Will You Walk My Dog?

Will You Walk My Dog?

By: Josh Proch, CSCS

Did you know that the average American spends 13 hours sitting and 8 hours sleeping each day. That is a total of 21 hours spent being in active. The other three? Well, let’s just say they aren’t being spent on regular vigorous activity.

More alarming is that while most all Americans know the benefits of being active, 56% devote less than $10 per month to regular activity. This isn’t just devoted to gym memberships, this is golfing, hiking, a rec league, and any active hobby or equipment needed to be active.

In short, we are a very lazy population. We vehemently defend that we just don’t have time for exercise, but yet we spend hours scrolling social media and Netflix each week. Or, we say we don’t have the money for the gym or to hire a coach to help us. But, yet we spend hundreds each month to make ourselves unhealthy on things like alcohol, processed foods, streaming services, lawn services, and many other services so that we don’t have to be bothered.

In some parts of the country we are now too lazy to walk our own dogs, even when we have the time to do so, and pick up their poop in our yards. So we hire professional dog walkers and pooper scoopers to come to our houses when we could be doing both of these.

However, the body was made to thrive on movement, but yet we look for more and more reasons to not be active and it’s affecting our health.

Daily movement is essential for life, yet the modern lifestyle promotes being sedentary. A typical day results in an hour commute to work, eight to ten hours at a desk in front of a computer, an evening filled with running kids to activities, and then crashing down on the couch or in bed at ten in the evening to unwind in front of a screen before going to bed.

It is this lack of movement that causes aches and pains, poor posture, and a host of health issues. It’s also why weekend warriors get hurt skiing, playing pick up basketball, or doing yard work. The body has been sedentary all week and then it’s pushed to be physical, but isn’t prepared to handle the physicality of those activities, so it gets injured.

Finding ways to move more each day can prevent this. Go to the gym two or three days a week and do some strength training, get up from the desk every hour and do a short two minute body-weight routine, take a ten minute walk a few times through out the day, join a gym that is near the kids places of activity and go there in evening rather than sitting in the car or watching them practice, take a walk with the other parents, and start finding as many ways as possible to be more active.

Movement is life and to live the best life you need to move every day.

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