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Welcome back to the Fit to Work Podcast! I’m Shannon, and today I’m going to explain why sitting on the couch and hitting snooze are essential parts of your fitness routine. Ok, I can already hear you leaning in, so let’s go!
Movement is essential. We all know this. I talk about it constantly, and you’ve almost definitely had one of those zero-action days. You know the kind, where you can’t figure out why you feel so blah the next morning until noon, when you remember you watched six episodes of Alias back to back yesterday and only got up to bring your dinner to the couch. Movement keeps our skeletons and muscles loose and luxurious, it keeps our joints moving well and our blood and digestion processes in sync.
There’s also such a thing as too much movement. We know the extremes of this. Whether it’s running a 10 k without adequate prep (been there done that…multiple times), trying some fancy fitness move you saw a professional athlete do on TikTok, or putting in an all-day shopping session at that mall the size of a small country…when we overdo it, we feel it.
Our bodies need movement and they also need rest. Additionally, they need gradual build up to more extreme movement and longer recovery after intense periods. But what about the examples that don’t fit into this framework?
What about the days more akin to the Alias marathon? Sure, the picture I just painted makes this sound like a completely negative practice, but is it really?
Do we have to be constantly conscious of how our body position is serving us? Does every spare moment need to be filled with something beneficial, like pogo hops while we wait for the water to boil or deep squats while we warm up our burrito?
I vote no, and I often worry, with all my focus on movement, that this vote might be a surprise to the avid listener of this podcast or reader of the Fit to Work newsletter. I tout movement and mindful recovery heavily because it’s not our default anymore. If everyone in my network, my whole target audience, was composed of high-performance athletes who push themselves to injury on a seasonal basis, I’d basically be creating the opposite podcast.
But the average person, especially the average desk worker, doesn’t overdo movement and active recovery. They overdo motionlessness. And I want to be clear: this goes for me too! Just because I know what’s better and teach fitness professionally does not mean I fall into that high-performance camp. Some days, it just makes me feel guiltier for not moving more.
My point is, I want people to work on movement habits because those are the habits that fall to the wayside in our hectic lives packed with working overtime, picking up the kids from school, making dinner, prepping the week’s lunches, squeezing in a few chapters of a good book, and getting enough sleep. Of course “extras” like movement fall to the wayside. My goal is to help people those extras into non-negotiable habits, however small or brief they need to be.
But that doesn’t mean feeling like a failure every time you flop onto the couch to watch Sydney Bristow kick some serious ass (come to think of it, my choice of TV heroines might be feeding my guilt…). Movement and active recovery are important but so are full-flop moments. Even the odd full-flop day. Sure, propping yourself awkwardly on the couch for five hours isn’t really benefitting you physically. But turning off your brain for a few hours or a weekend can definitely benefit you mentally. I’d probably draw the line at an hour of mindless doomscrolling, but a nostalgic show or a frivolous (or even smutty) novel, or a video game that doesn’t require any braining beyond hand eye coordination? Do it up!
Maybe take some breaks to blink and stretch. But ultimately doing “nothing” one weekend isn’t going to derail your fitness or nutrition goals. Really, it’s not.
Sustainable fitness is about figuring out what fits in your life. It’s also about allowing “what fits” to shift just like the seasons of your life shift. It’s not about doing exactly the healthiest thing 100% of the time. But even if it was, a do-nothing day doesn’t necessarily break that streak.
Do your fitness—your yoga, strength training, walking, movement snacks. Do your recoveries—mindfulness, sleep, stretching, mobility. And do your brain flops. It’s all part of a well-rounded, holistically healthy, long-term sustainable routine.
And remember. Whatever that routine looks like for you right now: you’ve got this.
What is your favourite way to do nothing? Drop me a line at shannon@lokifit.com to share. I’d love to include a round up of flop-day recommendations in a future newsletter.