My Morning Routine: How I Uncage Daily

A few days ago in our private little community I asked if people wanted to see my morning ritual.You guys responded with a resounding yes, so I went out to Mt. Tabor and recorded this video for you.Of course, there are many layers to it, and I could create several hours worth of video content to unpack all the details of the routine.Perhaps that's something I'll do in a future course. :)For now, hopefully you at least get the basics of it from watching the video:

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 Morning routine summary:

1. Ground and shake - 5 min
2. Standing check-in meditation - 3-5 min
3. Deep squat breathing practice - 3 min
4. Controlled rotations of all joints - 5 min
5. Incantations to unleash your greatest self - 5 min

Total investment: 20-30 minValue: undefinable

The benefits of daily uncaging practice:

• It ensures that even if I don't get outside again for the rest of the day, that at least I uncaged once. It helps me sleep better at night knowing this. And it helps combat Nature Deficit Disorder.
• Getting my feet on the ground right away helps restore the negative charge to the body. Grounding is actually one of the most potent anti-inflammatories.¹
• Mobilizing all my joints gets the stiffness out of my body and hydrates the tissues that have poor blood supply. Since doing daily CARs I wake up with less "old man" feeling.
• Daily incantations remind me of why I practice and helps put me in a powerful state to tackle my day, and create momentum toward my most important goals.
• Being outside just feels good. Enough said.

Of course, you don't have to do this whole practice, and some days I don't.If I'm strapped for time, I will do just get my bare feet on the ground, shake a little and do the joint rotations.The point is to do it every damn day. So just do whatever you can, however you can.Pro tip: Find a trigger that helps you anchor this habit. This is basically just something you already do each morning, that will remind you to install your new habit. You make it easier because you're essentially piggybacking off of something that requires no current effort.For some, that might be doing shaking and joint rotations after your morning cup of coffee. For me, it's taking my dog out to the bathroom in the morning.I hope this helps you uncage and awaken the primal beast within you.Let me know how it goes!

Over to you: What's your morning routine like? Do you have one?

If so, what is it? If not, why not start one now?

Sources:1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3265077/

How to Cure Your Nature Deficit Disorder

There are only two things that never fail to put me in a great mood:The first one is obvious: sex. Even "okay sex" is still sex.The second is time in nature.It makes sense when you think about it. Both are highly immersive experiences that pull you out of time, and its myriad problems, and drop you into the present moment. Both include large amounts of pleasurable and fascinating stimuli.They're also both things every human could probably do with a bit more of.But present moment, now-inducing experience is not even the best part about time spent in nature. So, if you think you just "don't have time" go outside, or you fail to make it a priority, there's good news:By the time you're done reading this, you won't be able to ignore or put off spending time in nature.To better understand this claim, let's look at why this habit is so powerful. Time in the nature or the wild is what author Charles Duhigg of The Power of Habit refers to as a Keystone Habit.In other words, it's a habit that has a domino effect on many other habits.Here's just a small handful of the benefits of nature exposure (it's almost like we evolved for it, funny idea, yeah?)

• Put you in a more positive mood
• Increase your ability to focus ¹
• Help combat depression and ADD ²
• Help you think creatively
• Boosts your levels of Vitamin D
• Bolster your resilience to changes in temperature
• Expose you to a wider variety of movement challenges that keep your body strong and healthy
• And even makes you a nicer person (yes seriously) ¹

When you add up all those things it's easy to see why spending more time in nature is when one of the most important habits you can develop.The best part though is that it's completely FREE, and therefore available to EVERYONE.

“We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” —Thoreau

So, how do you know if you have a deficit of nature in your life? And what exactly is "Nature Deficit Disorder" anyway?The term was coined by author Richard Louv. He describes it as such:

"Nature-deficit disorder is not a formal diagnosis, but a way to describe the psychological, physical and cognitive costs of human alienation from nature, particularly for children in their vulnerable developing years."

You might have NDD if...

