Writes Gretchen Reynolds, in "Why an outdoor workout is better for you than indoors/'Green' exercise can magnify the benefits of your workout" (WaPo).
Are people really so "jumpy" and "overtaxed"? I walk or run outdoors nearly every day — sometimes more than once and my short run is more than 40 minutes — and I could give you a few reasons why I do this, but none of it is about being jumpy or having "overtaxed attention."
But I do think it's better for my mind than walking on some sort of indoor treadmill. Ugh! What a way to live! I've never done it, by the way. I'm just thinking about it. It helps that I live where it's interesting to walk in any direction or where I can drive my car for 5 minutes and be where there are long wooded lakeside paths.
The article fails to discuss headphones. Speaking of an "onslaught of internal ruminations" and "our whirring brains"... does that voice in your ears count? I've done my walks/runs while listening to audiobooks, podcasts, and music, and I've also worn no headphones at all. I think no headphones is best, but not because "nature" turns off my mind. I don't have a problem with any sort of mental "whirring" or "onslaught." I consider it a great privilege and delight to have a mind with thoughts! I think you have different thoughts while walking or running outside. I want those thoughts. You put things together in new ways. It's especially nice to have a companion who can make this a creative dialog. But headphones also work to introduce material and give you something to mentally play with.
Good Lord! It's not about shutting your mind off.
The "scientists" seem to think the point is to shut up your brain and experience a "reset," then go inside again and get back to work. 15 minutes is best. What a grind! No wonder you're jumpy.
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27 comments:
"nearly every day and my short run is more than 40 minutes"
I am genuinely impressed. Am 56 and in pretty good shape for my age. Was one of the best runners in our middle and high school. Started running again a few years ago mainly to get back in shape and hopefully lose weight. Was making good progress - two miles! three miles! five miles! - until I hit a wall.
My knees. If I run more than a few days in a row they complain loudly. A year ago got an MRI and the diagnosis was "knees look great for 56 and don't like how much you've increased running - take breaks and mix it up".
If I may ask, how do you manage running nearly every day for 40+ minutes?
A woke state of consciousness forced by a progressive, fascist sociopolitical model.
I exercise every day with Althousian time commitments. If exercising alone, outdoor is much better. And thinking is better (Nietzsche: “all great thoughts are conceived while walking”). Indoor exercise is best in groups, which add a social element as well as the discipline of a schedule. Rather than having insightful thoughts, indoors you are more likely to learn something. Headphones for me are a Time Management question and I have the time to leave them behind.
Writers for the Post see themselves and thus everyone as jumpy and overtaxed. As you would be sitting in a bullpen thinking up topics you can shoehorn Trump or white supremacy into. Or a deadline.
I trot outside for thirty or forty minutes and sometimes indoors on a treadmill. The treadmill is a horror where time moves ever so slowly. Outdoor walking or running has the advantage over the treadmill in that there is a destination, a turnaround spot plus things to see. The dreadmill has only the clock.
I do the elliptical 4 to 5 times a week for 18 minutes. I generally listen to Pandora while getting my required cardio. Then 10 minutes on the Total Gym so I can keep my core strong. But my wife and I walk 40 to 60 minutes a day. No headphones, it is our opportunity to talk to each other without distractions other than comments on what we see on the walk. And it is perhaps the best time of our day.
"Are people really so "jumpy" and "overtaxed"? I walk or run outdoors nearly every day — sometimes more than once and my short run is more than 40 minutes — and I could give you a few reasons why I do this, but none of it is about being jumpy or having "overtaxed attention."
- Retiree (No job stress, no longer raising children, presumably secure retirement)
Yeah, there are lots of places with weather conducive to having an entire weight-room full of equipment outdoors to use year-round. Cuz, you know, some people exercise in ways other than walking, running, or biking.
That said, I'd rather ride my bike or run/hike outside on a trail than on a treadmill or indoor cycle. I only do the latter when it's too 'cold' here in AZ (December-February). Heck, I'll ride my bike when it's 113, but not 60.
"According to one widely held theory..."
Widely held by whom? Patients in psychiatric hospitals? Gretchen Reynolds' garden gnomes? And what does she mean by widely? That the geographic distance between people subscribing to such nonsense is reassuringly vast? Formulations like this are Kaiju-scale weasel words that ought to alert the decerning reader that what follows is bullshit unworthy of the time spent to read it.
When extrapolating from a theory for the purpose of stating a new theoretical proposition or corollary one has a duty to justify the original proposition unless that proposition is well-established by observation and experiment. For example, a theorist extrapolating from General Relativity need not revisit the entire history of Modern Physics as a preamble. Persons who are intellectually qualified to follow the mathematics already know that stuff. However, poorly supported theories, and especially the mere speculations and pipe dreams that silly people are prone to elevate with the inappropriate label, theory, must be defended and justified before proceeding to any consequential propositions. Fudging this obligation is the meat and potatoes of conspiracy mongers like the outrageous James G. Garrison and the pathetic Alvin Bragg. Extrapolating from nonsense is how they do their mischief, and it is the very essence of intellectual dishonesty. Evidently, we must conclude this sort of crap is cool beans in the WaPo ethics code.
Preferring the outdoors to the indoors for exercise is a matter of taste. If you are a criminal inmate exercising outside the narrow confines of your cell is both practical and perhaps psychologically beneficial, though the fact that most prison assaults and murders happen while inmates are outside and supposedly exercising argues against those supposed psychological benefits. But the claim that the "natural world" relaxes us is 19th-century romanticism run amok. Depends on the nature of the natural world, doesn't it? Someone alone and unarmed on the Serengeti plain with lions and other dangerous animals nearby would be foolish to relax, though income tax worries would probably fade to irrelevancy next to the prospect of becoming something's lunch. And anyone who thinks a public park with a jogging path is the natural world needs to really get out more. This all reminds me of Henry David Thoreau and his delusionary musings about his shack at Waldon Pond. When he ginned up the nerve to go hiking in the Adirondacks, the contrast between the sedate and welcoming environs of Concord, Massachusetts and the real natural world shocked him to his core.
