WHEN IT COMES to fitness and healthy living, many people operate under false assumptions.
There is a wealth of information and advice readily available but not all of it is accurate and separating fitness fact from fiction can often be a challenge in itself.
The natural inkling is to follow the herd and then hope adopting an universal formula will pay instant dividends. But as is the case with most aspects of life, simply following a rigid method is unlikely to work.
Finding the necessary time, and indeed motivation, to incorporate a brisk morning walk or a workout into a day without enough hours is a nuisance – many use it as an excuse.
But perhaps our mindset towards exercise needs to change. What if we looked at everyday tasks in a different light? If we saw the journey to work as an opportunity to stretch the legs or the couple of minutes we spend brushing our teeth as a chance to work core muscles.
When we’re after instant gratification, it’s all too easy to turn to fad diets and a short-term solution. But exercise needs to be integrated into a lifestyle and embraced rather than being shoehorned in and done apathetically.
It’s a marathon – a way of life – rather than a sprint and that’s exactly the message conveyed in a new book, Everyday Exercise, by Rory O’Keeffe.
It’s aimed at all shapes and sizes, all aerobic fitness levels and all the advice can be tailored and adapted to suit any lifestyle.
“It’s all common sense,” O’Keeffe tells The42. “But we miss these opportunities in everyday life. If we go to the supermarket, we park close to the door. If we can take a lift, we take it.
“When people embark on an exercise regime they go at it hell for leather and ultimately run out of motivation quickly after. If it doesn’t become a habit, it won’t stick so the point of everyday exercise is to seamlessly integrate exercise into things we already do.”
In the space of ten days – and several long nights – O’Keeffe produced his first fitness book which he hopes will inspire people to get moving by making better use of, what he refers to as, dead time.
If you think of your daily routine, there will invariably be moments when you could utilise the time to stretch and get the main muscles moving. On the face of it, it sounds absurd to be rolling your ankles while you wait for the bus or standing instead of sitting at your desk but the benefits are unquestionable.
With the focus now firmly on healthy living, there has been unprecedented growth and development in the modern fitness industry and that’s reflected in the demand for products like O’Keeffe’s book.
“The idea came from my own experience,” he explains. “I’ve always had ankle problems and when I’m brushing my teeth, I roll them to improve my hip strength and I realised this kind of thing could really benefit other people.
“It’s hard to get people to go to the gym for a few hours a day. It’s much easier to start doing simple, yet effective, movements and exercises that slot seamlessly into a daily routine.”
O’Keeffe breaks the book into chapters to represent the different stages of the day and presents the information in a simple, concise manner.
By his own admission, he is not an industry expert but he has first-hand experience of the traps we can fall into – the attraction of the lift instead of the stairs, the convenience of taking the car to work and the inclination to slump at the desk.
With the assistance of a personal trainer, he compiled a list of the ways we can incorporate exercise and activity into the most routine chores – he even refers to Mary Poppins as the original personal trainer for adding energy to housework.
“Three or four hours a week simply isn’t enough to negate the damage modern life is doing to our bodies. We spend hours on end stationary at our desk or immobile on the couch and we need to look at the world and our bodies differently.
“Starting from the moment the alarm goes off in he morning, we should be thinking about ways to get our body moving.
“Things like squatting after you go to the toilet to rolling your ankles when you brush your teeth – my aim is to get people seeing an opportunity to stretch your muscles in everything we do.”
There are many chapters that catch the eye but none more so than the section titled ‘Pee, Squat and Drink’. To be frank, it sounds like some sort of drinking game but in fact it’s a novel way of increasing your physical exertion.
The idea is to perform 5-10 overhead squats in the cubicle until the toilet finishes refilling with water. Research shows the average person pays a visit to the loo five or six times a day so it doesn’t take an expert to appreciate the benefit it would have.
O’Keeffe has already had friends sending pictures of themselves squatting in the toilet and overall the reaction to the book has been hugely positive.
“If I’m being honest, I was nervous doing it,” he says. “I didn’t promote it at all on Facebook at first because I didn’t want some of my friends to see the stuff I was doing.
“Now I don’t think there is that element of madness to it anymore. If a person in the next cubicle is listening to you squatting, they’re the one who has the issue,” O’Keeffe jokes.
The ideas seem remarkably simple – obvious even - but the intention is to make exercise as straightforward as possible while also breaking it all down for the uninitiated.
Yet there are so many similar books, articles and advice columns on the same topic so entering an already flooded market was something O’Keeffe was wary of.
“Before deciding to publish, I brought it to a couple of people who have done all this before. If they told me it was crap then fair enough but it was worth a shot.
“The hope is to help other people by dispensing some of the knowledge I’ve built up.”
From start to finish, the book is brimming with information and advice but O’Keeffe admits you should ideally pick-out the aspects of it that suit your lifestyle and routine.
After all, like any exercise you do, it is all about adapting to your needs and not sticking to an universal plan.
Such is O’Keeffe’s passion for healthy living and enthusiasm to enlighten others, we could read Everyday Exercise for hours but we’ve another session of ‘deskercise’ and toilet squats to complete first.
You can find more information on roryokeeffe.com and The42 readers can buy Everyday Exercise for a discounted price by following this link.