• You feel like an alien on your own planet
• You often find yourself feeling sad in the middle of the day for no apparent reason
• You get the classic melting screen face at the end of the workday, yet keep glued to it anyway
• You have tons of friends on Facebook and Twitter, yet you feel very isolated and alone
• You feel like your life, and in particular, your exercise routine has lost excitement and is too predictable
• You're afraid of being outside, touching things, or in general going off any premade paths
• You find yourself pacing back and forth in your apartment like a caged animal

If that sounds like you, don't worry. You are not alone. I used to feel this way... until I decided to finally do something about it. 

How I've been curing my own case of NDD

I swear it wasn't always this way...As a kid I never had any trouble getting outside. Sure, video games were cool, but so was riding my bike, playing in the creek and trying to build tree forts.Getting older, it's easy to think that I just don't have the time to get outside, or that it's too cold/wet/whatever.These are all just excuses, of course. I sometimes spend hours on pointless email checking, social media or watching MMA videos on youtube. And yeah, the weather is a real thing, but that's what gear is made for. As a friend of mine likes to say "there's no bad weather, just bad gear."So, what I've been doing is tricking myself into thinking that nature time is productive, and making it a part of my daily practice.Particularly, I've done three main things to force and even trick myself into getting outside:

1. Making a walk a part of my morning ritual. This way it's automatic and not left to chance. Once the habit is built up for at least 30 days, you're pretty much riding on autopilot.
2. Using Productive Meditation to trick myself into getting outside as a way of getting shit done. This is something I picked up from the ever-inspiring Cal Newport. The idea is simple: pick a well defined problem or project you need to get clarity on. For me this might be outlining a blog post, or figuring out the narrative for a product I'm working on. Set a time you'll walk or move outside for, and then discipline yourself to continually return back to the core problem or question, even as your minds drifts or wanders. This is similar to the way you return to your breath in meditation.
3. Replace gym time with outdoor training. I mean, why the fuck not? If I'm going to exercise, I might as well reap the benefits of fresh air, anti-fragility and mood improvement. Plus, with the gymnastic rings I always have a portable tool for strength training, pretty much anywhere.

The key I've found is to not try to find more time to get outside, but to embed time outside into the things you're already doing.

“Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so called, as the building of houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap.” —Thoreau

So, how can you get more time outside and cure your own NDD?

Simple ways you can cure NDD now:

• Make contact with the earth part of your morning ritual. Use the cue of making your morning beverage to get outside and put your feet on the ground before you start your day.
• Find a walking partner. Nature time can be as simple as a morning walk with a walking partner. Find a friend that's willing to walk with you every day, the wilder the better, but parks are great too. No excuses if you don't have time to get on the trail.
• Get megadoses. Take regular "megadoses" by going out for multiple day trips to the coast, the forest or the mountains. Cabin, tent or tarp under the sky, just get out however you can.
• Practice the art of productive meditation (trick yourself to get outside by using nature to make you more productive)
• Take meetings, calls, or interviews outside. Sure, there will be some noise, but it beats the stale air of an office.
• Make your education time your movement time. Take your audiobooks or podcasts outdoors while you walk, run, bike and play.
• Make nature time your "gym time" -- climb trees, crawl around like an animal, balance on stuff, etc. If you want to throw in some serious strength training, hang up a pair of rings on a tree.
• Use Pomodoros to remind yourself to take movement breaks. 25 minutes of focused work, five minutes of movement outside. You'll also increase your focus at work. You can download this simple app to make it easy.
• Just do whatever you can. If all else fails, go out in your yard and just hold a squat for a couple of minutes. If you don't have a yard, fine. Find a patch of grass, or just look up at the sky. Find and hug a tree. Kiss one of your house plants. Just do whatever you can. Everything helps.

