regardless of background) seemingly contradicting an entire organization, I hear you. Still, a little bit of critical thinking indicates that the idea might be more accurate than it initially seems.
Consider a hypothetical yet very realistic scenario of a typical “desk worker & exerciser”:
- Mon, Wed, Fri: Wake and drive (seated) to a traditional gym. Do 30 minutes of weight training that includes bench press (lying prone); leg extension, curls, or press (seated); curls or shoulder presses (seated); lat pulldowns (seated); abs (lying prone). Do 20 minutes of cardio on the stationary bike (seated) and 10 minutes of stretching (some seated, some standing). Drive to work, sit at a desk for 8+ hours, drive home, eat dinner, watch T.V. or read. Go to bed.
- Tue, Thu: Same as above except exercise includes yoga (half standing poses, half seated poses).
- Sat, Sun: Some yard work and family activities. Perhaps a 60–90-minute hike, jog, or bike ride (seated again). Catch a sporting event and/or movie (seated once again).
In this example, our individual case study did at least six hours of intentional exercise plus some yard work and family activities. And yet s/he was also sitting or lying down for 92–96% of the week (assuming hiking instead of biking on the weekend plus another 4–8 hours of standing or walking during daily activities and yard work).
No one would argue that this individual isn’t active. And my intention isn’t to discount the multitude of benefits derived from that activity or to suggest that we need to be on our feet for 40% of our week (about 9.5 hours/day) for optimal health.
However, we can probably agree that sitting or lying down for 22–23 hours per day (and slightly less on weekends) also seems to fit the definition of sedentary.
At this point, research may not be able to quantify the degree of positive to negative affects that might come along with this active + sedentary combo. But I’m still going to hedge my bets by moving my body as much as possible. I recommend you do the same.
Putting it into practice
This is a practice that I’ve implemented (to varying degrees of success depending on the day) for the past few weeks:
- Set the timer on my watch for 20 minutes.
- Start the timer whenever I’m sitting.
- Do something active when the timer chimes. Sometimes this involves one set of push-ups or body weight squats next to my desk. Other times it includes walking into the gym to do a set of pull-ups or a kettlebell exercise. Occasionally it involves a walk around the subdivision. Most of the time it entails standing up, taking a breath and stretching my arms and back (like when waking from a nap), and then sitting down again. Of course, sometimes it includes ignoring the chime… but I’m getting better at not doing that. 🙂
- Re-set the timer, and go back to work.
Particularly if you sit much of the day, give this practice a try.
You might think that a 20-minute timer would be too brief to allow you to focus on your work. I initially thought the same. However, movement has a way of focusing the mind (perhaps due to the increased heart rate, respiration rate, and blood flow), and it is not only far less disruptive than I expected but actually quite energizing.
If you have the same experience, great. If not, that’s fine too. Just extend the timer to whatever seems reasonable for your situation: likely 30, 45, or 60 minutes.
In any case, putting the idea into practice can be useful as either a springboard for adding more intentional exercise to your life (if you don’t exercise much now) or a way to put you squarely into the active + active category instead of the active + sedentary one.