Aren’t Movement and Exercise the Same Thing?
We all understand the concept and importance of exercise. But what about movement? Aren’t movement and exercise the same thing? Well, no, not exactly. Let’s have a look at movement vs exercise.
What is Exercise?
Exercise is an activity that raises your heart rate and improves aerobic or anaerobic fitness. Typical examples would be a brisk walk, running, playing a sport, dancing or swimming. Exercise can also include weight training and other activities that work on improving muscle strength. The NHS recommends that adults do strength training twice a week and aerobic type of activity for 2 ½ hours per week spread out over the course of the week. People might aim for 30 minutes per day over 5 days.
What is Movement?
Movement is about the variety of ways we are changing our body’s shape throughout the day, as well as the different pressures and loads we are encountering. Exercise certainly moves our bodies, but we need a lot more movement than 30 minutes per day to stay healthy.
Walking, jumping, squatting, crawling, hanging, balancing, lifting and carrying are important natural movements that we should be doing everyday. These movements can certainly become exercise, but exercise and movement are not the same thing.
Why Our Bodies Need Movement vs Exercise
Moving affects our bodies right down to the cellular level. Moving helps blood flow which increases the oxygen supply to an area. This promotes healing and regeneration. Our DNA is also affected by movement and a study shows that moving can change the DNA expression in a way that promotes reduced inflammation and increased blood vessel growth.
If we underuse an area of our bodies through lack of movement, we can experience inflammation and disease, as well as muscle atrophy.
Movement can benefit us in so many ways. Balance training can lower our risk of falls. Walking can lower our risk of heart disease and cancer as well boosting the immune system and reduce stress. Squatting can strengthen the pelvic floor. Crawling can strengthen our core and improve co-ordination.
We Can Move When We Are Resting
We can move our bodies without actually moving. The positions our bodies are in at rest count as movement too. However, all too often, we are sat in a chair or lying in bed when we are resting and therefore we are overusing certain muscles and underusing others and this leads to pain and disease. Sitting is not bad, it is the amount of sitting we do in one fixed position. There are many other ways to rest. We could sit crossed legged, kneel, sit with our legs out in straddle, squat, lie on our fronts, lie on the floor. All of these move us in a wide variety of ways without exercising at all. It doesn’t take much to add more movement into our day. It is about changing our habits and this is much easier to do when we realise how important moving is.
My Recommended Activity Level
While the NHS recommends we move for at least 30 minutes each day. I recommend that we don’t stay in any one position for more that 30 minutes at a time. We should think about all the different ways our bodies can move and work out how we can fit some of the more unusual movements into our day. Some movements such as squatting, hanging and crawling are becoming rare in our society. Even simple moves like reaching our arms into the air are not something we do often.
Getting Started With Moving More
In an ideal world, our lifestyle can provide us with all the healthy movements that our bodies require, but in reality, we often need to start with movement classes and workouts. If we have been under-moved for many years, some of the larger natural movements might be too difficult. By starting with smaller moves, we can improve our alignment and rebalance our muscles. Then we can slowly build up to being able to do the larger moves. For example, we might need to work on shoulder mobility before we can hang from a tree branch. It is important to start with what our bodies can do and build up from there. Everyone can start where they are at.
If you would like some help to get moving, check out our movement classes.