The reality is, we didn't get to spending 90% of our waking hours indoors over night. Domestication creeped up on us and before we knew it, the things we thought were advancements actually turned out to cause some serious damage to our health and wellbeing.So, having patience and a progressive transition to outdoor exposure is key. Go easy on yourself. Even 10 minutes of moving outside is a great place to start if you're currently doing zero.

Using technology to undo the damages of technology

I find it very amusing that I'm typing shit into a computer to help inspire and empower you to spend less time on screens.It does bring up an interesting point though. We can use technology to reverse and undo some of the damage it's caused. We can use it to connect with likeminded folks and find local training partners. We can set reminders on our phones to get up and move. And we can even block ourselves from using screens with clever apps so we aren't slaves to our devices.Technology is amazing. I love it. I love connecting with you. I've learned so much through the amazing and vast resources of information that have been enabled by it.But we must wield it consciously, lest we become slaves to it.If not, we aren't the owners of the devices. The devices end up owning us.Please share your thoughts: What's your biggest struggle with getting outdoors? Are there any strategies that have really worked for you?Leave a comment and share with the tribe so we can all benefit from it.

---

Sources:

1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448497/2. http://www.pnas.org/content/112/28/8567.abstract3. Study: Weinstein, N., Przybylski, A. K., & Ryan, R. M. (2009). “Can nature make us more caring? Effects of immersion in nature on intrinsic aspirations and generosity.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 1315-1329.

photo courtesy of chancellor

How I Get Strong with Gymnastic Rings (Rings One Review)

A photo posted by Jonathan Mead (@jonathanmead) on Jan 22, 2016 at 10:57am PST

Personally, I like to train outdoors as much as possible, and in the forest if I can.The fresh, oxygen-rich air is enlivening.There are no distractions (especially if there's no service). It's just you and the movement.Standard american gyms make me feel caged. I can sense an almost allergic reaction coming on as I approach them. As soon I leave one, I suddenly feel liberated.Don't get me wrong, I see the value in indoor spaces for training, but my heart and soul longs to be moving in the wide open spaces of the wild.Which brings us to a conundrum, how can you do strength training outdoors?Sure, there are many movements that can be done without the presence of any equipment. But often the stimulus becomes too weak once you've adapted.On the flipside, it's simply not practically to lug around a bunch of weights or machines with you everywhere you go.This is why I love the gymnastic rings.I was introduced to them in 2008 by my martial arts teacher. He brought them to the park to use as part of a conditioning circuit he often ended our classes with. Almost immediately, as if I'd been reunited with a long lost friend, I felt a deep kinship to this unwieldly and torturous apparatus.Soon my teacher and two other dedicated students made a habit out of hiking into the San Gabriel mountains (barefoot of course). We'd scan the landscape for a tree with a sturdy looking branch, then mount the rings for a strength training session. Hearing the stream bubbling past, feeling the earth under our feet, I had a curious primordial feeling that this wasn't much different than the way our warrior ancestors trained. Maybe they didn't use gymnastic rings, but they were surely out in the wild, training and practicing their skills to hone their warrior abilities.Knowing this made my heart sing.Unfortunately when I moved to Oregon it became hard for me on hikes to find trees with branches low enough to hang the rings on. The lowest branches in the forest are often 20 to 30 feet from the ground.Luckily though, I've recently found some trails that have great spots for hanging rings. Maybe even the perfect spot. So, I've been getting more ring time in the wild.Practicing more cold exposure this winter has also made me more resilient to going out to train, even when the weather would rather make me want to bundle up next to a roaring fire.

Here's some of what I've been doing on the rings:

Obviously the portability of the rings is a huge plus. They fit nicely in a small backpack. Or you can just carry them in your hands, like my teacher often did.

But there are even more awesome benefits to rings training:

• The adjustable height allows you to easily scale exercise difficulty. Pushups on the rings too hard? Try elevating them to hip or nipple height and you'll find a variation you can do.
• The instability makes any exercise you could do on the ground instantly harder.
• You can easily chain movements together to create movement flows.
• They make you feel like a total badass.

