Introduction
Everyone knows that they should exercise more. Yet we don’t. Lack of time, lack of enjoyment, injury and pain, there’s always a good reason.
In this piece, we walk through the science, habits and strategies of a concept we call movement - which is more than just exercise. While exercise has connotations of difficulty and of being time-consuming, movement is a more approachable concept. Essentially, movement is anything that helps us avoid being sedentary. As humans, we are built to move, not just to exercise. That means things like dancing, walking, and getting up and down. For people who don’t exercise as much as they’d like, we hope that reframing exercise as movement breaks down barriers.
Part of the problem is that we often don’t have a deep enough understanding of why exercise and movement are so good for us, and the way it can positively impact so many of the things that bother or harm us. We know that people say it helps us prevent disease, and sometimes to feel good, yet we often fail to appreciate just how transformative it can be for concentration, focus and performance. Perhaps just as importantly, many people don’t quite understand how to incorporate exercise into their busy lives.
While movement is a core pillar of physical health, it is also a core pillar of protecting and improving our mental health - whether we have a diagnosis of illness or not. Movement joins nutrition, sleep, social connection and mindset as one of the five fundamental foundations of the Resilience Agenda Mental Fitness Toolkit. If you’ve ever given up on exercise because you aren’t seeing results on the scales, discovering how movement impacts mental health can become an ‘aha’ moment.
Prioritizing the broader notion of movement, even if you already do some exercise, will improve every other aspect of your health, and likely make you more productive and successful. Because, as we’ll learn, movement gives us energy, rather than taking it from us, which is what people commonly assume mistakenly. It also has the potential to leverage good habits in every other area of our lives. At the most fundamental level, we need to move past the idea that we don’t have the time or energy to start moving more. Let’s get off and running.
Why Movement Matters
As we navigate the pace and complexity of modern life, the physical and mental demands on our minds and bodies are greater than ever. Yet, many people struggle to incorporate regular exercise into their routines, often citing barriers such as lack of time, motivation, or access to suitable equipment or spaces in which to move. Some people think it’s ‘selfish’ to take time to exercise while family or work responsibilities need to be prioritized. Some of us just don’t want to.
However, we are built to move. That much is obvious. Our entire physiology is designed to help us move around our environment and thrive. Yet our lifestyles get in the way. Often, our apps and gadgets have a way of reducing the amount of movement in our lives. Convenience is often a euphemism for ‘move less.’ Think of how food delivery replaces walking to the shops to get something, and how this impacts our rest, our relationship with our devices. Fundamentally, we have become sedentary. We sit too much and move too little.
From a physical health perspective, movement gives us energy, passion, motivation and keeps our bodies in working order. It promotes cardiovascular health and prevents diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer. The obvious things you’ve heard before. It also gives structure to our lives. It helps us build a sense of autonomy over how we use our time and how we show up in the world. Most vitally, it prepares us for stresses and helps us overcome them.
More Than Exercise
So what’s the difference between exercise and movement? The answer comes down to the reasons why we do it, and how it fits into our daily lives. On one hand, exercise is structured, intentional, and often done with a particular goal in mind - for example to lose weight, train for a race, or build muscle. Rather than a part of how our day unfolds, exercise is often considered a separate part of our day, separate to work, family or personal time.
One of the problems with how we conceive of exercise is that we think of it as ‘big chunks of time’ that require effort, sweat and recovery. This means we often only get to it when we have several free hours, which for some people is rarely. A secondary issue that gets in the way for many people is that they plan their daily exercise after they’ve fit everything else in, and when they are tired and exhausted from all the other things they’ve prioritized.
Movement, by contrast, is a broader concept of physical activity that includes all sorts of incidental actions and activity we do throughout the day. Often, these movements don’t have any particular purpose. This could include standing at an adjustable desk to work, taking the stairs more often, or going for a short walk after each meal.
While many people wouldn’t consider these exercise according to strict definition, and therefore dismiss their physical and mental health benefits, each has a way of resetting our biology and our moods. We are able to fit them into ‘gaps’ in our day, and when cumulative, they can add up to several hours of movement in a day. Every step and every stretch matters, especially if you have an office job. Movement is therefore a more habitable, common and functional way of protecting and improving our health.
For the purposes of this article, we will use the terms movement and exercise more or less interchangeably.
