Remember to Get Up and Stretch
We use Slack as a team collaboration tool, and it displays cheering messages on load screens. Such as, “What good shall I do today?” or “You got in, and day just got better”. One such message from Slack inspired me to write this post. The message goes like this: “Remember to get up and stretch once in a while”.
There’s no doubt, that with the bulk of our days spent at our desks, we do need some sort of stretching. It’s hardly that any IT worker, or knowledge worker, would question the need to exercise and to keep fit. Media advertise lifestyles for which some sort of physical training is a must. So, if we don’t want to be labelled as “couch potatoes”, or if we lack movement, we naturally want to compensate for that. Many years spent studying, and then working, and sitting all the while, require some sort of compensation. At one point or another, any sedentary worker will want to step on the path of exercising. It seems, what can be wrong about it? Everyone is doing this, and it feels so great to exercise! The devil is in the details, as usual, and I want to outline the trend which I currently observe with some of my colleagues, and which, actually, I observed earlier in my own life, too. This is not a wellness blog, and this article is not about wellness and keeping fit. It is about keeping ourselves sustainable for doing our work. It might sound as a bummer, but if we put too much of our personal energy into exercising, this might not only do us no good, but, in fact, sabotage our productivity.
It’s quite hard nowadays to resist following the lifestyle that media impose. We are told to go jogging, or to ride a bike, or to be a triathlete, or to run a marathon. I’m 100% certain that anyone reading this article is either doing these activities themselves, or has some friends that do. Now, here’s what the trick is. As I was able to observe, people usually start out with their athletic pursuits after lacking in physical movement for years. It’s as if they are let loose from a leash, and it’s a euphoric experience, to feel yourself moving, exercising, pursuing, being an athlete. Until there comes a time when you realize that this euphoria is not endless, and investing too much effort in exercising backfires, and backfires hard. That was the case with me. In my late 20’s I felt some sort of itching to exercise, and I started out with jogging in a nearby park (on concrete, and jogging on concrete is a knee joints killer, no matter how hype your sports shoes are, but that’s a whole other story). Then, I really got into tennis and passionately devoted myself to mastering this sport. I’m a stubborn and persevering girl, and if you’re serious about doing tennis, you need to keep yourself in good physical shape. So, apart from my tennis practice, several days per week, I did jogging, went to the gym, did some tennis-specific workouts, and I used to have 2 or even 3 training sessions per day (!), and I was doing this in parallel with my day job. Everyone cheered me, because it’s a commonplace belief that it’s such a great thing for knowledge workers to exercise. I managed to maintain this regimen for about 7 years, until at one point of time I realized that I can’t do this anymore. Instead of being a joy, playing tennis — this most beautiful, graceful, smart and elegant sport ever — turned into a dull burdensome chore for me. Besides, my health deteriorated, and this prevented me from doing my best at work. I realized that I need to make a choice, and since I had no intention of becoming a professional athlete, I terminated my tennis practice for an indefinite time. Someone might say, come on, you can just play leisurely, once or twice in a week! The point is that with this fatigue from overexercising that has accumulated over those years, I’m happy and comfortable with this indefinite break. Now I exercise as I swim in lakes (no chlorine for me, thanks), or go on walks, and my favourite way to exercise at the moment is to walk barefoot in a park, on a grass lawn.
Why I’m telling this story? Ironically, I see that some of my colleagues in their late 20’s experience the same curve of being fatally drawn to exercising. They suffer from injuries, but still exercise, as if butterflies drawn to a fire. Everyone lives their own life, and it’s their journey. But I can clearly see, and I can tell from my experience that overdoing with exercises is not only harmful for health. It switches focus from work to exercising. If you have friends who show these symptoms, try to talk them out of the exercising madness, if they agree, and help them look at their life from the perspective of holistic personal energy management. There’s a great book that can help with that. We don’t need the overstrain and depression from exercising ourselves to death. This is not a war, and there’s no way that someone will put up a monument to us for that. We need some sort of light activity, and it’s a matter of personal preference. As for me, I’d rather prefer not to expose my spine and joints to unnecessary physical load. Sitting in a chair, no matter how ergonomic it is, is bad for our spines, so I’m particularly sensitive about all things spine, and I’d rather do some soft exercises, such as yoga postures, or stretching (I’ve got the whole baggage of cool tennis stretches from the years of my practice :), or use a fitness ball. Or, walk and swim. Skipping, biking, or, God forbid, jogging on a concrete are my least preferred kinds of physical activities. Another bottomline thing is that the healthcare bills are not ethereal. They are real. So, if we do not want to end up being healthcare bankrupts by our 50’s, it’s better to use caution about exercising as early as in the 20’s, or at least 30's.
Last week-end I had a flashback to this do-or-die exercise mindset. I was walking barefoot in Delaware Park, enjoying the feel of grass and fresh air after the rain, the landscape was so serene, and there were not too many people in the park. Then, I saw a bulky guy, who was obviously doing some sort of plyometric training, running uphill in sprints. He was huffing and puffing, and, as I sat nearby, I could hear some hard-and-push music from his earphones. Well, his huffing and puffing was actually breaking the serenity of the moment, but I could definitely empathize with this guy, because he reminded me of those days when I used to be like that myself. Then, after a while, the guy was done with his training and, as if sensing my discomfort, said to me as he passed by: “Now you can have it all to yourself”. I laughed and said: “I hope your workout was good!” He didn’t answer and looking at him one could say that he was exhausted, rather, than happy and filled with energy after this workout. Then, I proceeded walking barefoot around the loop of the Hoyt Lake, and spotted a beautiful piece of street art as I went:
Now, tell me, who do you think felt recharged and re-energized on Monday? Me or that guy? The answer looks obvious.
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Originally, this article was published here. I’m posting it today in memory of a dear friend at Buffalo, NY, who left for a better world on January 30, 2019.
