Everyman's Fitness Guide by Infinite Ideas

Author:Infinite Ideas [Infinite Ideas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Infinite Ideas Ltd
Published: 2012-02-10T00:00:00+00:00

11. Bus-stop body builder – you spend five years of your life queuing, so make use of them

The Full Monty showed us how queuing should really be done – twirls, hip thrusts and all – but for those of us who don’t have the moves or the music there are other ways of playing the waiting game to win.

You will spend five years of your life standing in line. That’s not including all that time on the bus/tube spent glaring at the youth of today in the hope that one of them will crack and offer you his seat.

In Britain queuing is the unofficial national sport. It’s being proposed as a relay event to the Olympic Committee and the discipline of Last Orders at the Bar Full Contact Queuing may soon be recognised as a formal martial art. In the meantime you might as well use some of that time on your feet to keep your body on its toes, as it were.

It doesn’t matter if you’re standing in line for stamps, waiting for a bus or queuing for the border at Burkina Faso, you can always use the time to check your neutral stance and tone your torso. First make sure you’re standing with your feet hip-width apart, facing directly forward, knees very slightly bent and your shoulders nice and relaxed but not slumped. Check that your pelvis is in neutral by tilting it forwards and backwards until you find the midpoint. If you genuinely are in line for an immigration official, police checkpoint or anything at all when in prison, then it’s best not to rock your pelvis forward and back too vigorously. You might be sending out the wrong signals.

Without bending your neck forwards, tilt your head so that your chin drops very slightly forward to extend the neck and help elongate the spine.

Breathe deeply. Really deeply, right down into your lower abdomen. Time to contemplate your navel. Focusing on your belly button, use your abdominal muscles to pull it right in towards your spine and up towards your ribs. Keep breathing in deep into the abdomen – it may seem a little strange at first but you should be able to do this without relaxing your stomach muscles. The aim is not to have your stomach clenched like a fist, but instead taut and elastic so that it is flattened but still rises as you draw air into your body.

Now breathe into your stomach, and gently out again for ten long, slow breaths. Of course you don’t actually breathe into your stomach, but that’s how it should feel.

Concentrate on that stomach, on keeping your shoulders relaxed, and on emptying all the air out of your lungs as you breath out.

As well as practising your Pilates stance, toning your tum and taking your mind off the wait, this should also help calm you down and reduce your stress levels. Perfect for when the muppet at the front of the queue walks up to the counter and asks for ‘six first-class stamps … and a complete change of name and nationality, please’.

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