“ If I may ask, how do you manage running nearly every day for 40+ minutes?”
1. I stop for 5 minutes or so in the middle… to see the sun rise.
2. I give myself permission to switch to walking, but don’t need to.
3. Motivated by needing to catch the sunrise.
4. Am not fast.
5. Distracted by conversation or podcasts or music most days.
6. Have never had hip or knee pain at all.
7. General good health and a desire to keep it.
8. Believe in it as a ritual.
Rick67
I have ten years on you. Got a single cortisone shot years ago in each knee and havent had knee trouble since. I am religious about new running shoes every six to nine months and have used Hokas for about ten years. Cushioned.
New York is different from Madison, and employment is different from retirement. Is it so surprising that New Yorkers want exercise to calm their nerves?
Thank you.
I live in one of the most perfect, beautiful places in the United States for a walk/jog/bike. Naturally, most the treadmills at the gym are occupied in the morning...
"Widely held theory" should be understood as idea that someone wishes were true but has no evidence.
People are analog in a natural state, and digital in a social state.
10,000 years ago, 'relaxing in nature' was a sure way to die.
We've come a long way, baby...
I will preface this comment with the statement that I am 72 years old and will be 73 in June. I have COPD, not severe and mostly mitigated with an inhaler, from smoking (which I quit in Jan. 2001) and I know I brought this on myself.
Some people call it running. Some call it jogging. Some call it speed walking. One persons run is another's speed walk. Whatever. In High School I excelled in the 200 and 400 yard sprints. Now I can't do any exercise outside in the late fall, winter or early spring. The cold or very cool air makes my nose runs like an open faucet and I'm not kidding. It's so bad I have given up all out door winter exercise, with the exception of shoveling the driveway oh joy!
So through an organization called Silver Sneakers I was able to obtain a free membership in the local Princeton Club Express gym. I have been going to the gym 3 days a week Mon, Wed, Fri for the last 4 years. I spend 45 mins on resistance training (weights) and 40 mins plus 5 mins cool down on aerobic (?) alternating between treadmill and exercise bike. Through trial and error I have been able to determine my limitations on both pieces of equipment. That is how fast can I go and at what resistance (bike) or elevation and speed (treadmill) to make it for 40 minutes and still be able to breathe. Treadmill is 3.8 mph starting at a slight incline of 4% increasing .5% every 10 minutes up to 30 mins then +.5% at 35 mins, +.5% at 37 mins, +.5 at 37.5 min and then +.5% every 15 seconds up to 11% for the last 15 secs pant pant! For the bike I use a program called rolling hills which slowly increases and decreases the resistance. I use a setting of 10 (out of a maximum of 20) for my maximum resistance and keep my RPMs no lower than 65 and try for 70. Once again, pant pant. :)
Once the weather warms up I'm off on my bike (when we're not camping and/or hiking) on my off days from the gym. I live very close to the Drumlin trail so trips to Jefferson and back to Cottage Grove are pretty regular. I LOVE riding my bike! My mind wanders all over the place.
And they would call me "conspiracy terrorist", if they read my comments on how the "great reset" is really about the attempt to one day control everybody's life down to every possible minute detail.
Jumpy person here. I NEED nature to ground my nervous system. I have known this since a young child. The 40 acre woods was my home for long, long hours. I think better there and am more creative. Now I live near a botanical garden, so I can go regularly and take long walks.
“ Yeah, there are lots of places with weather conducive to having an entire weight-room full of equipment outdoors to use year-round. Cuz, you know, some people exercise in ways other than walking, running, or biking.”
Believe it or not, I have a Pilates room, and I use it almost every day.
I have only one major piece of equipment, the one that over 100 hours of private instruction taught me was the most useful. Not the reformer. The chair!
I used to drive 47 miles from DC to Baltimore at the end of long work days. Toward the end of my Durante vile there, I'd go straight from the car to the back yard and chop wood until I was over the daily toxicity of my job & commute. Everyone should have axe.
'The chair!'
Is it electric?
We have a romantic view of nature because we don't actually have to live out in nature with its real dangers. We just read the odd story now and then about the poor person who dies from exposure in the wilderness.
I am glad you have a mind with thoughts. I benefit from them.
you have great outdoor habits so you don't have the jumpy problem. you should be proud of yourself..great job taking good care of yourself..that is unusual at most any age.
Disarmed and docile... like the dodo.
Rick67 said...
I was like you, a reasonably talented HS CC runner, but then didn't really run much until 40. Within a few years, I was up to marathon distance. I think that part of how I staved-off injury was by buying running shoes in batches of 3-5 pair at a time. I would have a couple pair at work, where about half my running took place and the other two at home. The shoes were all different brands, which helped because whatever weakness one had, wouldn't be the same on the other 3. This worked for a while, but by 50 my hips and knees were sore all the time.
That's when I added weight training. Specifically and exclusively the barbell and clean and jerk. I'm now 60 and don't have any achy joints. My normal run is 6 miles, 2-3 times a week. Every so often, I will run an 8-mile loop.
"The chair!"
Indeed. I first started working out back in the late 1970s when I picked up my mom's Jack LaLanne home workout book. Couple of chairs and a towel can give you a really decent workout.
In fact, when the gym closed during the Covids, I worked out on my back patio with a few weights I'd begged borrowed or stole (not really), together with the dining room chairs.
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