The other day my nine-year-old patient Keira asked, “Why does it say Keep Moving on your wall?” I commented to her mom that our tag line written on our lobby wall is a little confusing as some patients think that it is an order to walk down the end of our hallway. For this reason, we have considered moving and/or changing it.
It made me think; of course children don’t have a problem with being reminded to move. Then that evening I happened to watch a TED Talk on the “best kindergarten you’ve ever seen”, where Japanese children were in an environment with the ability to move about indoors and outdoors while they learned. The five year olds were tracked to be moving on average 4000m in a morning and have the highest athletic abilities amongst their peers. Now how many adults can say they do that? I thought about it again as I was encouraging yet another patient to attempt to change positions every 30 minutes and to try to walk just 10 to 15 minutes a day. Unfortunately, today we sit at a computer/laptop/tablet no matter what industry we are in and on top of that we use those same devices for leisure activity. Take a look at my former blog on posture, Stand Tall and Keep Moving for more on that. During our weekly Empower Running Club runs, one of the teachers was talking about the difficulty of a child that couldn’t sit still in class. It’s ironic how we expend so much energy teaching kids to sit still and then as adults we turn around and have to teach them how to move again. Do we as a society put too much emphasis on teaching children to sit still??? On the flip side though, there are many gadgets and apps that can be used for encouraging and monitoring activity such as Fitbits or The 25 Best Fitness Apps for 2016. Try to walk 10,000 steps, give yourself a personal goal, or set competitions within your workplace on who covers the most mileage in a week. If it gets you motivated and moving, then it’s a great tool for you. I have to be honest and say I’ve never personally used any of the above as I’m definitely not a techie. I generally judge my exercise output by how much I sweat and how good I feel. But for those of you who enjoy your electronics, why not use it for some good and try an exercise app to see how you are doing compared to the average five year old. We’re keeping our original tag line and encourage you to Keep Moving (with or without a gadget).