I was thinking again today about the contrast between those who make exercise part of their everyday life and those of us who go the gym and do something special and different that we think of as ‘working out.’ I blogged about that here, In praise of everyday movement.
And then I came across this beautiful post The Thousand Cuts Fitness Program from Leo Babauta author of the Zen Habits website. It’s a terrific post, full of great suggestions, and you should read the whole thing. Here’s his conclusion:
“Always be active. It’s not hard, if you do it in tiny bits. You can’t say no to 1 minute, or even just a few seconds. And if you do a thousand of them, you’ll be fit. Fitness is a part of my life now, but it wasn’t when I started. I did it in little bits, without designating a certain time as “workout time”. My whole life is workout time.”
My whole life is definitely not work out time. I push myself so hard when weight training, if I tried to use those muscles regularly throughout the day I’d injure myself. The walk fast everywhere and as far and as much as you can part of it though, I understand. Once you have more energy, you need to burn it, or you go a little crazy and you get irritable!
[...] even less than 5 minutes, as Samantha discusses in her post about the “thousand cuts fitness [...]
[...] much moving if you don’t plan to move. This is a good week to incorporate some of the ideas Samantha blogged about when she cited the thousand cuts fitness program from Zen [...]