In the early days while my training with the rings was fun and challenging, it was largely an unfocused, haphazard affair.I dreamed of being able to achieve things like the muscleup, superman and higher level movements. But just throwing myself at the movement over and over wasn't getting me anywhere.I tried books and forums like gymnastic bodies, but couldn't figure out a clear, progressive program for beginners.Then, luckily I stumbled upon GMB. Their rings program had just come out and I was all over it.The trail, my garage and my back porch became my strength laboratories. Now guided by the intelligence of a smart program, and the helpful coaching of friendly GMB coaches, I was actually seeing progress.As I said above, I recently fell back in love with training with the rings. I think they're an amazing tool. However, I see almost everyone make the same mistake with the rings:They just blindly start "doing stuff."

Don't make the common, dumb mistake with the rings

Basically, they're making the same, dumb mistake I did. Find something you think is cool, and just keep trying it, hoping you'll get better by sheer volume of attempts.While this might work with some things, it's a dangerous gamble on the rings. If you're not strong enough and jump into an advanced move, you will often pay with elbow and shoulder injuries (ehem, like I did).Because of the brutal nature of the rings, it's absolutely critical that you follow a well thought out, and progressive program that can be tailored to where you are starting. Just because you see someone doing an iron cross on Youtube, doesn't mean you are ready to jump in and try it. What you don't see is the the thousands of ring pushups they did and various other progressions for years before they even begin approaching a move like the iron cross.So, with all that said, if you are interested in getting started with the rings, do yourself a favor and check out GMB's Rings One program (they also have an advanced Rings Two for those with a solid foundation on the rings).Start your journey on The RingsThis is what I used, and I know it works.And if you don't have a pair of rings yet, I highly recommend the wood rings from Rogue. I've owned several pairs over the years, and these are the best I've found.That's it guys. Get out outside, and train wildly!P.S. Soon I'll be back with a guide to warming up for the rings, and a basic beginner workout you can do to get started. So, stay tuned for that. Or if you're ready to jump in, check out Rings One from GMB.They have a promo going for the next couple of days where you'll get a free shoulder mobility course, and a rings conditioning circuit.Learn more about Rings OneFull disclosure: If you click on the link above and purchase GMB's program, I will get a cut. This helps me make more awesome videos and tutorials like this for you. I only promote products I've personally used and tested, so you can be sure they're top notch. Thanks for helping out!

GMB Elements and the Missing Pieces for Epic Movement

Note: This is a follow-up to this post about how to reverse the damage of sitting and human domestication.It took a lot of damage to get it through my thick skull.Big, hard heads are great for absorbing punishment, but not so great at learning how to do things smarter."Just go for it!"Doesn't that ring a bell?You're in a class and you want other people to see how badass you are. You get excited about a youtube video, and like Nike, you just want to do it!"Oops. Umm, something doesn't feel good. Owww, what is that?"Guess it wasn't as easy as you thought it would be.So, you lick your shoulder/knee/ankle wounds and retreat back into your pain cave with your tail between your legs."What did I do wrong?" you wonder.What you, I and 90% of the human population, did wrong is that we tried to skip vital steps along the process. Each of those steps would have formed a stronger base in our foundation, but since those bricks were never laid, collapse is the only possible outcome.

One way ticket to back to the basics, courtesy of the Welcome to Reality Foundation

I'm going to tell you the unsexy, raw truth about high level movement ability:If you want to move in an epic way, you have to go back to the beginning. Probably a lot further back than you'd like.The deeper the foundation, the higher your building of movement can be built. The more mastery you have over the most basic elements of movement, the greater potential you unlock further in the game.Let's take for instance a simple squat. At face value, it looks like a basic, simple, nothing-to-see-here-move-along type of movement. But in reality, a squat has much more going on than meets the eye.The squat is not only an important "elemental" position in itself, but it's the link in between many other movements.Going from seated on the ground to standing might easily involve a squat. Bending over to pick something up often goes through a squat pattern. Jumping or even climbing usually involves some kind of squatting motion as well.If there is a breakdown in your squat, none of these other movements are likely to go well.Adding load, complexity or speed to this movement is only accelerating the inevitability of collapse in the system.The distance you go with your development will always be determined how much time you spend on the basic, foundational elements.

