Daily life
A short walk, most days
Let me get the word out of the way first. Exercise. It arrives with an industry attached — the membership, the mat, the special clothes, the cheerful man on television counting at you — and for a great many people that apparatus works mainly as a reason never to begin.
This piece is about walking about a little. Ordinary movement, of the kind nobody thinks of as movement at all — the business of getting from the car to the store, and up to the spare room for the good scissors. Nothing here has a name, a schedule, or anything to buy.
What is actually worth interrupting
Sitting is not a vice. Everyone sits. What is worth attending to is the long uninterrupted stretch of it — the three hours in the same chair that go by unnoticed, which is what a good afternoon of television actually is.
The mechanics are plain. The large muscles of your legs are a sort of pump. Blood gets down to your feet easily, traveling the way gravity is already going; bringing it back up is the harder half of the journey, and the squeeze of those muscles as you move does much of that work. Sit perfectly still and the squeezing stops, which is why ankles swell on a long flight and settle again after a walk around the terminal. Joints are similar: a knee held in one position for hours settles into it, and the first steps afterward are stiff and complaining.
So the interruption is the point. Standing up to put the kettle on. Walking to the far end of the house for something you would have collected later anyway. Getting up during the commercials rather than after the program. None of that is exertion; it is only not being in the chair.
Beginning again after a long spell of very little
If it has been months, or longer, the mistake nearly everyone makes is starting at the level they remember rather than the level they have. Begin instead at a size that feels faintly ridiculous.
To the end of the driveway and back. That is a respectable first day, and if it is all you do, a respectable second one. One unhurried lap of the supermarket, pushing the empty cart, before you start shopping. Once to the mailbox, then twice, on a day that is going well.
Three things make it stick, and none of them is athletic:
- The same time each day — not a time chosen in the abstract, but one hitched to something already fixed. After the morning coffee. After the midday news.
- Somewhere you cannot get stranded — a loop that passes your own front door beats a straight line out and back, whose halfway point is as far from home as you can be.
- A pace at which you could still hold a conversation — that is the whole measurement. No device on the wrist, no counting.
Weather, and the days it plainly will not work
For half the year the outdoors is arguing with you. Ice deserves the plainest speaking, because it is the one condition where the sensible course is not to go at all: a driveway with a dark shine on it is not a test worth taking, and nobody was ever the worse for skipping a day. Heat is the same argument with the hours reversed — early, before the sun is up over the roofs, or the last hour of the evening.
On the days it is simply not happening, the hallway counts. So does a stairwell, and the long corridor at the library, and a slow circuit of the mall before the stores open.
Six lengths of the hall while the kettle boils is not impressive and does not need to be. On a Tuesday in February it is the walk.
The rail, the shoe, and a light on the landing
Balance is worth a word, and a calm one.
Hold the rail, up and down, on the days you feel entirely fine as much as on the days you do not. A handrail is a piece of carpentry whose whole purpose is to be held, and holding it every time is what makes it automatic on the occasion it matters.
Wear something with a back to it. The backless slipper is the most comfortable thing in the house, and also the thing your foot must grip with its toes to keep on, which is a poor arrangement on a staircase. Anything that stays on by itself, with a sole not gone polished smooth, does more for steadiness than concentrating does.
Put a light where you get up at night: a small plug-in lamp on the route from the bed to the bathroom, or a switch your hand can find without hunting. What people meet in a dark hallway is rarely mysterious — the box left on the landing, the cord across the doorway, the curling corner of a rug.
Ask first, if any of this applies to you
This is the part to read slowly.
Speak to your doctor before you begin if you have chest pain of any description, if you get dizzy or lightheaded, if you have had a fall in recent months, if you have a heart or lung condition on your record, or if you have any doubt at all. A physician who knows your history and what you take can tell you in two minutes what no article can tell you in two thousand words.
And plainly: chest pain, faintness, or breathlessness that comes on suddenly and severely is not something to walk off, or to save for the next appointment. Stop, sit down, and get help. In the United States that is 911, straight away.
What it is for
I am wary of promising anything on behalf of a walk to the end of the driveway, and I will not. None of the above is a medical claim.
The argument for it, in my own house and in my mother's, has never been a grand one. It is the stairs. It is the step up into the back of a car. It is the groceries carried in from the trunk in one trip.
Most days, then. Not every day — most. That word is in the title on purpose, and it is the only part of this article I would defend to the last.
— Margaret Hayes
General information, not a plan of care
This article describes ordinary daily movement in general terms. It is not medical advice, it is not a plan of care, and it cannot account for your own history, your medications, your joints, your heart or your circumstances. Before changing what you do, and particularly if you have chest pain, dizziness, a recent fall, a heart or lung condition, or any doubt at all, speak to a licensed physician who can examine you. In an emergency in the United States, call 911.