Exercise is a Luxury

Why would we hike up when there’s a perfectly good chairlift right over there?

Once when I was living in Tahoe, probably about 15 years ago, I jumped in my car in Olympic Valley and drove five miles to the gym in Tahoe City. I rode the stationary bike there for ten miles, got back in my car, drove five miles home, and immediately realized what an absolutely ridiculous outing I’d just had, especially considering there’s a perfectly good bike path most of the way I had just driven.

The summer I lived on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle between my junior and senior years of college, I had an internship at a geologic consulting firm in Fremont. My aunt was very generously letting me live in an apartment above her house. I did not have a car. Every day I would ride my bike three miles downhill to work, and after work every day I would ride the three miles back uphill, arriving sweaty and victorious at home, extra proud of myself. I started running at lunches with a co-worker, and pretty soon realized that since I was biking and running almost every day, I should probably sign up for a triathlon. So I did, and added evening swimming at the nearby pool to my regimen a few times a week. I would walk or skateboard to the pool (and the grocery store), and at the end of the summer, I completed the triathlon but I also realized that I was feeling better about myself than I had since starting college. The regular exercise—a lot of it in service to just transportation or social time (running with Annika, the only woman close to my age at the entire office, who also happened to be totally awesome), helped me feel confident and accomplished and strong.

Going nowhere fast and loving it.

These are very western-centric lessons to learn regarding exercise; much of the world still moves their body out of necessity, for transportation, daily chores, and regular life. The concept that we think of as “exercise” is to many people simply living.

When I spent a month in China in 2010, I could count on two hands the amount of times I used a sit-down toilet, the thing we use regularly and take for granted in the west. Most bathroom spots we found, rural or city, in homes or businesses there, were a hole in the ground. Sometimes a fancy porcelain hole in the ground with a flusher! It was perfectly normal to squat down to the ground every time you have to pee or poop there. Okay, I’m sure the guys probably stand and pee. I wasn’t observing how others went. I just noticed how many times I was squatting, all the way to the ground, and it hit me that most of the people in China are probably squatting all the way to the ground at least once a day. Which doesn’t sound like a big deal until you think about how many people in the US probably squat all the way down once a day. I certainly don’t, and I’m the annoying kind of person who loves working out and does squats for fun! I can only imagine how much more mobile folks there are, squatting all the way down to the ground several times a day for their whole lives.

Just adding in some pushups and hair dips. Anne Cleary cooling off during a long day hike.

There are many times I’ve realized how much I take my movement for granted—being injured or recovering from childbirth or surgery. In those times, simply being able to walk again has felt like the greatest thing on earth.

Thinking of all of this helps me realize how much more movement I can enjoy in daily life without having to think of it formally as exercise. When the kids were small, my arms were stronger simply from holding them a lot. Now, I guess I can do workouts that focus on those same arm muscles, or I can choose to work in some other movements for my arms: I can knead bread by hand rather than in the mixer, or whip cream with a wire whisk, by hand, rather than using the mixer. It takes two minutes, and it makes my arm remarkably tired! Those pioneer women must have had super strong arms. I read this article the other day about Chicken-Sizing, and it was exactly what i’ve been thinking about—ways of adding movement that are in service to daily life, rather than formal exercise. After all, movement feels best when it’s fun, natural, and purposeful.

I mean, talk about fun and movement….