courtesy of djaquay

I have written quite a lot here about fixing your work out into your day, and making it happen even if you are extremely busy or have kids, even if that means multi tasking it into your day.

As they say, A little is better than nothing, or if you can’t beat them join them and a multitude of other little sayings.

Kelly from Fitness Fixation has a different view on this issue.

In her post Exercise While You Blah-di-blah she speaks about giving exercising the respect it deserves and making time to do that and only that. I hadn’t thought about it in that way before, even though A do work out a lot and enjoy it, when it comes to cardio that is walking or running (mostly walking lately) if I don’t have music, or book on tape or treadmill-with-TV, then the chances I am going to maximise my workout lessen.

when it comes to Weights or strength excises, I do like to make time for that if I can. No books or TV or any other distraction. Just me .

I have been feeling really bad about not liking to run. I don’t like to run. Never have.

But there is something so romantic about thinking about running, and I like to imagine myself running, and when it doesn’t translate into action, or every time I try to go out for a run with my hair flowing behind me and my feet moving fast and gracefully over the road, pushing it back and myself forward as I progress - it never quite works out that way. I feel self conscious, feel the road ramming up it my feet, and instead of my feet pushing it back and me forward, it ends up kind of putting up and invisible wall in front of me and sucking all the oxygen out of my body.

You might want to know what brought on the thought of mine about running all of a sudden, Well, I was reading Fit Bottomed Girls again, and Jenn was going on about she is not much of a walking girl. she would rather run. Not only that - she put up a poll, to find out if she is alone or if others think like her, and it turns out that most people view walking only as a means to get from point A to point B.

Anyway, walking has a really bad reputation, I think, and you can get a great workout walking. I was going to demonstrate this on this post with a video, and a funny thing happened. I had a hard time finding a video about walking that didn’t have me on the floor laughing my head of…

For example

Anyway, I don’t race walk (although its quite cool once you get over the funny) but I do like to walk. Just get out, and start walking. I can get my pulse up pretty quickly and can keep it up for longer than I can when I run, so if you ask me if I would rather run or walk, for me its walking everyday.

As apposed to the previous post I wrote about working fitness into your every day activities, this video is completely different. I like the parallels between the tool world, which I love, and the fitness world, which I love as well.

Via A Morning Cup Of Joe

courtesy of Joaaso

A Little while ago I wrote a post called Mama and Baby exercise about how you can exercise while you baby is in a carrier, which is pretty much the way I spent the first months with my babies…The gist of this thinking is that if you don’t have the possibility to take time to exercise - then work some into you everyday chores and tasks. (like taking the stairs instead of the elevator, and cleaning the paw prints of the kitchen cupboards while squatting and  so on.

I never really gave it much thought, and it has become part of my way of doing things. Mama Sweat, who recently had a baby, and is rediscovering life with less control, and less free time, wrote a really great post about this, and to give it more justification she found that this kind of activity actually has a scientific name

taking the stairs and walking a little farther than you need to have a real name and a real acronym: Non Exercise Physical Activity or NEPA (but if you Google it the first thing that comes up is “National Environmental Protection Agency” so scroll down before you give up).

While you can’t use NEPA as an excuse not to work out, You can at least try and fit in some NEPA when working out is not an option for various reasons. I try walk to the day car to pick my kids up, and the 10 minutes it takes me to get home pushing a pram with a 2 year old and a four year old on it at a brisk pass, does constitute as some form of physical activity.

Also, one of the benefits of being forgetful, is that I have to run up and down the stairs about 10 times for every little thing, because I keep forgetting things downstairs, when my office is upstairs, and vice verse…

So, Even if I don’t get to workout everyday, I certainly do NEPA!

creative commons license pescatello

How particular are you about what you were for working out? I am not very particular at all. A lot of my workouts I do at home, so it certainly not about looking good, its a lot more about being comfortable and not having my clothes hinder me.

I don’t like anything to tight, but on the other hand to big and loose is annoying in its own way. A good bra is a must, and appropriate shoes for whatever it is that I am doing - since I don’t run much, I just use walking shoes which are OK for jumping around in as well, or don’t bother with shoes and go bare foot (of course this really depends on what I am doing)

Other people I know have their biking attire, jogging attire, gym attire, yoga attire…..and so on.

Each to his own.

I guess you are wondering about the choice of image - well, there were several reasons I posted this.

1. I have been waiting on the right time to use it.
2. The difference in clothing is so extreme, its funny. You would think that he would be wearing shorts, if it was that hot
3. I was just reading a post on Fit Bottomed Girls, about choosing attire for different activities, and its seemed to me that this photo went really well with that post….