What are the obvious things everyone overlooks?

We have a nasty habit of making assumptions and taking certain things for granted. It's all too easy to overlook the most obvious things when studying a subject.We pay the price for this when stretching to higher levels of movement capability.If you really want to go back and master the foundational elements of movement, you'll go beyond how to squat, pullup or pushup.You'll begin investigating the deeper levels, like:

• Awareness of your relationship to gravity
• Awareness of your whole body
• Moving from your center

And then you might be ready for:

• How to crawl
• How to get up from the ground
• How to squat
• How to stand
• And so on...

WTF, you might be thinking. "I already went through that awkward learning how to use my body period. Of course I know how to crawl and stand. Gravity is automatic and everyone feels their body. Only a moron would waste time with these things. Bring on the handstand pushups!!!"This might be true, if you never stopped doing all of these things, and hadn't sat in chairs for the majority of your life.Chances are you have some joint issues, some overly tight muscles, and a few imbalances. Some of these were probably brought on by injury, others by repetitive motion or just sitting too damn much.Going back to the foundations helps us relearn how to use our bodies efficiently and consciously. Through increased awareness, we're better able to figure out what we need to do to restore balance and integrity to our entire system.Really what we're after is creating a base of flexibility, strength and joint integrity that will serve our exploration of movement.This is not exhaustive, but just a few of the most important things I've done to rebuild strong, mobile, happy joints.

1. Return to your home, homo sapien

It's amazing how little contact most of us have to the ground these days.The shoes we wear keep a continuous buffer between our feet and the earth beneath us. Our furniture keeps our asses at a safe distance from the dirty, filthy floor.As kids we're encouraged to quickly grow out of this primitive habit.But at what cost?By putting so much distance between us and the earth, we tend to become disconnected from it. We forget that the ground underneath us is solid, and here to support us. We lose touch with our feet, the very base of our bodies.Without a close relationship to our base and the ground — no surprise here — we are already at a disadvantage with any movement that involves either (which means, pretty much everything).Taking off your shoes and spreading your toes is a good start. Actually sitting on the ground, a rock or even a cushion on the floor is the next step.Try feeling the weight of your body through the support points of your feet as you stand, your butt bones as you sit and your spine as you lay on the ground.It's one thing to know it, it's a whole other to feel it every moment.At it's most basic level, this is it. If there's one thing you can count on it's the ground... except if you're above a sinkhole or something. That would definitely suck.

2. Take back control of your joints

If you don't have segmental control over each joint, the ability to move it through its full range of motion, how are you going to expect movement that involve multiple joints to go well?If one joint in a movement is compromised, the other joints included will be forced to take on more work, causing further problems.Learning to control each joint through its normal range is key to waking up your connection to each area of your body, as well as identifying any areas that might need some rehab or healing done.I've taken the advice of Dr. Andreo Spina and made a morning practice of Controlled Articular Rotations, or CARs for short. What the hell does that mean? It's simply taking the time to move each joint slowly through its range of motion after a long night of not moving.Here's what they look like:

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3. Get up, get up, get up and get down

Getting up and down off the floor.You can see it in your WOD now...1. Get up and down from the floor - 10min AMRAPYeah, probably not happening any time soon. But if you can't decently get up and down from the ground —without your hands, momentum or compromising good posture — then you have some serious weak links in your movement ability as a human.In a study on risk of mortality, researchers found that those who couldn't get up off the floor without use of their hands were six times more likely to die than those who could. This is serious stuff.I like playing with getting up and down from the floor, especially since a lot of the times I'm working from my laptop on the floor anyway. Here are just a few of the possibilities:

