Bit by Bit … By Bit
By Amy E. Lawrence, MFA, ACSM
There are 24 hours in one day. In simpler times, getting an hour or an hour and a half to yourself seemed much easier, probably because it was. Now we’ve become so accessible to others, even people we don’t really “know;” we are allowing complete strangers to dominate our days, annihilate our hours, and wreak havoc on our weeks. Social media has made us anti-social creatures. Smartphones, countless “chat” apps, Instant Messaging, texting… and here’s the real “kicker,’ – the Apple Watch. Ironic. Something that is designed to show us how much time we have remaining, how much longer until something begins…. or ends. A timepiece has now become a tool that allows us to become even MORE accessible to others, and less accessible to ourselves; whereby stealing moments of our precious time, and the question which begs to be answered: could all these “interruptions,” and endless accessibility end up costing us relationships with others, ourselves? Flash-forward. Could technology one day ultimately take our very own lives? Sounds dramatic. But it’s true.
So how do we get back to us? The REAL “us,” and not our “profile picture” “alter ego-us? How do we become less accessible to the world around us and more accountable to ourselves, and most importantly, our health?
Life has the tendency to cave in on the lives we had envisioned for ourselves; or it can if we allow it. Sometimes the ebb and flow from the day to day swells into an enormous tsunami of mundane obligations, endless interruptions, and the only way to survive may be to drown and let go of the life we had once so perfectly envisioned for ourselves. But maybe, just maybe, there’s a branch reaching out for us beneath the social, political, economical riptides threatening to rip us from our destinies. We don’t have to fight the current, be it technological or in a metaphorical tsunami, if we stop fighting it, and look for that branch beneath the currents reaching for us. That “olive branch” of sorts; your health. Any aspect of it. Be it physical, emotional, or mental, our health, and the way we prioritize it, or eschew it, or crush it first thing in the morning, it’s the one way out of the chaos tossing about just beneath the surface of the lives we try so hard to present as “together,” or “boss status.” (Whatever that means).
How do we stop surviving and start living? Much the way technology seeped in to our lives until it became an ever-present ghost, robbing us of our commitments, our best laid plans; ultimately ourselves: byte by byte; or bit by bit.
What baffles me about the world of fitness in general, is how complicated and intimidating it seems to have become; even for myself after spending nearly three decades working in the industry. It’s like one of those many days you are trying to accomplish the most basic tasks on our computer and it freezes, or wont connect to the server, or the printer is on the fritz. We spend our entire day trying to get our “typical” work accomplished, but end up spending hours on the phone with some “help desk,” where the person “helping you,” convinces you your computer has been attacked by some virus you made it susceptible to when you opened “that” email. Now for just $299.00 they can “help” you clean it up…. You get my point…
Turn off the computer. Go perform a “wall squat” for 60 seconds. If that’s too long, start with 10 seconds. Start where you are. Then turn and face the wall; perform 60 seconds worth of triceps push-ups against the wall; again, start with 10 seconds if that’s where you are.
Here’s another idea. Take a five-minute power walk around the office. If you work an 8-hour day, at the top of every hour, go for a power walk for five minutes. By the end of the day, you will have accumulated 40 minutes of cardiovascular endurance work, Bit by bit; it adds up. Below are some additional ideas on how to get fit; “bit by bit;” don’t worry, you will be on hold with the “help desk” for hours on end anyway. So let’s get to it!