The Easiest Way to Get Fit? 'Incidental Movement' is Key

Being a society where exercise is simply the 30-90 minutes per day that we set aside for formal movement isn’t working for us. We need to think outside the gym

Most of us live in a society where our life is predominantly sedentary. A society where exercise is simply the 30 to 90 minutes per day that we set aside for some formal, predetermined amount of movement. Well, more and more research is showing that this approach isn’t working for us. We need to think outside the gym. And what better place to start than with the daily commute?

From a financial standpoint, having gotten rid of my car means that I don’t have any car payments, no insurance companies are gouging me for more and more money, I am only peripherally aware of the rising gas prices, and I never have to pay for parking.

From a wellness standpoint, I didn’t even know what I was getting myself into when I handed over the keys to my 2008 VW Golf to the buyer from Calgary, Alberta, who got it for a song. At that time, selling my car was simply more convenient than continuing to own it.

I was moving across the country to start a new job and although I had visited Toronto many times, I wasn’t entirely sure that I could afford to park, let alone drive, in that city. I was OK with that idea since selling the car would eliminate some rather oppressive monthly payments and I rather liked the idea of bucking the system and becoming even more of a pedal-estrian than I already was.

Now stick with me here, this isn’t going to turn into some hippie tirade about how we are all killing the planet (even if we are). I will explain how this actually applies to being fit and healthy in a minute.

When You Own a Car

For the majority of my adult life (or at least since I was 16 years old) I have possessed a car. As you may or may not know, there is a strange thing that happens to your mindset when you own a car. The question of “How will I get from point A to point B?” is always answered by default: I will drive. Of course! Because I have a car. Not to mention that at some points in my life, it was a pretty cool car with a rather decent stereo system and a veritable mountain of cassette tapes.

Now, if the distance between point A and point B was extremely short, I would likely walk or ride my bike—I mean, I am not a monster—but for any distance or duration over a few minutes, I would simply get in the car, crank the tunes, and drive. This was doubly likely in the cold Albertan winter months.

When You Don’t Own a Car

When you take the “I own a car” element out of the “how will I get there” equation, you are forced to get creative. Will I walk? Will I ride my bike? Take the bus? Take the subway? Walk there and run back? Use a car share? Call a friend? An Uber? Mom?

Even using a car share program involves walking to the parking spot where the car is kept and then walking home again after you drop the car off.

The first beneficial thing about many of these alternative modes of getting around is that they involve physically moving your body parts. Yes, even taking the bus or the subway involves walking, standing, and balancing (using proprioception) that we don’t use when we are sitting on our butts in a car seat. Even using one of the car share programs involves walking to the parking spot where the car is kept and then walking home again after you drop the car off.

The second beneficial thing with these carless alternatives is that they have many deep health benefits like lowering stress levels, raising your mood, and perhaps even helping you get better sleep. But more on that later.

According to a report from the United States Census Bureau, the average American’s commute is 25.5 minutes each way. That’s about 51 minutes per day or about 204 hours per year spent commuting. Just to put that in perspective, researchers recently found that most adults only do 17 minutes of fitness activities per day or about 103.4 hours per year. So we are only exercising for approximately half the amount of time that we are spending commuting. Ugh!

Happy Commuters Are Active Commuters

According to a study called the Happy Commuter done by the researchers at McGill University, all commuters are more likely to feel happier when they are walking to work rather than when they take any other form of transportation. It’s been a while since I said this but once again, it’s good old walking for the win!

The team of researchers surveyed over 3,300 students, staff, and faculty at McGill University about their daily travel times, their comfort, safety, cost, wait times, and even their level of street harassment. Their results lined up like this:

• Participants were happiest when they walked, rode the train, or cycled to work—in that order.
• Participants reported lower satisfaction when they traveled by car, subway, or bus—in that order.

When the researchers dug deeper into the factors that affect commuter satisfaction, they discovered that the duration of the travel mattered greatly. Unsurprisingly, people with longer commutes felt less happy than those with shorter ones. But—and this is cool—that same factor of travel time mattered less to walkers, bikers, and bus riders. The results showed that an extra ten minutes lowered their satisfaction by only half as much as it did for those who drive, ride the train, or take the subway.

