For the last month I haven’t been riding my bike much on the weekends. Instead, Sarah, Jeff, and I have been getting the house ready to sell. That’s related to my new big job. And we’ve all been helping Jeff get his boat ready to be put away for the season. It’s all been pretty tiring work though and as usual, it’s got me wondering about exercise and what counts.
It reminds me too of growing up with parents who worked jobs that were at times pretty physically demanding. There is no need for end of day exercise when you’re on your feet baking all the day.
Two places prompted me to wonder about the status of physical work as exercise. Place one was personal training. I showed up and told Paul I was tired because I was up at seven that morning to pick up cement stones and bags of stone dust to go under the stones.
Who knew Home Depot was open at 7 am? (Contractors know.)
And then I told him I had to go back after we were done personal training to get more. I explained that the bags of stone dust weighed 50 lbs and the patio stones weighed 65 lbs. It wasn’t just lifting them once, of course. It was getting them from the shelf into the cart and then into the car and then out of the car onto the front lawn. He said he knew. He worked on his own house. He also joked that I didn’t need personal training.
The other place that prompted me to wonder what counts is the Facebook group 217 in 2017 where we pledge to exercise 217 times in 2017. I included the patio stones but I didn’t include boat washing. Hull scrubbing didn’t feel like exercise. I’m not sure why. And pressure washing definitely wasn’t a work out.
Do you have a physically demanding job? Does it count as exercise? Do you do things on the weekend like paint your house, install new patio stones? How go you think about it? I’m curious.
I think hull scrubbing didn’t seem like exercise ’cause you were watching me do it. 😉 Definitely a core/back workout!
True! I just did little patches. You did most of it