Foundational Fitness For Office Workers
Dear Office Worker,
When life occasionally demands that you be physically strenuous (moving house, pruning your garden, man-handling a toddler), can you comfortably handle it?
Or do you become excessively weary, sore or even injured?
If you can’t absorb those irregular events – which are part of life for most people – you may lack foundational fitness.
Foundational fitness is the physical capacity and the mental wherewithal to do the physically demanding things in life, and to get them done comfortably. Not easily, but comfortably.
It is also having the skills, strength and stamina to maintain or develop a baseline level of exertion that is needed for your well-being.
If you have foundational fitness, you can walk for an hour three times a week and enjoy it. Or you can swim 20 laps of the pool with your friend before work once a week. At the very least, you know how you could get back to that point.
For the modern office worker, which includes yours truly, the conditions of our social and economic life are not-so-great for obtaining or preserving foundational fitness.
It seems that the default setting for our work, transport, and home life is: “as little movement as possible”. Long hours at a computer, car travel, online grocery shopping, Netflix, Uber Eats, screens to placate the kids instead of rough-housing.
The good news is that you can reclaim your foundational fitness, or you can maintain it pretty easily.
Here’s how:
Lay a foundation of strength
Get more movement into your day
Do some huffing and puffing – preferably in the great outdoors
Indulge me in some straight talking: There is a basic level of fitness that everyone should have, or aspire to.
Every person who is not constrained by unusual limitations should possess, or go after, the skill, strength and stamina to undertake some physically demanding pursuits and participate in some form of regular movement that is enjoyable and uplifting.
What would this look like? It would look different for different people. Young bodies are different from older bodies. Some people are kitted out for pure power; others are kitted out for staying power.
What would this look like for a garden variety office worker in a modern city?
This person has some unique opportunities and unique challenges. They have the opportunity to use movement and exercise to pursue pleasurable interests – social, competitive, or recreational. They face challenges, too – like the physical and emotional consequences of a highly sedentary occupation.
Allow me to flesh out what it would look like to possess foundational fitness as a city-dwelling, modern office worker:
1. You would have enough physical capacity to do the occasional hard physical work that life throws at you. Like standing for an hour and not getting a sore back, or having the strength and skill needed to move house without using removalists and without injuring yourself.
2. You would be able to comfortably cope with the physically demanding aspects of one of our modern luxuries: travel. You could lift luggage, stand in queues, and spend a day on your feet walking around a new place. If you have relinquished the ability to be mostly on your feet for a day, you will most likely find travelling to new places pretty tiresome. It’s worth re-claiming that lost ground to be ready to soak up the great outdoors and the sort of cultural experiences that may require you to be a little bit vigorous. Those things come across the path of many people – be ready.
3. You would invest a little bit of time each week in gaining or maintaining your fitness foundation. Three thirty minute walks once per week and some basic bodyweight strength training once a week might be all you need to get (or keep) you there.
Stay tuned for my thoughts on how to get there.