Movement and Mental Health
Movement helps not just our physical health, but also our mental health. How anxious or depressed we feel, how resiliently we recover from setbacks, and even how clear and focused we feel while working day to day are impacted by how we move. When it comes to anxiety disorder and major depression, the two most common mental illnesses, these are not just disorders of the mind, but also the body.
While exercise is a wonderful antidote to anxiety and depression, exercise is a useful stress reliever for people who don’t have a mental illness. In the United Kingdom more than the United States, exercise prescriptions are one of the top three front line treatments for depression (alongside talk therapy and medications).
According to scientist James Blumenthal’s SMILE study, and countless studies subsequently, exercise is equally effective as antidepressants for improving depression symptoms. Everyone should know this fact. The irony is that depression often makes us feel lethargic and listless, which has a way of undermining our motivation for movement. Yet, if you feel miserable, move, even if you can’t summon the energy to formally exercise.
One way to do this is to schedule small ‘bites’ of structured movement into our day. For example, a 10 minute walk every hour or two at work. A short walk outside after lunch. A ‘fake commute’ around the block before and after work if you work from home so you can bookend your workday with a ‘change of scenery’ and some fresh air.
Exercise creates chemical changes in the body. Exercise regulates neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine that antidepressants work through.Serotonin also affects impulse control, in a loop that helps us avoid slumping in front of the TV or snacking too much. Serotonin counteracts cortisol, the stress homeone. It helps us learn, consolidate memories, and be creative.
As anyone who has experienced the ‘runners high’ will tell you, exercise produces endorphins, which act like morphine, and kill pain. Essentially, exercise is a natural opiate. The thing about endorphins is that they aren’t instant - in fact they take 20 minutes of exercise to occur and make you feel really good. By then, many people have stopped or gone back to work! That’s why although movement is great, we still need intensive exercise.
Exercise improves self-esteem, which improves motivation - by giving us mastery and autonomy over how we structure our time and how we feel as a result. Self-esteem also improves our social connection (we feel more equipped for the performance of life). Exercise makes us active rather than passive in the face of stress. Crucially, it gives us the sense that we can experience discomfort or difficulty, keep going, and come out okay at the other end. At a basic level, exercise tires us out, so we fall asleep better.
Exercise can also help with anxiety. Even though the physical sensations of exercise often mirror those of anxiety (think about that for a second), with exercise we learn to cope with discomfort. We learn that we are in control, even while uncomfortable sensations are bubbling up. You learn that anxiety can be ‘okay’, and not a prelude to disaster, which makes you resilient.
Exercise leads to lower resting tension in our muscles, interrupting a loop that heightens anxiety. Calmer muscles tell our brain there’s less need to worry. And it breaks down fat to help fuel our muscles. In a study by cardiologist Carl Lavie, exercise reduced symptoms of anxiety by 50%.
Another way that movement helps alleviate anxiety is that it is distracting. We literally think about and feel other things than our constant worries and our typically overwhelming physical sensations. That’s part of the reason yoga works as a Mental Fitness tool. The intentional and controlled discomfort of contorting our bodies requires a degree of focus, which channels our attention away from its usual point of focus. The skill of yoga is to shift that attention between the discomfort (a chosen source of focus) and back whenever we inevitably mind-wander back to our thoughts.
One of the biggest contributors to poor mental health is ongoing, chronic stress. Unlike ‘acute stress’, where bad things happen and we move past them (and our bodies natural stress response mechanism recovers on its own), or we experience a fright, and then recover and settle down, ‘chronic stress’ is when we don’t give our bodies natural recovery mechanism a chance to replenish. As a result, we stay on ‘high alert.’ When we are in this state, we find we are on edge and in a constant state of threat vigilance, find fault with other people, and our bodies start to hurt and let us down.
When we are looking for ways to ‘relieve chronic stress’, we often make two big mistakes. Firstly, we assume that we need to do less of the things that cause us stress. As if our kids, bosses or elderly parents would just stop ringing on their own. The key is to do stressful things, but to recover from them appropriately. This recovery takes the form of social connection (with people who aren’t currently stressing you out), movement, good nutrition, learning new things, play activities, and time in nature and the outdoors.
That leads to the second part we get wrong about destressing. People think that passive rest, such as watching TV, sitting on the couch, or scrolling their phones is the best way to calm down and destress. While these have their place, it turns out that active recovery, such as calling a friend or playing an instrument or a game are more effective.
