 Hey everybody, I'm Lance Coyke and today I want to talk about a question that I got from a client today There's this there's this idea that you know we work at computers a lot and people sit down a lot in this day and age and We don't get a whole lot of activity So the question that I got today was does my walking to the train station count as exercise? Like should I should I be counting them and I guess the short answer is no, I'm sorry There are different types of movement that we talk about so when we classify somebody's activity level We say that you might be sedentary Meaning you're sitting down most of the day. You're not very active most of the day If you are a personal trainer, you're probably Kind of active where you're you know, you're walking around you're loading plates, but you're not doing manual labor You know that much unless you're working out with all of your clients and then You know, if you're a day laborer you work in the sun you build houses or something you take shingles up on the roof Those types of activities are very active. Those days are very active. So That would be the comparison between a sedentary job an active job and a very active job now Those things are just describing your day to day. It's not describing your activity level your Your exercise, right? So we make distinctions between sorry I really messed up when I said activity level we make distinctions between your activity and your exercise Activity is generally I'm moving around but I could kind of keep doing this pretty much indefinitely Whereas exercise is something that if I kept going eventually I would have to stop and so you think like jogging Even for somebody who can do a marathon if they kept jogging eventually they'd break down and they'd stop right even if they were eating But if you you know, you can kind of take a pick a wheelbarrow up move some mulch over Dump it and then wheel it back over and that is that is something that you know, if your body's not prepared for it It's very challenging. Don't get me wrong, but if you do it day to day For a living you're probably pretty well trained for it and it's not too strenuous for you So back to the question is walking exercise. So walking we would consider an activity of daily living an ADL That is just it's extra credit, right? It's not that we don't want to count it. It's not that it doesn't mean something. It's not that It's not effective for keeping you healthy every day But it's not quite exercise so How am I category? Categorizing exercise so if an activity makes you sweat a lot in a way that you're kind of like weird about being around people and Makes you breathe really hard in a way that you can you know It's kind of impacting the way that you talk then I would consider that exercise So walking on the treadmill at two and a half miles an hour with like a 2% incline. I Mean depending on your your physical condition It's probably not that strenuous For somebody who hasn't been very active It can be very strenuous and so you can kind of use this talk test we call it as a way to Tell yourself, you know as a way to measure your intensity level So if you can't talk while you're doing something It's a pretty good indication that you're not going to be able to do it for terribly long You want to kind of like be on the barrier if you're doing some sort of cardio workout You want to be able to talk but kind of like Taking weird breaks where it's like if you weren't exercising it would sound really weird, right? Whereas if I am just walking to the train station Generally, I could talk on the phone while I do that and it wouldn't really impact my conversation I would be comfortable having a business conversation while doing that sort of walking as long as you know The microphone is working and things aren't too loud in the the neighborhood So that's that's kind of the answer Walking know doesn't really count as your exercise, but it does help you get your steps in Keep you a mobile person an active person and it helps combat a lot of other good stuff like you know I didn't even go into that but It helps just keep your joints moving when you walk your your pelvic bones have these these tiny little short little movements and Though they are tiny they are very important because they get amplified throughout the rest of the body, right? So if my shoulder blade just moves a little bit My arm can move a whole lot differently and that's kind of the principle behind walking in general keeping me loose You know movement is medicine to an extent right you can you can do too much and you can hurt yourself but In general you want to try to move as much as you can you want to try to shoot for at least 10,000 steps per day, so you know go for a walk after lunch maybe go for a walk when you get home Make it longer if you don't walk at all during the day and that will keep you an active person But make sure you're still throwing on exercise in addition to that