~by Haley Lynn Gray~
I’m a firm believer in movement, and my reasons aren’t the usual ones.
I watched my father retire and then, largely, stop moving. The decline was remarkably fast. The human body seems to need a certain amount of movement simply to keep working — and a great many problems get worse without it.
That’s not a fitness argument. It’s an argument about capacity.
Why this belongs on a business site
Because if you run a business, your energy and judgement are the inputs. Not your enthusiasm, not your ideas — your capacity to think clearly and keep going.
Movement is one of the few reliable levers on both. It improves sleep, and sleep is what makes your judgement worth anything. It clears the fog that settles over a long day of decisions. And it’s the difference, over years, between an owner who can still work at sixty and one who can’t.
Owners are particularly prone to skipping it, because the business always presents something more urgent. The problem is that the cost never arrives as a bill you can see — it arrives as a slow decline in what you’re able to do.
What works, in my experience
Schedule it like a meeting. Movement that isn’t in the calendar doesn’t happen — it’s the first thing a busy week eats.
Attach it to something you already do. I walk the dogs. They’re extremely reliable about requiring this, which removes the negotiation entirely.
Make it small enough to survive a bad week. The routine that only works when everything else is calm isn’t a routine.
Count the ordinary movement. Walking, stairs, the school run on foot, gardening. It doesn’t have to be exercise in the gym sense to count.
Do something you don’t dread. The best activity is the one you’ll still be doing in a year.
One honest note
I’m not a doctor, and this isn’t a plan. Bodies differ enormously, and what’s sensible depends on your health, your history and your circumstances — so talk to yours before changing anything significant.
But the broad point stands, and watching my father taught it to me faster than any article could: bodies that stop moving deteriorate quickly, and much of what they lose is hard to get back.
You’re building something that needs you functional for decades. Move accordingly.