Types of Movement
When most people think of exercise, they think of running, swimming, cycling, going to the gym or something like crossfit or pilates. While these are valuable, starting with simple types of movement, especially if you’ve been injured or out of the game for a while can be highly valuable.
Don’t Just Sit There
One of the key reasons for the growing obesity (and potentially mental illness) epidemic sweeping the world is the degree to which many of us sit throughout the day. As more of us work in office jobs, relax on the couch, and then learn, connect and shop in front of our devices, we are sitting more than ever.
Yet, even when we are sitting, we can still ‘sit better.’ One way is to sit on the ground more often, without a chair. While this does take some adjustment, the need to support our posture, and have our legs out in front of us is a form of movement, especially for our core and lower back. Likewise, we can sit at our desks on stools, or what are otherwise known as ‘backless seats.’ This is another way of getting a core workout while we sit. Just be careful with Swiss balls, a common ‘replacement’ for normal chairs, as they don’t provide the support needed for long days of work.
A common but not always affordable way to implement more movement into your day is to get a standing desk. The key is to remember to use it. This is where planning and habit-stacking can help.
For example, a common system is the 30, 20, 10 system, where one stands for 30 minutes, sits for 20 minutes for a rest, and then takes ten minutes to go for a walk, grab a drink or do some stretches. These don’t have to be followed religiously, and are instead a general guideline.
Another way of working with a standing desk is to do certain tasks while standing, and others while sitting. Alternatively, try having all of your regular meetings while standing, and take phone calls while walking around. In my own case, I try to take all calls and host my podcasts while standing, as well as answering most emails and calls, yet I sit when doing complex planning, writing pieces like this, or when I’m just exhausted. The key is to break it up, and not spend hours sitting at a stretch.
Walking
Aside from getting up more regularly, the easiest way to get more movement into your life is to walk more. Whether its a slow walk around the block, up some stairs or a challenging hike in the park, walking helps overcome the damage caused by sitting, helps to relieve pain, and helps us achieve better physical balance.
Walking for about half an hour a day has been shown to reduce depression symptoms. Walking also helps calm anxiety, especially when we do it outdoors and in blue and green spaces. The World Health Organization recommends that healthy adults do ““at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity throughout the week, or do at least 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity.” Clearly, many people don’t achieve this goal, particularly if they are in pain or have pre-existing conditions.
Many people have heard of the 10,000 steps daily challenge. While this might seem insurmountable for some people (we are assuming you are able bodied here), there are a few ways to build more steps into your life. Firstly, if you work from home, schedule a fake commute before and after work which helps you separate ‘home time’ and ‘work time.’ Second, if you drive, don’t always insist on parking near the door at the carpark. If you commute by public transport, add a few minutes of walking to the commute, especially if you have a connection in the middle. Try doing 10,000 steps for a week, and see how it impacts your schedule, and your mood.
One way to add extra ‘spice’ to your walking is to engage in a popular new activity called ‘rucking.’ Although it might sound like torture, this involves deliberately adding weight (such as books, bottles of water or clothes) to a backpack and going for long, brisk walks. This adds a degree of difficulty to a walk that strengthens our muscles and builds our endurance. Rucking certainly falls under the category of exercise more than gentle movement!
Blue & Green Spaces
The fact that getting outside into nature is good for our wellbeing should not come as a surprise. However, new science is showing just how important it is and how it benefits us. Blue and green spaces include parks, forests and gardens, whilst blue spaces include rivers, oceans and lakes.
Being outside is beneficial for several reasons. One of the most practical benefits of spending time in blue and green spaces is their ability to reduce stress levels. We tend to be around others when we’re outside, we experience better air quality, and we typically feel calmer and clearer when exposed to low-intensity stimulus. In other words, natural environments are just interesting enough to not be boring, but not so over-stimulating as to be stressful.
Then there’s the impact that natural light has on people, especially those who spend alot of time indoors and those who live in climates where the winter months are shorter than in other places. The key habit to develop is spending at least some time outside each day moving around, ideally in the mornings when we’re waking up, or after meals when we’re digesting food. This may require some reflection on what is considered ‘appropriate outdoor weather’ for some people.
Mindful Stretching (yoga)
A common practice to mediate stress and improve physical capacity is yoga. This ancient form of movement combines the focus and breathing techniques of meditation with the physical benefits of stretching our muscles. Yoga helps to improve mental focus and physical flexibility by shifting our bodies into poses that are challenging and which require attention to maintain.
