We have become very black & white when it comes to movement.
It seems that most people are either ALL IN or ALL THE WAY OUT.
What does ALL IN look like?
It is the ‘athlete’ trying to eke out every bit of potential they can with regard to their sport, the ‘gym junkie’ trying to perfect the ideal aesthetic, the ‘enthusiast’ chasing the next trend, or the time poor parent taking on every experts advice trying to maintain / regain their ideal weight.
On the other end of the scale is ALL THE WAY OUT which looks like this:
It must be said that ALL IN is a great way to be & ALL THE WAY OUT, in the right dosage, is certainly ok as well.
But if you zoom out from a case-by-case basis and look at society as a whole the issues begin to arise, and the following trends develop:
- It is assumed that being ALL IN some of the time means you can be ALL THE WAY OUT the rest of the time. NOTE: Meeting the Physical Activity guidelines becomes less beneficial when you also don’t meet the Sedentary Behavior guidelines.
- We shift from one extreme to the other far too quickly / frequently. NOTE: This puts you at an increased risk of injury.
- And we have too many people who don’t want to be ALL IN (which is fine), so they assume ALL THE WAY OUT is the only other option. NOTE: ALL THE WAY OUT leads to increased risk of a variety of co morbidities.
Why these trends occur, in my opinion, is because we have neglected the different types of movement we have at our disposal.
We are saturated with structured forms of movement, more sporting competitions, gyms, training protocols, that we assume if we want to implement an intervention on our physical wellbeing that they are the only way to go.
When in fact we have made a massive oversight by looking past the void between the one extreme of ALL THE WAY OUT & the other of ALL IN.
The below table is what we have skipped over in the void:
| Recreational Sport: Done for leisure | Positions & Movements: Day to day habits | Incidental Physical Activity: Active transport or active profession / work |
| Play / Recreation: Unstructured. Purpose is enjoyment. Very much a reflection of lifestyle | ||
- Play / Recreation may be exploring different movements at the park.
- Incidental Physical Activity could be riding your bike to work.
- Positions & Movements is standing instead of sitting, or half kneeling instead of lying down.
- Recreational Sport might be a kick of the footy with a friend.
If there was another layer at the top of this table, that would include the ALL-IN categories. E.g., Competitive Sport, Exercise & structured forms of Training.
Notice where I said it would be, at the top.
Anytime we build something the foundation and integrity of it is usually at the bottom, so the same applies here.
Absolutely, you should do those ALL IN activities, but don’t do them at the expense of the foundations of not just movement, but Physical Wellbeing.
Adopting the activities featured in the void of movement will help your Physical Wellbeing look a little more like this:
And a little less like this:
Whilst the extremes of the second image may seem attractive, the roller coaster in between is usually unsustainable, as the invincibility of the highs is usually contrasted with the vulnerability of the low’s.
What really lasts is a steadiness and consistency over time. Which is much easier to sustain when you live in the void and inhabit all the building blocks of movement, as opposed to skipping straight to the extreme of ALL IN.