4. Crawl like a (human) animal

I'm a big fan of the bear, frogger and monkey crawling patterns. I think they're great for establishing a baseline of strength, flexibility and body control.But what you might have forgotten is that these aren't just animal patterns, they're human patterns! The bear resembles a baby mid-crawl preparing to get up. The monkey looks a lot like squatting on the ground playing in the dirt. And the frogger easily looks like a kid attempting a headstand.Crawling is the precursor to standing and walking, so it makes sense to learn how to do these again. Plus, playing on the ground is just fun. I'll bear crawl down the hallway when I'm playing with my dog, or walk through the living room like a monkey. It's a fun way to get more "practice" in without making it into a thing.These compound movements are great for practicing total body awareness leading to greater skill and motor control.

5. Mobility games

I like to do mobility type stuff without actually working directly on my mobility. It's a great way of cheating the system and doing mobility without "doing mobility."What do I mean by mobility games? I mean any game that involves a wide degree of mobility.Hacky sack is a great way to get more hip mobility without trying to. The Trees Are on Fire is a great game for upper body mobility.I'm sure you can think of more.

6. Use squatting, crawling and playing in every day life

Woah, imagine that. Actually using movement to get things done, rather than it just being some isolated drill you practice in a gym? Preposterous! No, it's actually pretty simple when you think about it.I mean, squatting and moving around on the floor can easily happen if you let it while you're..

• putting away dishes
• sweeping or mopping the floor
• folding laundry
• playing with your dog/kid
• watching tv
• brushing your teeth

          This is a very half-assed list I just ran off the top of my head. I'm sure you can think of a thousand other ways if you just start exploring and being more mindful of how you move throughout your day.The more you move well throughout the day, in continually novel ways, with good mechanics, the more you will master the basic elements.

A video posted by Jonathan Mead (@jonathanmead) on Oct 22, 2015 at 1:03pm PDT

Becoming mindful of every moment you're moving and how you're holding yourself is the ultimate goal, and where you'll really find deep transformation of your body.It can start with closing the cabinets with your feet or brushing your teeth.

7. Explore your body, be in the mo(ve)ment and enjoy the journey

My buddy "Tom Mountjoy likes to say "Be In the Movement."I love this. It seems so obvious, to just be there, in the movement, completely absorbed and immersed in what you're doing.When the separation between you and the movement disappears, something foundational shifts. Being in the movement you are conscious and alive as motion.You are not just thinking about the movement and going through some motions. You are fully immersed, and on a great day the boundary between mover and movement seems to dissolve.The more you relax into movement, the more you slow down, move with greater quality, and most importantly, enjoy the journey.Whether you're reclaiming the lost elements of movements, or reaching towards epic feats of skill, the journey is what matters most.Building a great foundation is a process that requires patience and is always evolving. The more you venture down the rabbit hole, the further you might find that it goes.

Increasing your foundation with the elements = longevity and preparation for advanced skills

When you build a strong base, you're setting yourself up for healthy, functional joints that you can rely on throughout your life.What it requires is that you slow down and stop trying to "get there."You are exactly where you need to be right here, right now. And this moment is the only moment you can affect any change from. If you're not in your body now and you're just trying to get somewhere else, you have very little power to transform what is.When you're actually in relationship and present to what is (embodied), you can begin to work with it.In other words, freaking enjoy the body you have and what it can do. Be grateful for every single articulation you're capable of right now.[clickToTweet tweet="Start feeling the pleasure of movement itself." quote="Start feeling the pleasure of movement itself."]

