natural movement instead of the gym

I decided a few years ago that I was done with desk jobs.  I've gone after manual labour jobs like farming and construction and it's fantastic for strength, flexibility and movement.  I'm a lot healthier just by being active all day and I love being outside, even working construction during our winters.  If you're cold in the winter, just work harder.  Plus I get a perma-tan, so that's got to count for something.

I've been sitting too much. Not when I'm working, but during my leisure time. A long distance relationship has caused me to spend a lot of time in public places where I can get Wi-Fi. Voice and video calls for free. I try to mix it up a bit, by sitting in different positions and getting up to walk regularly. When I make calls from where I'm staying, I'm almost always comfortably reclining. But they don't necessarily want you to do that at the coffee shop.

So, I noticed that lately it takes a little longer to get comfortable after I get up and start walking. I'm taking this as a sign that I need to ease up on the sitting. Also being careful to bring in a good pillow so I can turn every seat into a comfortable recliner. I don't need more exercise. In fact sometimes I need a lot less. I'm just going to have to change this one behavior, so I don't wear out something in my lower back.

I love the idea of natural movement for exercise, but it doesn't fit my lifestyle.  A life of Kayaking, Scuba Diving, Sailing, Hiking, and Gardening would be great, but it's not in the cards.

I sit at a desk five days a week and work in the food-forest on the weekends.  Saturday last week I worked in the garden for 8 hours because I do look at it, not only, as enjoyment but also as beneficial to my well-being.  I purposely drop a mulch pile where I will have to load and unload it by hand.  I do everything I can with hand tools.  I'm kind of a weirdo because I thoroughly enjoy manual labor.

I used to be a runner, but my knees and lower back aren't the best.  I neglected my core when I was younger, and this really affects how you carry your body and how you feel.

I love Yoga, and it's a great way to get in touch with what's going on as far as alignment, but I don't get the drenching sweat that really makes me feel good.  I think sweating helps your body get rid of toxins too.

Because I don't have the option of being outside all of the time I do CrossFit and core exercises similar to what D. Burton is doing.  If I have a three day weekend or something, I will supplement a bodyweight workout with hiking or some other enjoyable endeavor.

My regular exercise routine is 20 minutes of stretching and 30 minutes of cardi-core training.   The 30 minutes is intense though.,  you go from circuit to circuit with as little rest as possible.   The actual core workouts cover the front and the back.  You don't want to do just the abs and the front core you want to integrate

the lower back and hip flexors because everything works together. The well-rounded core determines how your body fires in motion.   If you aren't doing anything, I strongly suggest taking baby steps and just do something you will sleep and feel better.  

Gurkan Yeniceri wrote:

I am sitting on my bum all day in front of a computer so 2000 cal a day is a myth for me. Eating only once a day (dinner) is enough for me plus 3 days a week heavy exercise mostly using our own body weight within the group fitness classes I join.

After working in the garden for a day, I am completely wasted and can not even lift a finger in the evening. I do what I've learned from stretching classes for about 25 minutes, concentrating on aching muscles and a new me comes out of it.

This is in harmony with the program

There are some good free resources for establishing a personal bodyweight program at Nerd Fitness. Most of these you can do at home without any fancy equipment (e.g. a gallon jug instead of a dumbbell).

I've got a set of free weights indoors, but garden and landscaping work gives me a lot of exercise. I spend quite a bit of time working on hugel beds and it's a couple hundred yards of steep incline from my seasonal creek bed up to the yard level where I have my garden and edible landscaping, so walking up out of there with a dead log or a couple 5 gal buckets of dirt is great for cardio and core muscles.

As an ultrarunner I find that the weight kinda falls off if one can run for about 8+ hours/week.  Plus it’s great for the mind.  As the saying goes, if you haven’t figured out the answer to your problems after a 5 hour run, you probably never will.  

All that said, while it’s supposed to be a bit tongue in cheek, the truth in the following rings true, and it’s how I approach exercise.  

https://gawker.com/5931205/you-dont-need-that-fancy-shit

Bike to work and for errands, move around a lot at work (teacher). Go on walks as social activity with family.  skateboard and play baseball a lot.  Sometimes canoe, kayak, hang glide, paraglide. Lots of work in the food forest.  Decided to create a mini-gym at home so I can be here with the family.  Weight training is highly recommended for longevity and injury avoidance. Super cheap: stacked paint cans for weight rack, boogie boards for bench, bleach bottles and pulley, $1 metal bar from Restore, rope for lat pull down machine.  Craigs list weights.  No fees.  

