I have been travelling by air a lot recently and everyone
has travel luggage on wheels and its annoying me. For lots of reasons.
If you are one of those people, here’s why:
As you walk along in a busy airport or queue, you drag this
obstacle behind you with no concession for those of us walking around you so it
rolls over my toes, it bangs my legs, plus you and it occupy a space at least 2
humans could fit in.
Next, they are ridiculously huge and fill up the cabin
lockers on the plane so those of us with normal sized ‘hand luggage’ cannot
always find a space for our bags. Your stupid wheely case is rigid and won’t
squash down. Finally, there are so many of you wheely maniacs out there that
our take off is delayed because you can’t all get your luggage into the
overhead lockers and 10 of you have to return your bags to the ground crew to
be stored in the hold – As I write this I am on a plane from Dusseldorf and the
flight was delayed 30 minutes for this exact reason.
So that’s how you inconvenience me, which I grant you is
very selfish of me and truthfully, none of the above really bothers me. What I
do think you don’t realise is how it’s damaging your health.
“How can wheely bag damage my health I hear you cry! I use
it so I don’t strain myself with a heavy bag.”
Well, in an increasingly sedentary lifestyle you are giving
away the opportunity to exercise your grip strength, shoulder and arm strength,
back stability, core and leg muscles. In fact your whole musculoskeletal system
benefits from being put under load and you are making a choice to minimise the
opportunity to load your body. It's the most basic principle of exercise, we
work out, it provides a manageable stress to our muscles, which adapt and we
get stronger.
The Farmers Carry is a well known exercise in the Crossfit world
and it involves picking up a significant weight and carrying it a chosen
distance. A bit like carrying luggage! I imagine there are commuters who wheel
their luggage through the airport not wanting to strain themselves with a heavy
weight who then promptly check into their hotel and go to the gym to pick up
heavy weights to randomly move through the air in the name of working out. Is
that no a bit weird when you think about it?
You get a workout carrying your luggage and its real world –
the health and fitness people is talking a great deal about functional movement
these days, you can’t get more functional then carrying your luggage.
Check out
this definition of functional training on the Virgin Active website:
Functional training does what it says on
the tin - it mirrors everyday actions like reaching, walking, carrying, lifting
and bending so moving becomes that much easier. It’s all down to your body doing
what it was meant to using seven primal moves - push, pull, bend, twist, move, lunge and squat.
The app on my phone says I walked 3 miles today and all of
it carrying 15kgs of luggage – a bonus workout.
Why on earth would you deny yourself the strengthening
effect of carrying your luggage and then complain that your work is so busy you
don’t have time to stay fit, to work out. You have a brilliant opportunity to
work out right there so take it.
Last week I was early for my flight by 3 hours so I walked.
I put in my headphones and I walk 4 miles round the airport carrying my hand
luggage. Virgin Active would charge me £50/month for that.
So, my suggestion is get rid of your wheels, pick up your
bags and get healthy and strong whilst you commute and whilst you’re doing that
you are making space for my bags in the overhead lockers and ensuring our
flights on time.
