Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
AVAILABLE HERE
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Exercise at work
The window cleaner who caught me practicing my violin at work this morning at 7.00am(!) after having been rained off last week, was telling me how bad his back had been over Christmas and New Year. Apparently he had been tucking into just a little too much food, sat in front of the TV and got all stiff. Also with a new router for his laptop that wasn't working fully yet he squatted under the stairs where it was kept with a short cable attached...no wonder his back was in bad shape...
On getting back to work he found his backache has subsided quite a bit so didn't go to the osteopath, but said that he really must start going to the gym. And I asked him why?
He asked me what I meant and I told him that I thought his work as a window cleaner was far better exercise than going to the gym. "Why's that?" he asked. In the gym we usually do a sequence of repetitive exercises that 'work' small groups of muscles in isolation to the rest of the body. Whereas his work is far more akin to the more natural lifestyle that our ancient ancestors would have had involving random movements of running and hunting. OK, my friend is not running and hunting, but in the process of cleaning windows he is bending to pick up heavy buckets of water all day, he's squatting, climbing, hanging on with his hands and arms as he reaches and stretches, scrambling in and out of windows, carrying ladders....etc, etc. Such a wide range of movements is using his whole body in a co-ordinated way, for many hours. His face lightened as I spoke and he said I'd made his day and he felt a lot better about his work, that apparently can become very monotonous.
By doing the work he does he's getting plenty of exercise over many hours of the day and it's my impression that this is much better than if he went to the gym for an hour or two and he will burn more calories and fat in the process. The same could be said for house cleaning, car washing (by hand), gardening, decorating, bed making in hospitals or hotels and many other similarly physical activities. If he also cuts back on the food a bit and drinks lots of water (which keeps him hydrated and reduces sense of hunger) he will soon be in better shape. However, this does not necessarily attend to posture and if he's got some habits of slouching and collapsing his back then that's another issue where some posture training such as Alexander Technique can help. Yes, I could help him with this, but he's not asked yet.... :-)
