Long ago I agreed to help Sarah move into her new apartment, however I didn’t realize the date was today until ummm today. So I decided it would be great to try and turn it into a workout, i.e. is moving your apartment a legitimate form of exercise? I wasn’t sure if I could count it as a workout or not but I remember the last time I moved, my legs were sore for three days so I was excited to try out this alternative form of exercise.
The agreement was that she would pack up everything so it was ready to go when I came over after work and that I would help physically move it to her new house. In an attempt to get my heart rate pumping and to do the move as fast as possible I ran up and down the stairs carrying boxes, suitcases, and other random odds and ends. I worked up a good sweat but I was continually trying to get my heart rate higher. It stayed pretty low around 110 for most of the time despite sprinting a flight of stairs. Once we got a van loaded up I decided to run the quarter mile to her new apartment while she drove the van. I did this two minute run pretty hard and raised my heart rate up to a max of 153 so by the time we were ready to unload the stuff into her new place I was in a full out sweat.
Successfully helped move apartments, this is me organizing some boxes in the basement.
No one really likes moving, quite frankly it sucks a lot. However, I found that by turning it into a fitness game it was actually kind of fun AND it only took an hour to do it. If I hadn’t been hustling so hard it might have taken double that time and we certainly would have been complaining throughout most of it.
All in all it was a 65 minute “workout” with an average heart rate of 109. I was certainly sweating but it didn’t feel like much of a workout because I wasn’t too tired at the end of it, I definitely could have still gone to the gym or gone for a run afterward. Therefore, it was pretty clear that I wasn’t performing at a high level athletically or aerobically. So while I wouldn’t use this workout to train for a half marathon or a mountainous expedition, I totally recommend trying to turn what is usually a negative experience into an exercise or a game; it helped to pass the time, it put us in good moods, and we ended up getting a good sweat out of it which is always a positive thing.