Wait, you don't have to do this blindly

Reclaiming a strong foundation of movement ability can feel like a seriously daunting task. After all, what I just covered in this post is a lot, and that was me holding back a considerable amount.How do you put "returning to the elements" thing into practice, and more importantly, how the hell do you find your weak links and what you need to work on the most?For that, I recommend my friends at GMB's course, Elements. Shocked by the name? It's no surprise that they built this course because of a common need for people to get back to the fundamentals of strength, flexibility and skill.Here's what Elements does:

• Helps you diagnose your weaknesses in mobility and strength
• Builds confidence through basic crawling patterns
• Helps you regain lost ranges of motion and skill in your body
• Gives you a structure for exploring creativity and flow within your movement

This is just a bit of me playing around with some of the patterns in Elements:Of course you can try to do your own thing and search around on Youtube for endlessly, but you’re not going to get the quality you would investing a few bucks into a quality program.If you’re tired of being confused about the proper foundations, and want to start actually seeing results, this is the way to go. I've used many of their programs to get great results in my training, which is why I'm proud to be an affiliate for them.Check out Elements nowP.S. You might also like this post on how I went from a stiff board to a supple beast in 10 months.P.P.S. Remember, your body is your own, and only you can claim total responsibility for it. Research and learn about how to maintain and care for your vehicle, you don't get another one.Full disclosure: If you click on the link above and purchase GMB's program, I will get a cut. This helps me make more awesome videos and tutorials like this for you. I only promote products I've personally used and tested, so you can be sure they're top notch. Thanks for helping out!

How to Reverse the Damage of Sitting and Reclaim Your Physical Freedom

It's easy to put off the debt incurred from not moving. You don't feel it now so you keep your shoulders hunched and plug away.

You'll move your body later.

If you do this long enough, "later" will come crashing down on you in the form of herniated discs, knee replacements and loss of basic human function.

So, what the hell is movement debt and why is it the most important thing you're not thinking about?

Allow me to explain...

We're all familiar with sleep debt.

If you don't sleep enough one night, you'll feel it, but generally you can still get by. Cut your sleep for more than a few days in a row, however, and it starts to catch up with you. Ignoring it and powering through becomes much, much harder.

Movement debt works the same way.

If you don't move much for a day, you'll feel the stiffness and tension, but you can usually shrug it off and barrel through. Before long though, the tension begins to mount. Your joints, which require movement in order to regenerate, become cranky and aching.

You might wake up after a great night of sleep, yet your body begins pleading for movement by way the way your joints feel: "get moving, I need to articulate or I'm going to calcify!"

But what do most of us do? We make our coffee and plop down on the computer to begin another day of stationary life. Mostly in the form of sitting.

Over time domestication of the human has led to narrow and narrower movement demand. Agriculture made work predictable and repetitive and opened up the ability for division of labor and specialization.

The industrial revolution led us further into repetitive molds, and the information age has confined us mostly to sitting in right angles, working in boxes on bright, shiny rectangles.

Technology has done many great things for us (fridges and grocery stores are pretty freaking sweet), but it's mostly wreaked havoc on our bodies.

Each day the movement debt mounts. Each day we can either undo some of the damage of sitting, or we can defer the debt to be repaid in the future, perhaps to the point that a total collapse of the system ensues.

(The irony is not lost on me that I'm sitting even as I'm typing this. Time to get up and move!)

So, how do we undo the damage caused by domestication, mostly in the form of excessive sitting?

Step 1: Stop the damage of sitting

I know what you're thinking. "I just need to finally get a standing desk and I'll solve this sitting bullshit once and for all."

Now, don't get me wrong, mixing up sitting with standing can definitely be beneficial, but what most people do is replace one static position with another.

A friend of mine told me recently that while he's working standing his Apple watch will alert him to get up and stand because he's been so still it thinks he's actually been sitting the whole time!

So, the enemy is not too much sitting, and it's not too much standing either. The enemy is prolonged holding of static postures.

Learning how to align yourself better while sitting or standing is where we need to start, then we'll work on varying your habitual position.

