Make your rest days active

Humans are meant to move. The structure of our body is built around that truth (if you haven’t already, check out Born to Run by Christopher McDougall). We’ve gotten away from that default state because of desk jobs, automated transportation, and laziness combined with society’s ever-increasing convenience. And once our default state becomes still and inactive, our cycle of endorphin addiction is broken and we forget how great moving makes us feel. This is likely because we’ve evolved to enjoy and seek out laziness and rest. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors certainly needed it after a full day of chasing buffalo and gathering tree nuts. But Joe in accounting, a desk-ridden 45-year-old on track for heart disease who takes the subway to work then the subway home to watch the Sopranos before sleeping and doing it all over again does not. 

It can be the smallest effort: getting up and walking for 5-10 minutes every hour, taking your hour lunch break to eat and walk, or combining your call meeting with a stroll (muting when a hill comes along). When a colleague asks to go for coffee, suggest a walk and talk instead. Get back into that endorphin cycle, remind your mind how much it loves and craves this vital hormone.

I’ve always been a borderline insanely active human, so I never thought much about this. But the way I was active was by purposely going to the gym to have an intense workout then stop and go to work and sit. I’m kinder to my body now. I still have those intense workouts, but they’re not the be all end all of maintaining an active lifestyle for me anymore. I have a couple of ‘rest days’ where I sprinkle movement throughout the day, long walks through the city mostly. Sometimes yoga and stretching as well. And since starting this, even on my intense gym days, I have urges throughout the day to get up and use the body perfectly designed for movement. I used to have an ever-present dull lower back pain, tight muscles, and afternoon antsiness. These have all nearly evaporated. It’s such a simple solution, move. 

I read a lot about evolution (Sapiens, On the Origin of Species, The Selfish Gene, Sex at Dawn, Idiot Brain…), and it’s amazing how many solutions come from going back to basics and looking at how our ancestors lived and behaved. It informs much of what we need in order to thrive in our own lives today. As we know, evolution is significantly slower than societal development, i.e. our modern daily lives are a bit different than our hunter-gatherers’ but our basic needs align in more ways than we know. 

Make your rest days active. Raise your default state to periodic light movement. Avoiding days of little to no movement will keep you healthily in that endorphin cycle that’s so key to human existence. Doing so will also make it easier to add on a few of those intense gym days a week. 

Dannyism #2: You don't get to pick your hills

When you’re cycling up a steep hill, a few things are happening with your body and head. Your body is strained in every way, your legs are running on autopilot because your perception of movement seems to have been replaced with a burning fire from your calves to glutes. Your core is clenched, fighting to keep you stabilized and upright. Your mind is telling you all the giving up phrases, “there’s no way I can finish this”, “this is impossible”, it’s doubting your body’s capabilities and looking for an excuse to stop. Sounds like a great situation doesn’t it!? And people do this daily through Marin county bike trails…willingly. Why? Because hills in cycling are a resource that forces a cyclist to work their ass off. With sprinting or weight lifting or HIIT training, your mind can trick you into stopping before your body has maxed out. With hill cycling, stopping could send you zig zagging down a busy road (speaking from personal experience in the lovely but intense Marin headlands), straight into another cyclist/car, or if you’re in CA, down some unfriendly rocks into the ice-cold bay. You don’t get to choose whether to keep going. You have to. It’s a useful tool for those who might find it more difficult to push to physical limits at their own doing, i.e. most of us. Put yourself in a situation where the environment has to choose when you get to stop, not your mind. 

You don’t get to choose your hills. They come around the corner and once you get going, stopping could be seriously harmful and might set you back further than when you started. Fighting to the top brings you to that beautiful view and a minute to rest. Yay, another life metaphor! Challenges come out of no where, shying away or backing out too early will never move you forward. You’ll stay stagnant at the bottom, no scenic view for you. If you tried to pick your hills, you’d seek out a bunch of baby hills leading to somewhere less fulfilling. When that next big one comes around the corner, be grateful for the opportunity and take it on full force. You’ll be glad you did.