Occupation is important in planning personal fitness routines

The gentleman in the above photo is “working out” by working.  No kidding!  A common mistake made by many “fitness experts”, in my opinion,  is to make the assumption that the “workout club” includes only sedentary workers with desk jobs such as  teachers, accountants, computer programmers, etc.  Too many “experts” are, in my opinion, strictly limiting their audience to this type of sedentary worker.  They are, perhaps unintentionally, excluding the type of worker above whose livelihood involves heavy physical activity with their focus on either a home fitness routine or a gym fitness routine.

I can personally attest to the need to take work-related activities into consideration in planning a personal fitness routine.  As a grad student, my duties involved little physical exertion. Consequently, I spent several hours a week in the gym and running on the track. During the summer months, however, It was necessary for me to supplement my income by doing janitorial work. That activity, if safely performed, provides a considerable amount of physical exercise. Nevertheless, I ignored that fact and continued with the same workout routine that I had followed as a sedentary student. This bad decision on my part  caused overuse of my back muscles and injury to my lower back, resulting in lower back pain. To add to the problem, a campus physician that I went to for help actually recommended to me that I continue with what I was doing and take the prescription muscle relaxer Valium. Luckily, a physiologist friend of mine, also a student at the time,  persuaded me not to do this.  Instead, I simply lightened up my gym activities, and supplemented my work-related janitorial exercise with cardiovascular biking and some moderate weight lifting.

Similarly, a person whose job involves heavy lifting, such as a mason or the roofer pictured above, should also concentrate more on cardiovascular and less on heavy lifting with weights in his/ her routine. I hope to cover this topic in more detail in later posts; but, in the meantime, I would like to get your opinion.  Should the “fitness experts” be taking occupation into consideration in planning fitness workouts, or not?  Does it make sense to recommend that everyone perform the same standard online workout, regardless of the work they do in life?  I look forward to hearing from you on this topic.

Doc Garrett

Photo info: https://www.flickr.com/photos/91173606@N00/5685105479/ Creative commons license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/