The problem with yoga is that some people have already made up their mind on it after trying one or two sessions, or they have a prejudice against yoga as something that’s simply for ‘lithe people.’ Some people may also perceive it as religious, which may conflict with other beliefs. Others believe that it's all about standing on your head or doing impossible moves, which means it’s not for them.
That’s why we like to call yoga ‘mindful stretching’ - which is a less loaded term. Mindful stretching takes some of the difficulty away from yoga, and turns it into simple flexibility and mobility work, something that we should all be doing.
While yoga can be complicated, there are also simple ways to begin. Watch Youtube videos, or find a simple online course. Even Googling ‘yoga for beginners’ is a great way to get started with a safe step by step approach.
Yoga positions are particularly handy for overcoming some of the damage done by prolonged sitting. For example, the downward dog position helps to create flexibility in our shoulders, which overcomes the hunch that comes from sitting and working at a computer all day. For many people, we don’t lift our arms above our heads throughout the day, which isn’t great for range of motion. Similarly, the downward dog position helps to stretch out our calves and hamstrings, muscles which become tight or underused when we sit too much or carry weight.
Mobility
Beyond the benefits of increased flexibility from yoga, one of the most overlooked aspects of good physical and mental health is joint mobility. While flexibility refers to muscles, mobility refers primarily to joints. Keeping our joints in working order means we’re able to carry out basic (and sometimes not so basic) daily tasks, prevent injury, and stay energetic.
Mobility is often overlooked however, in favor of the immediate gains and reward associated with strength or stretching. Mobility tends to build over time, and it tends to reduce over time as well. When we’re more mobile, we move better, and tend to feel better too.
To improve mobility, we can do yoga or gentle stretching, or take it a step further by doing targeted joint mobilisations or using a foam roller or massage ball. Massage balls release tension in tissue around our joints, and is a targeted way to get pain relief for tight muscles.
We can also include functional movements into our workouts or even at different points of the day. For example, squatting is the ability to get in and out of a chair or on and off the toilet safely, lunges or one-legged standing mimic walking or running and strengthen muscles in our rear, and rotations are good practice if we play golf, or pick up children off the ground.
Strength
Strength is a foundational component of wellbeing that plays an essential role in daily life, athletic performance, and longevity. Beyond merely looking good, strength is critical for day-to-day function (even going to the toilet), injury prevention, and mental health. Whether lifting groceries, playing with children, or simply getting older, strength enables us to perform tasks efficiently and without injury.
One key to strength is muscle mass, something which declines by roughly 3% for each year after the age of 40. This is one of the reasons older people often spend time in hospital from falls. Partly, they don't have the coordination and mobility they once had, but also they lose muscle. For many people, maintaining and even building muscle, mainly through lifting weights, is a vital step in maintaining their physical wellbeing, and feeling good about their mental health.
One of the most foundational and overlooked aspects of strength is core strength. Often considered the domain of situps, core strength protects the cylinder of muscles and tissue that surrounds our spine. It also includes the glutes, the largest muscle set in the body. When we are sedentary, our glutes ‘switch off’, which can cause issues such as back pain.
For people who sit at a desk, the glutes are possibly the most undertrained muscle in the body. Combined with weak back muscles, front abdominals and forgotten obliques, our backs can become weak which impairs our functionality.
To improve core strength, we might need to go beyond ‘situps’ as the answer, as they can sometimes be difficult or harmful for people with lower back pain.
According to the world’s foremost expert on back-pain, Dr. Stuart McGill of the University of Waterloo, Canada, “the idea is neither to rust nor to wear out.” That’s another way of saying to protect your joints by neither overdoing or neglecting movement.
Breathing
The way we breathe is also a vital component of how we feel, and is actually a key part of movement. Those familiar with yoga, pilates or weight-lifting would know that the way we breathe can help support and strengthen our movement. However, the way we breathe day to day, impacts how we feel as well.
While breathing well helps us to stabilize our core (alongside the key muscle strength that we mentioned above), our breathing also helps us manage how we feel. In fact, targeted breathing exercises (practiced when we’re somewhat calm) can be powerful tools to help us control and manage our physical and mental state.
When we’re anxious, or about to become anxious, our breathing speeds up. We breathe more shallowly, into our chests rather than our stomaches, we breathe more often, sucking in breath rather than slowly and calmly breathing it out, and we breathe more through our mouths. This activates and stimulates our ‘fight or flight’ stress response, which makes us anxious. If you think about it evolutionarily, this makes sense. This is exactly the kind of breathing you would want to do to stimulate adrenaline and cortisol and to get away from an attacking animal.
