Are you ‘cheating’ at exercise?

[Jive Knight]

No, I don’t mean taking a shortcut to turn a half-marathon into a 1500m. There’s a very interesting piece on the BBC News site today, suggesting that people are ‘cheating’ by doing exercise that they don’t think of as exercise. Although it focuses on housework, it also links through to a site where you can look up activities to find out their Metabolic Equivalent of Task (MET).

 

This gives you a reason for doing stuff you like – it is exercise. We all know that exercise you like is something you are much more likely to take up than something you do for the sake of getting fit – i.e. joining a gym after New Year.

 

The Government says you need at least 75 minutes of vigorous exercise (MET 6+) or 150 minutes of moderate exercise (MET 3-5.99). So I though I’d work out my weekly regime to see how they match up.

 

Dancing: a 3-hour Blitz Modern Jive evening has about 75 minutes of classes (MET 5.0) and 90 minutes of freestyle – for ease of calculation I estimate that as 75 minutes of ‘general’ dancing (7.8 ) and 15 of ‘slow’ dancing to bluesy tracks (3.0). That’s my 75 minutes’ requirement for vigorous exercise already in one evening, and I frequently do two a week. And another 90 minutes of moderate exercise.

 

Medieval re-enactment: In a Knights In Battle evening (every Wednesday – come along and give it a try!) I estimate that I fight slowly (‘practice’ style, instructing novices, MET 5.3) for about 90 minutes and vigorously (MET 10.3) for another 30.

 

Walking to and from work: well, that only just scrapes into the moderate exercise category at MET 3.0, but it does take me about 70 minutes a day (on Sheffield hills!) five days a week, so that’s another 350 minutes of moderate exercise a week.

 

So what pastimes do you do that are ‘cheating at exercise’, and how much exercise are they really?

[Waldo]

I think I've just seen it on BBC2. They compared regular household activities, like vacuuming, mopping, dusting, cleaning the windows, washing your car; and quite of few of them turned out to be (only just) 'moderate activity'.

 

Great that the BBC put stuff like this on; it was also followed by another health focuses program (on at 9pm till 10pm), something about 'Trust me, I'm a doctor'. I wish they'd put more of this kind of thing on TV...

 

Salsa can be moderate exercise, I guess; though, I think I find it more mentally draining, than physically (after a few hours, I tend to lose spark and creativity; after a few more, I'm flogging a dead horse). Las night someone was playing a crazy fast track too; maybe 10,000 B.P.M. - there was just a blur where my feet were supposed to be!

 

Running, I find is pretty much the best thing I've found for getting the heart pumping and blood flowing.