Exercise and Writing Need to Go Hand in Hand

Exercise and Writing need to go hand in hand.

We write when inspiration strikes us. We sit down and we either grab a pen and paper or we tap away at our keyboard. The ideas start to flow and we write… and we write… and we stare off into space… and we write… and we…

The thing is that we forget about time. We sit and sit and sit. And of course write. The writing part is fabulous, the sitting in one position for a long time… not so fabulous. In fact I bet when you go to move, your body starts to complain, immediately. The trouble isn’t so much that we sit for a long time, although do make sure you take regular breaks, it’s what we do when we aren’t writing that matters.

Could it be our hips?

In an interview (for the Women Writes Movement Members) I did with Doree Blake (writer, nutrition and fitness professional), we talked about writing and exercise for writers and authors. As I also have a degree in Kinesiology, I was very keen to talk to her. One of the key things that Doree mentioned was that some of our problems come from our hips being out of alignment. Our body is one big, beautiful functioning unit and when one thing is out of alignment it really can throw off the whole body. And the hips can often be the culprit. 🙂

I’m pretty active.

For years, I have always done stretching, movement, and exercise to ensure my body will allow me to sit and do things like write 55,000 words in 21 days. If you want to know what sore, aching muscles are, I highly recommend doing this. 🙂 My forearms, hands, shoulders and back bothered me by the end of this and that was with ensuring I was following a good exercise program. One thing that I had forgotten though, was that our bodies are a whole and I had been focusing on stretching out my hands and arms and shoulder and doing strengthening exercises, which are all good but my problem probably didn’t solely stem from those areas. As Doree mentioned in the interview I did with her, many of our problems come from problems in our pelvic area. It was one of those light bulb moments. I had been able to sustain what I was doing because of exercising, movement and stretching but I hadn’t been addressing what might be the key issue.

Sitting is okay but…

if we don’t sit properly, have the proper posture, ensure that we are doing exercises, movement and stretching to keep our bodies functioning optimally while away from writing, then we are likely to feel the aches and pains of sitting for long periods.

A book Doree mentioned that she found incredibly helpful is: Pain Free: A Revolutionary Method for Stopping Chronic Pain by Pete Egoscue.

Doree gave a few simple exercises to help with hip realignment, here are a couple of those that you can do regularly:

Lay on your back on the floor and put your legs up on a chair so that your knees are at 90 degrees. Put your arms, palm up, out to your sides. Relax your body.

Wall Sit – it is a really good exercise to realign and strengthen your hips. If you’re like me you kind of groan when you hear this exercise because when I was in school this was used as punishment. Who knew what they were really doing was giving us a great exercise to keep our hips aligned and our bodies healthy. Start with doing it for about 10 seconds. Each day make the time a bit longer. Soon you will be able to do it for a minute and you will see the benefits.

One of the key issues that writers often end up with is wrist pain and for some carpal tunnel syndrome. Our hands, like our body are meant to do a lot of things but they too need to be taken care of. Doree had spoken of Pete Egoscue and his book, so I looked up his website. He has some really great information on his site. And I found this article: 3 Exercises to Eliminate Wrist Pain about realigning shoulders and hips, especially for writers. It has some simple but really good exercises.

“Exercise and Writing do need to go hand in hand.”

Exercise, Movement and Stretching are the key to Writing.