To become more conscious of our breathing, we should breathe deeply through our noses, ideally, deep into our bellies, and then slowly exhale.This process helps calm the sympathetic nervous system and encourages and our minds to calm down. One other benefit of deep, slow, breathing through our diaphragm? We concentrate better, can maintain our attention for longer, and ultimately either be more present or productive.
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Barriers to Movement
Despite all the evidence and benefits of movement and exercise, many people fail to prioritize them in their daily lives. Of course, for some people, there are plenty of (sometimes legitimate) reasons why we don’t move.
Many people simply don’t enjoy exercise, or haven’t found a form of movement that suits them yet. Very often, we say we don’t have the time. Some people have niggling or ongoing injuries that prevent them from moving in a way they’d like. Others lack the resources to get started, such as affordable equipment or access to outdoor spaces. Some people have begun exercise programs, only to become discouraged, either by injury or lack of progress toward desired goals. Finally, we can feel so far ‘behind’ other people when we start jogging or join a gym and simply feel inadequate and unmotivated. The result is that fitness or exercise recommendations can be intimidating, even unwelcome.
We also have to compete with our culture and the trends of technology. Technological advancements have reduced the need for physical activity in many aspects of life. We live in an age of convenience, where machines and devices handle tasks that once required manual labor. Remote controls, Uber eats, and escalators are just a few examples. Great for efficiency, not great for our health.
Another reason is that we often can’t ‘see’ the benefits of exercise for our health, happiness and performance until far into the future. Science has shown that we tend to prefer immediate gains over distant rewards. The almost certain rewards of staying on the couch, staying inside when its raining, or comforting ourselves with food tend to win out over the possible damage done by overeating or undermoving.
The discomfort of exercise is a tangible reason people don’t begin or accelerate their exercise programs. As a culture, we have become conditioned to ‘ease.’ We use phrases such as ‘it wasn’t easy’ to define a mildly difficult task, implying that the task in question should have been easy. Influencers and fitness clubs often show people extending themselves, and we are so used to seeing ‘perfect’ people on Instagram or the olympics that we never feel as though we can measure up.
Building Habits for Movement
- Treat movement like a meeting with your boss. Schedule it into your life like a non-negotiable appointment. By integrating movement into your routine, you’ll be more likely to see it as a priority than an afterthought.
- Update your identity. With a schedule full of planned movement, you’re identity shifts from someone who doesn’t move to someone who does. That makes you an athlete. These mental shifts can influence your self talk and inspire you when you’re feeling unmotivated. “I’m not going for a run, I’m a runner. Therefore, I’m going to run.
- Movement, not just exercise. Instead of thinking about exercise as long, two-hour, sweaty and intense intrusions into your time, think of them instead as ‘movement snacks.’ Get up from your desk, lift your hands above your head and push the sky away.
- Ditch the car. For short distances, are you able to walk, ride or skate instead of using the car or public transport? Of course, the classic piece of advice to combine commuting and movement is to get off one stop earlier (you need to commit to it first, before deciding on the day if it feels right) or avoid trying to park right next to the elevators in shopping center carparks. The fact that you need to carry the grocery bags back a long way is a good thing - a workout. Once again, movement integrated into daily life.
- Keep commitments with others. If you find it hard to motivate yourself to get outside or to the gym, make a standing appointment with someone to keep you accountable. Even on days when you don’t feel like going, knowing that you don’t want to let someone down can be motivating. Oh, and working out with others is social, and fun, and enjoyable simply for its own sake.
- Walking meetings. Find ways to move around more during meetings. For an informal catchup or coffee, suggest going for a walk first, then sitting down for a coffee. Take the stairs a couple of times a day at work rather than the lift. Your author has an ‘always take the stairs’ at the shops or the airport policy.
- Move every day. Stack a movement habit, such as a few lunges, steps or stretches onto a habit you already do. For example, when you come home from dropping the kids off at child-care, go for a quick 15 minute walk before heading back into the house to start work. If you work at home, try the ‘fake commute’, which is where you go for a 10 or 20 minute walk before and after work to clear your head or get your head in the game and separate home-life from work-life.
- Find something you enjoy. The exercise they taught us in high-school isn’t always the best form of movement for us today. Consider yoga, rock-climbing, or even dancing.