How to have better alignment while sitting:

• Make sure your feet are on the ground, toes pointing straight ahead
• Untuck your pelvis by making sure there's a slight arch in your lower back
• Relax your ribcage, let it drop down
• Release your shoulders down (don't pull them, simply let them fall)
• Lift your chin
• Relax your jaw
• Let your eyes gaze down at the monitor without tilting your head

Standing? Here's how to improve your alignment:

• Place your feet hip distance apart, toes pointing straight ahead
• Screw your feet into the ground as if you're standing on big metal plates
• Bring your hips to neutral
• Let your ribcage fall toward your hips
• Lift your chest
• Relax your jaw and face
• Look down at the monitor with your eyes, not your neck

All right, now that your alignment isn't throwing your whole body off kilter, it's time to...

Step 2: Sit and stand weirder

How many ways can you think of to sit and stand? Here's just a few...

(image source: Wiley)

Most people are incredibly unimaginative with the way they sit. This isn't surprising, since we're told in school to "sit still and sit up straight!"

We're not told to continually move while sitting and regularly change our position, to save our joints and tissues from atrophy and inevitable collapse (wouldn't that be nice?!).

Getting into the habit of changing your position will take time, but it's a habit worth building. I mean, this is your body we're talking about here. If you can't move, what good is all the wealth in the world?

So, sit/stand moving is what we're after.

Here are some ways you can creatively change your position while sitting:

And if you stand while you work, here's how you can move more standing:

Step 3: Undo the damage of sitting (static) living

If you're not using pomodoros for your work already, I highly recommend that you start right now. They're the best way I know of to both increase your productivity and ensure that you get up and move your body.

Changing our positions will help undo stop the damage, but it's not enough on its own. We must act to undo and pay back the movement debt we've incurred. Fortunately for us this debt usually manifests itself in some pretty predictable patterns.

I recommend you get the pomodoro app for your smart phone and begin using it immediately. The way it works is you focus for 25 minutes, then take a break for 5 minutes. It helps helps you to be fully on when you're on, and then take a step back and recharge your brain.

What better way to do that then spend those five minutes getting some movement nutrition?

Now, big flashing warning for those of you that don't think you have the time for breaks.

Please excuse my intensity around this matter.

THIS IS AN EMERGENCY. THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE. YOUR BODY IS DECAYING AND ATROPHYING AS WE SPEAK. HIP AND KNEE REPLACEMENTS ARE ON THE HORIZON UNLESS YOU DO SOMETHING NOW. CRIPPLING BACK PAIN THAT DISABLES YOU FROM DOING SIMPLE, DAILY TASKS IS EMINENT UNLESS YOU TAKE IMMEDIATE, SERIOUS ACTION!

Okay, rant over.

Seriously though, if you don't think you have time for breaks or you don't think that your work will "let you" (what are you, a six year old?) just tell them that you have to go to the bathroom. NO ONE can stop you from going to the bathroom. Tell them you have a serious medical condition, and you got the evolutionary short stick, since your bladder is the size of a walnut. :)

Do whatever you need to do to make taking movement breaks a priority. Be the weirdo moving around in the office (your life depends on it!) and take breaks to go outside. Do it however you can, with whatever you've got.

Now, what are you actually going to do on your movement breaks? I'm glad you asked.

We want to focus on movements that counteract excessive sitting and computer work.

What are the common problems we see with excessive sitting?

• Hunched upper back
• Rounded shoulders and head jutting (not sexy)
• Tight hip flexors
• Tight hamstrings and calves

Here's a few that you can begin doing immediately, wherever you are to undo the damage:

Step 4: Return to the elements of primal movement

Of course, undoing the destruction of sitting is only really where you begin.

If you're serious about reclaiming your primal badassity that is your human birthright you'll begin exploring the elements of human movement.

My recommendation is to create a daily movement practice of ground-based movement, hanging, squatting, lunging and moving all your joints through their full range of motion.

Don't think you have time?

See how this busy doctor unlocked her physical potential.

Bonus: How to use your laptop pain free

Here's a quick video I made for you on how to use your laptop with better posture at home or work.

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chair photo courtesy of fotothing