design mandatory movement into your life

Action

Instead of designing movement-minimizing solutions into your life, design movement-maximizing or movement-optimizing solutions into your life. Some examples:

• Put most often used dishes in the lowest drawer in your kitchen, which will obligate you to do more squatting movements per day (credit: Katy Bowman).
• Don’t own a car, obligating you to walk, ride your bike, or take public transportation, all of which require more movement.
• Don’t have chairs in your house. Sit on the floor instead. The ability to get up off the floor unassisted is a major indicator of health and longevity.
• Stand at your desk instead of sitting.

Discussion

Human bodies are designed to move, but they also are designed to adapt. If you move a lot, your body adapts to moving a lot. If you don’t move very much, your body adapts to not moving very much. Muscles and connective tissues and proprioceptive capacity atrophies.

Formal exercise is good, but lots of natural movement throughout your day is also very good for general health.

It is difficult to choose in the moment to take more movement. Designing your immediate environment to make yourself move more is a solid method for increasing your baseline level of daily movement.

Further Reading

• Move Your DNA, Katy Bowman
• Nutritious Movement