- Redefine what ‘difficult’ means. Overcoming challenges physically and mentally allows us to realize that things can be difficult and still be okay. When it comes to exercise, the more difficult or competitive the challenge, the more enjoyable it can be, at least according to some. For beginners, this mindset can be difficult to understand. So, when you start to huff and puff after a few minutes on your first jog in a long time, consider this ‘getting stronger’, not failing. Take a ‘growth mindset’ that suggests you just haven’t found the right strategy or put in the amount of time required yet, instead of thinking you are a failure for not being good enough.
- Good enough is good enough. Avoid the tendency to be an exercise perfectionist. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. Especially on days where you are unmotivated or overly busy, instead of abandoning your entire movement for the day when you can’t make it to the gym, go for a 30 minute walk instead. It’s not quite the same, but you’re still moving, and your identity as someone who moves consistently stays in tact.
- Consider home workouts. If lack of local resources, fear of going outside, or embarrassment is hindering you moving more, try home workouts. The internet is full of amazing, often free resources. Try YouTube, or for simple yoga and mobility workouts, search for FitOn (Not affiliated with Resilience Agenda in any way. We just like their work).
What Else Could Be Going On?
Of course, there may be an underlying mental or physical illness preventing you from changing your exercise habits. If you think this might be the case, speak to your doctor, psychologist or physiotherapist.
If you’re in pain all the time, and exercise hurts beyond just being uncomfortable, you may have chronic or inflammatory conditions to manage. Likewise, if you’re exercising, but finding you’re getting injured or not recovering appropriately, stress or lack of sleep could be a part of the issue.
Finally, it is difficult to support optimum physical and mental performance without the right fuel. Therefore, we need to ensure we’re getting enough fibre to support our gut microbiome, enough protein to support muscle development, and fats to help ensure we stay full and avoid excessive snacking.
What Can We Do?
So what can we do to get more movement into our lives? We like to call it the 3 Ps.
- Prioritize it
- Plan it
- Protect it
Firstly, prioritize the importance of movement in your life. Even if you are already exercising, revisit your why (physical or mental health, performance, time spent with others) and actively decide to plan the time for movement. This may require making hard choices about what this time replaces. And remember, the first hour of exercise is likely to be of more benefit to you than your tenth hour of work, or your fourth hour of Netflix. Keep that in mind as you balance your day.
Secondly, put movement and exercise into your calendar or schedule. Plan it. There’s no such thing as free time. When we build our lives around the fundamental components of our health - movement, good nutrition, sleep and rest, social connection and a positive mindset, not only do we get more done, we feel better.
Thirdly, try your best to protect the time you’ve allocated in your schedule. Of course, there will occasionally be last minute school runs, your boss will ask you to work late, or you’ll have had a late night out the night before and just can’t be bothered. Work with the default. If it’s in your schedule, you’re more likely to do it. When it's in your schedule, you have to actively make the choice to not go to Crossfit every Tuesday night, rather than summon the energy to get off the couch. It’s just what you do.
When there’s a handful of these default movement habits in your day, you’ll be on track for a lifelime of quality movement.
The Science of Movement
Compared to other fields such as nutrition and wellbeing, the specific literature on movement isn’t as accessible or broad as one might expect. Nevertheless, if you’re looking for some good books that delve into the motivations and habits of good movement, check out these recommendations below.
The Joy of Movement - Psychologist Kelly McGonigal’s book on movement is simplistic, easy-to-read, and a great place to get started if you’ve been intimidated about building your exercise program.
Outlive - Functional medicine specialist Dr Peter Attia offers a valuable, practical and sometimes unrealistic (where does he find all this time?) view of how we can think about nutrition and movement in our middle years so we are preparing adequate for an age where we are likely to live until we’re 100.
Spark - Dr John Ratey’s book is a wonderful story of how exercise changes the brain and leads to improved life quality. It can be a little dense at times, but the point is that exercise is great for our mental health. Makes a good read.
Exercised - Daniel Liebermann’s book is an entertaining and practical guide to how and why we should exercise, the reasons why we don’t, and how we can overcome them. This is one of the books that helps us reframe exercise as movement. It’s probably the best book on this list for the person who is fairly active, but who wants to go deeper into integrating movement more thoroughly into their personal lives.
Built to Move - This books is a fairly in-depth look at functional and performance training techniques. If you want to learn how to lift and stand better, and discover the anatomy and skills to really be at your best, try this one.