John S
PDX OR

I think its a good a time as any to reply to this thread. I am in the process of reading through Katy Bowmans book title Move your DNA

Its been great to read about the many steps I have taken to improve my posture/health.

It all started for me when I travelled to Nepal several years ago. I was someone who played sports growing up but otherwise spend quite a lot of my downtime playing video games/sitting. While in Nepal I got to experience sitting on small short stools( say 3-4 inches off the ground). I got to experience sleeping on thin cotton mats. I got to experience squat toilets. Needless to say my back had lots of relearning to do.  I will say the short stools had a huge impact.

After reading this book I realize that most of what I saw in Nepal resembled what Katy talks about in her book. Food was prepped on the ground. Most tasks were done squatting/sitting on the ground.  Who would have know how helpful going Nepal was for my body!


While in nepal its was easy to adjust to furniture free life. However in Canada I find it much more challenging. The floor can get quite cold in the winter. Sitting on the couch is warmer than the ground. We could probably insulate ourselves from the floor if we needed to. Having a wood stove means needing to get up every now and than in order to keep the house warm. Not everyone has a woodstove to get up and feed.

How is everyone else handling moving their Dna more? I really appreciate Katy stating (found here)

Exercise is one way to be physically active, but there are other ways too, like walking or biking as transportation, mixing up your sitting positions, and choosing more active ways of doing your household tasks. Daily life has become mostly sedentary, with exercise being a short period set aside for movement. While exercise is beneficial, research shows this approach isn’t meeting our bodies’ needs for movement. We need to be more active throughout the day. We need to infuse movement into our everyday activities.

This thread is a great one for the kind of weather most folks are experiencing or getting ready to experience.

I have never been inside a gym except when I was in school or visited my kids' school functions.

Any sort of exercise would be beneficial to any and every person.

My favorite is walking.

I tried jogging years ago and found out that that was not for me.

In the past I have done a lot of exercises, such as wall pushups, using cans for weights, etc.

I always go back to walking. Walking forwards, walking backward, sideways, etc.

Natural movement instead of the gym is great.

I'm a huge fan of both, rather than either/or.  I'm very active on our land.  I don't know how many miles I put on a day walking around, usually carrying something heavy, pushing, pulling, and lugging things.  That kind of activity just makes me feel so much better than being inactive.  At the same time, nothing makes a person stronger than lifting weights and that kind of training.  I enjoy it, so I do that as well.  My goal is to stay as mobile as possible, as long as possible.  Both kinds of exercise are great tools to that end.

I use hand tools instead of power tools. 30 minutes to an hour of hand sawing is cardio.

I beat out my sleeping futons once or twice a week since my son and I have dust allergies. Not long enough for cardio, but it sure burns calories.

I turn my compost piles with a shovel every few days.

I carry heavy things around. Recently I carried pallets to my garden to make a new compost station. Hauling logs on your shoulders will suffice for replacing dead-lift and clean any day.

I sit on the floor a lot. As Jordan Barton talked about, sitting on the floor as a primary thing makes a big difference in mobility. I couldn't sit in a squat posture for longer than a minute back in 2005, now it's quite comfortable.

I try to cycle to one of my jobs - about 16km one way, 32km round trip.

I go for walks usually 3-5km but occasionally longer ones of 10km or more. I often end up walking 500m to 1km with a child in my arms or on my shoulders. That is a full body workout.

I supplement with yoga and very rarely calisthenics like squats, pushups, and pull-ups.

I used to go to a gym and do weight lifting. I followed the book Starter Strength. Later I did that super intense workout program that was really popular ten years ago... I can't remember the name of it, the workouts changed every day and it had a big web following. I found going to the gym to be rewarding when I was in my 20s. But I also ended up hurting myself by slight missteps or careless form. When my gym partner left I lost the motivation and my safety net, so I gave it up. For a while I switched to entirely body-weight exercises that were easier to do on my own, pull-ups, dips, pushups, squats, sprints, and yoga. I enjoyed that series quite a lot and was getting quite strong. All said though, my functional strength now is probably much greater than it has ever been, because I use my muscles for what I need to do in my life now.

Once the kids get older and need less supervision I'll probably spend even more time doing woodworking, garden work, forestry work, house work, and a variety of other physical labor.

I expect to not need to go to the gym or pick up weights again unless I have a specific injury that needs rehabilitation.

For the last few months I've been getting more serious about fitness, but as I'm lifting weights that have no practical need of being lifted and riding a stationary bike that goes nowhere, I started to think "If I'm doing work, why not produce something with it?"

