I thought that the fulltime RVing lifestyle would be an active lifestyle just by its very nature. I’ve been disappointed. Images of hiking, biking, kayaking, long walks, and playing pickleball have been replaced with the reality of hours spent sitting while driving, sitting while working on the computer, reading, and watching TV. In other words, if you had to make an effort to put exercise into your life before RVing, you’ll still need to put in the effort in the RV lifestyle.
As it turns out, we find it even harder to get exercise than when we lived in a stationary home. At least there, we could map out a 2 mile route and get into a habit of walking every day. In the RV, we’re at a different location all the time. As I wrote in another post, we can use Google Earth to map a walk wherever we are, but that’s very different from knowing where you are and getting into a routine.
10 minutes of Exercise
Lynn Difley writes here on the RV.net Blog about health and fitness for RVers and I’m always reading her posts looking for inspiration. I know, I know, instead of sitting at the computer reading her post, I should be outside walking or something! I especially liked her post last week about how ‘Every Little Bit Helps’. She writes that, even 10 minutes of simple exercise like squats and marching in place, can make a difference in your fitness level. Then, she mentions the key for me … music! If I could push a button and know that exactly 10 minutes of make-you-feel-like-dancin’ music would play, I could do some heart-pumping exercise for 10 minutes. Even in the small space available in our motorhome.
Playing music from your computer
Many of you are way ahead of me when it comes to music and computers. I have yet to join the iPod revolution, or even iTunes. We still have CD’s of music we bought long ago. And those are my favorites. Whenever I feel like listening to music, I usually put a CD in the CD/DVD player of our stereo system. But, I do know how easy it is to copy some of those CDs to my computer so I can listen to them without putting the CD in the player. It’s called ‘Ripping.’ With Windows XP or Vista, if you insert a music CD into the computer’s CD drive, a window will pop up on your screen asking if you want to Rip it. If you click OK, your computer will proceed to copy the songs from the CD to your computer into My Music folder. It only takes a minute. From now on, you can simply click Start and then Music (My Music in XP), you will see a list of all the albums you have ‘Ripped’ and you can choose one to play. Or, you can open the folder for a particular album and just choose one song to play.
Making a Playlist
But, unlike a CD player, you’re not limited to playing a CD, you can choose songs from many CDs and have them play in whatever order you’d like. You will see onscreen exactly how many minutes each song is, making it a piece of cake to put together 10 minutes of foot-stomping, heart-pounding music. “Footloose” by Kenny Loggins is my all-time favorite, can’t-sit-still-while-this-is-playing music. In fact, it played while I was making the screen shot for this article and I had to get up for 3 minutes and 42 seconds. Do I sound out of breath?
So, Footloose is definitely in my playlist. But, it’s only 3:42, I need another 6:18 for a 10 minute workout. So, I pick something a little slower to start out the 10 minutes … a warmup, if you will. Then I find another fast one, and finish up with a slightly slower song for my ‘cool-down.’ Here is my finished playlist:
Actually, I made 3 different 10 minute playlists, so I don’t get bored with just one! Now, any time I pick to do 10 minutes of exercise, I just open My Music, click on one of the playlists, and – now here’s the important part –
GET UP AND MOVE!
Chris Guld, www.GeeksonTour.com