john m flores 

I found her last point - daily physical inactivity (i.e., desk job, car-centric life) plus exercise is not healthy - most interesting.

TakingMyTime

Sorry, this lady is way overthinking this.

Lucillle

It is an interesting claim. But she never defines what she means by healthy and unhealthy, and never introduces objective research results to back up her claims. Are people with inactive lives but who exercise (how much exercise?) having more heart attacks? Dying earlier? What is the comparison group? How much daily activity is the dividing line between active and inactive? Finally, what is her incentive for making this claim?

john m flores 

Good question. I've been meaning to ask her, but I did a little Googling and found this from an interview with a Johns Hopkins cardiologist:

"Q: Even fitness buffs can be sedentary, as you recently discovered?
Michos: I consider myself physically active. I run every morning for four or five miles, and I’d pat myself on the back for that. But then I got a step-tracking device and realized I wasn’t moving much the rest of the day.

I have a long commute, so I was spending two hours in my car. On days I’m not doing rounds, I’m doing research or teaching, so I might be sitting at my computer for eight hours. I was easily sitting more than 10 hours a day. Outside of my run, I was getting very few steps the rest of the day.

Q: Does all that sitting cancel out the benefits of your daily running?

Michos: Not entirely. More recent research shows that high levels of exercise can lessen some of the risk. Yet even for people with high levels of activity, there seems to be a threshold around 10 hours of sitting. Research shows that if you hit more than 10 hours, your cardiovascular risk really goes up."

Source: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/heal...s-heart-health

My friend worked at J&J and the thing that they said there is that sitting is the new smoking.

slow rollin

Curse of the spinny chair job. Less physical activity. On the flip side it isn't always viable to do physical activity all the time, nor is that the best if you go too far. Everything has a balance point and our goal should be to maximize what we can feasibly do to reach our goals. Like exercising further/faster or being more physically active doing projects.
Just do what you can.
To me this was an obvious thing.

Carbonfiberboy 

Yeah, I can. The difference is that "physical activity" can mean anything, just walking around the job shop would do. Exercise, if done in sufficient quantity, hurts or exhausts. When you can't do it anymore, you've had "exercise" and enough of it. I obviously didn't watch the video. "Physical activity" will seem like enough for a while, as your fitness gradually decreases, but then all of a sudden you just can't run 2 miles anymore. Then you're screwed, got to build back all that fitness which is not nearly as much fun as staying fit.

RH Clark

I agree on your point of physical activity meaning anything. The issue I often see is that someone thinks they are getting proper exercise just because they are active. I've met many that feel this way just because their job requires specific physical effort. Granted any activity is better than none, but a good exercise routine will include strength training, cardio, flexibility, nutrition, and recovery. There's probably some I didn't mention but you get the point.

TMonk

I haven't watched the video but find the premise interesting and sort of agree. Perhaps physical activity can be defined as anything that is not sedentary - which is certainly bad for you. I have elite level fitness (for an amature baby master's racer), however am mostly sedentary during the day. I am a scientist, but mostly deskbound. Perhaps this is all la consequence of technology - I can message my staff to get updates instead of going to talk to them in person. At least my apple watch tells me to stand up every hour or two, that's a good excuse to get off my butt and check on things in the lab.

I had a bilateral inguinal hernia repair in January, which left me unable to cycle for a couple weeks (or more). I am fortune enough to live about 1 mile from my worksite, so I began walking to work. I have continued that and I must say, the physical and mental health benefits of two daily 20 minute walks cannot be understated. In the long run - I wonder if that is better for me than my next VO2 max workout in the garage.

Pardon the typos, I am finishing an easy hour on the trainer as I type this. I will be walking to work in about 45 minutes

RH Clark

I've been thinking about the question. My conclusion is that exercise-training is a movement to force an adaptation. Any new physical activity will initially force an adaptation, but then the body adapts to be as efficient doing that as possible. Proper exercise would be movement engineered for specifically targeted adaptation. Exercise should be flexible enough to continue forced adaptation until a specific goal is met and then consistent enough to maintain it or progress.

work4bike

I think too many people, especially us aging folks, put too much emphasis on cardio health and not enough on a healthy musculoskeletal system. I've seen far too many older cycling/hiking buddies with an outstanding cardio system, but a failing body that ends up sideling them.

And I do agree with the video in general, I also have many gardening buddies that think gardening is the only activity needed for a healthy body -- I've tried to show them the light, but they ain't havin' it.




.

pdlamb

Seems to me the line between "physical activity" and "exercise" is arbitrary, and I'm not at all sure it's important. Where does daily activity become exercise?