A search on permies turned up this thread, which has been great so far.

I really like the idea of the function-stacking aspect of all this!

Just to look at it from another angle...
Instead of doing the chore you need and taking the exercise you get (which, there will always be a place for that of course), what about choosing the chores you do based on the exercise you want to get?  Hold on, I'll explain...

From the traditional exercise standpoint, if I wanted to work on a muscle group, say, my abs, I could grab an exercise book and find a list of exercises that could target that.  Could we come up with a similar sort of list for homestead chores?

(I know there was the image earlier with the various shovels and pruners and things, but I kind of get the feeling that was more to make a point vs strength training advice.)

You know, like, "Chopping firewood targets this, this, and this"...
Or if "carrying a bucket of water targets muscles X,Y,Z", I could decide whether that's what I'm going for.  If it is, I can choose to hand-water the animals.  If not, I could turn on the hose instead and go do something else with my time that targets other muscles I am interested in.

What do you think?  Anybody want to chime in with some ideas for chores=>muscles list?

K Eilander wrote:For the last few months I've been getting more serious about fitness, but as I'm lifting weights that have no practical need of being lifted and riding a stationary bike that goes nowhere, I started to think "If I'm doing work, why not produce something with it?"

A search on permies turned up this thread, which has been great so far.

I really like the idea of the function-stacking aspect of all this!

Just to look at it from another angle...
Instead of doing the chore you need and taking the exercise you get (which, there will always be a place for that of course), what about choosing the chores you do based on the exercise you want to get?  Hold on, I'll explain...

From the traditional exercise standpoint, if I wanted to work on a muscle group, say, my abs, I could grab an exercise book and find a list of exercises that could target that.  Could we come up with a similar sort of list for homestead chores?

(I know there was the image earlier with the various shovels and pruners and things, but I kind of get the feeling that was more to make a point vs strength training advice.)

You know, like, "Chopping firewood targets this, this, and this"...
Or if "carrying a bucket of water targets muscles X,Y,Z", I could decide whether that's what I'm going for.  If it is, I can choose to hand-water the animals.  If not, I could turn on the hose instead and go do something else with my time that targets other muscles I am interested in.

What do you think?  Anybody want to chime in with some ideas for chores=>muscles list?

I think you will find that most "work" targets mostly your core.  Shoveling, chopping wood, stacking and throwing wood, raking, weeding, scything, and on and on all target the rotational muscles of your central body.  Carrying things on your shoulder or in one hand target core as well, but from different angles.  Personally, I find lifting weights pretty essential to target things that don't really get taxed sufficiently from regular yard work.  Your legs in particular need direct work as far as I am concerned, and are hardest to maintain strength in if you don't lift weights or do some form of resistance training with them.   I believe you could figure out a way to target them while working, but I believe it would be much less efficient.  Lifting weights 3 times a week for 30-40 minutes is all that is needed, and I think I would waste more time than that doing my outside work in a less efficient manner to try to figure out a way to target other muscles.  You may feel differently and I can certainly respect that too.  Just for me personally, the added quality of life from the minimal time invested in weight training pays off in a big way.

As an aside, I started getting up 45 minutes early every day so that I can start my day off walking 45 minutes in a fasted state before I go to work.  In really bad weather, I can walk on my treadmill, but in even decent weather, I prefer to walk on my trails through the woods with my dogs.

In my mind natural movement is both the goal and solution. There used to be a gym in my city called "Monkey Bars". The owner had noticed how fit children naturally are and had adults climbing and playing like kids for fitness. Myself, I chose to pursue a career working outdoors. I loved the inner peace I get participating in Creation. Not to mention feeling the health benefits. I quickly shed about 50 lbs and kept it off for the next three decades without worrying about diet. Without the extra weight my achy feet were better, making more walking a thing. I picked up a hobby foraging for mushrooms. Even more time in the sun and wind being active. As I got into my forties I was noticing aches in my joints I thought was arthritis. I have always been able to address these mainly with stretching exercises. Now at 57 my body craves that activity. However in the last year I have developed a degenerative neurological disease. I have lost considerable strength in my legs and hips, have neuropathy in my hands and legs and balance problems. But I still feel healthy without medication, I just can't do the things I love safely. I fall down a lot. I'm learning to cope. I got a cane for balance and a son does some of my work. But I insist on doing as much as I can. I slowly walk across the parking lot at the grocery store rather than use a handicap spot because I still can. This winter when I'm afraid to go outside because its icy I will be doing some exercise indoors, but the idea is to facilitate getting outdoors. Being able to step over a log again would be nice.