Sure, you need to be more organized and plan ahead so you arrive on time (although, I would argue that you need to do that just as much when you drive because, let’s face it, traffic sucks) but in general I would much rather feel the wind in my hair on my bike than be breathing the recycled and overly conditioned air inside a restrictive car.

I would also rather let a well-trained bus driver do all the work while I stand, read a book, or listen to a podcast instead of sitting there reading the infuriating political bumper stickers on the cars in front of me.

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The Wellness Benefits

Even sporadic cycle commuting was associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and all-cause mortality.

A recent study in the UK gathered 263,450 participants (52% female and 48% male with an average age of 52.6) and asked them what mode of transportation they used (walking, cycling, car, or public transit) to commute to and from work on a typical day. The researchers then measured the incidents of fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular disease, cancer, or any causes of death among the participants over the next five years. The results were published in the British Medical Journal.

Awesomely, after the five years was up, the researchers concluded that even sporadic cycle commuting was associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and all-cause mortality.

The study's authors wrote that “Cycle commuters had a 52 percent lower risk of dying from heart disease and a 40 percent lower risk of dying from cancer. They also had 46 percent lower risk of developing heart disease and a 45 percent lower risk of developing cancer at all.” I like those odds!

OK, this part takes it to the next level: the researchers even included the risk of getting in a bike vs. car accident in the study, and still came up with the 52 percent overall lower risk of dying. So, yes indeed this study gives us more evidence that even the "risks" of riding a bike get outweighed by the benefits of being a pedal-estrian.

As for walking to work, assuming the distance isn’t prohibitively far, there's a load of reasons to add more movement to your commute.

• A study at Stanford University showed that people score higher on tests for creative thinking when they walk to their destination.
• Research from the American Heart Association shows that you can cut the effects of even a genetic predisposition to obesity in half by walking for an hour per day.
• A study from the University of East Anglia showed that people who switched from driving to walking (or cycling) actually experienced a greater sense of well-being. And, if you are interested in being a high performer, walking to work also showed a greater ability to concentrate and remain calm under pressure.
• According to a Penn State University study, your spouse, friends, and coworkers are more likely to choose a more active mode of transportation if they see you doing it. It’s kind of like the lemming effect but for the power for good. You can find out more about that in the article Is Exercise Socially Contagious?
• According to a 2013 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine walking to work can lower your blood pressure and lower your risk of diabetes.
• And finally, according to a 2015 study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, walking outdoors (preferably in some nice green spaces or parks) can actually put your brain in a meditative state. This is a practice called Forest Bathing and I can tell you from first-hand experience that it really works.

Make Exercise Part of your Day

Live an active and mobile life for your health and wellness, and hit the gym for your biceps.

What elevates the importance of these studies is that they were done on people who were commuting to and from work or school, not on people going out for a dedicated session or a set amount of predetermined “exercise time.” These are people who are building the fitness, cardio, stress-relieving, fresh-air-breathing, leg-stretching, carbon footprint-reducing, wind-in-your-face aspects of movement into their daily life.

This shows us the added benefits of making movement, exercise, and activity part of your day-to-day life over simply hitting the gym. Getting a dedicated workout in four or five times a week is a great way to hit your specific sport and fitness goals but to be a truly healthy and well individual, you need to keep that movement going for the other 23 hours of the day. Ok, sure you need to sleep in there too but you get my point.

Live an active and mobile life for your health and wellness, and hit the gym for your biceps.

It doesn’t matter how much you rip-it-up in your BODYPUMP class if you proceed to sit in your car, at your desk, back in the car, on the couch, and then retire to your comfy bed, day after day. The incidental movement that happens between the gym and bedtime is what truly defines your overall wellness on a deeper level.

It's a Mindset

To bring this full circle and back to my lack of a car, I want to reassure you that you don’t actually have to sell your car (if you still don’t want to after all of this) but I do want to issue you a challenge to at least adopt what I call a “car-less mindset.” Give yourself the task of choosing a different mode of transportation for at least 75 percent of your journeys from now on. If you do that, I am certain that you will start to fall in love with the idea when your blood pressure drops, your creativity rises, the steps on your activity tracker sore, while the numbers on the bathroom scale plummet.

Let’s regain our health by shunning the modern conveniences that are turning us into sedentary lumps. And again, what better place to start than with our daily commute.

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