Consider a couple of examples. There was a study in the early 1950s, IIRC, of London's bus drivers and conductors. The conductors didn't "exercise," they just went about their jobs clambering all over their buses, and they had markedly lower heart disease. And a sort-of-famous amateur profiled in Runner's World in the 1970s was a working longshoreman in the San Francisco Bay area, back before the days of containers and cranes moving the freight, yet he ran more than 25 Boston Marathons.

So digging up a garden, bending and reaching while carrying loads, isn't exercise? Or building a house, bending, reaching, carrying, climbing, and hammering -- that's not exercise, because the mason or carpenter isn't doing it to raise their heart rate? Go try it for a day, then come back and tell me about it. Oh, and plan to take a day or two off your exercise to recover, if you've not been doing it for years.

RH Clark

Activity is all well and good to a certain point. Sitting may be the worst activity possible. No one is arguing staying active isn't good. Some of that physical activity - work however if not compensated for can actually do more harm than good. Think repetitive stress syndrome. What if your work only required you to work one arm and one leg? You would quickly become stronger in one area to the detriment of the other, even to crippling extent. Think in terms of adaption.

Now make exercise a way to achieve specific adaptation. You can exercise your way back into strength balance or whatever specific adaption you are training for. In this way we can think of exercise as the work of specific adaptation and training as the specific application and direction of that work.

john m flores 

I've sat on large inflatable exercise balls and balance chairs to try to counteract sitting for hours a day. My girlfriend has a standing desk. I may get one too. We both walk a lot, which I think helps us too

I started doing short, 30-second planks while making coffee and strengthening my core just a little bit is helping my cycling a bunch - I'm engaging my hamstrings and glutes a lot more.

work4bike

I really like Kneesovertoesguy's YT channel. It's not an "exercise" channel, rather it's focused more on strengthening the knees (and other problem areas). This guy (Ben Patrick) wanted to become a basket ball player, but was plagued with knee pains that prevented him from jumping. Since knee problems are a major area of the body many people suffer from, these exercises are perfect for anyone with knee pains, regardless how severe. His mother has rehabilitated her issues, see video below.

And he, along with others have included other problem areas of the body, which can be seen on his YT channel. https://www.youtube.com/@TheKneesovertoesguy

ScottCommutes

An interesting premise, for sure. My take is that it is more or less bunk. It comes across like a doctor's lecture to less active patients to exercise more.

Some people's lifestyles (the bricklayer, etc.) are so demanding that I hardly see a need for them to exercise more. I personally don't exercise, but I bike commute a lot of miles every day. That's not exercise by her standards.

TMonk

Some amount of strength work and/or walking (or jogging or running) I think is really great from an overall human health perspective. These movements and activities are beneficial towards a wide range of human physical activity. Also good for bone density, which cycling does not support.

I jog once weekly (usually just 15-20 minutes) and have two weekly strength routines that keep me overall healthy on and off the bike. I keep the upper body stuff to a minimum since I race at a high level and don't want to bulk up. The leg work (glute specifically) keeps my overuse injuries at bay (knee problems, back problems).

RH Clark

Those people you mention (the brick layer, etc.) may get a lot of physical activity, but they may need exercise "targeted adaptation" just to help balance strength and flexibility. Some of the hardest working people I know often become some of the most crippled to any movement other than what their work entails. That's because the body adapted to be most efficient at their particular work. I personally have spent years correcting an issue that evolved from work which required mostly one leg forwards movement.

Iride01 

Simply riding your bike isn't a complete or thorough exercise. It only works your heart muscle. And it's wonderful for that. A limited amount of leg muscles are involved too. But they don't get worked throughout their range.

I'm finding out very fast since retiring that just riding a bike does nothing to help me keep my muscle mass. And as I lose muscle mass and tone in the other parts of my body, I've had more complaints about how I fit on the same bike I fit very comfortably when my work and other activity came to a halt. Though they have been minor complaints at the moment.

As I've started doing more resistance exercise to try and address the muscle groups that affect me while on the bike, I've noticed that my aches and pains on the bike are going away.

Jaywalk3r

I think Apple use a more straightforward distinction between physical activity and exercise with their Watch: Physical activity that increases your heart rate above some threshold calculated (by the Watch/iPhone) from your age, weight, and other data is considered exercise. That's a more reasonable approach than basing the distinction on intent. One can get a lot of exercise doing yard work or house work, but that doesn't mean they were doing the work for the exercise.

Users can also force the Apple Watch to consider their physical activity as exercise by explicitly starting a Workout (the calorie burn rate remains unchanged), so they count intentional activity as exercise, but they also use the more objective standard based on pulse rate. In other words, Apple considers intent to be sufficient, but not necessary, for physical activity to be considered exercise.

Do you know what the line between science and pseudoscience is called? Medicine.

terrymorse 

Harsh.