Burn Before Reading
Posted on: May 3, 2016
Confession time. I spent most of the first half-century of my life sitting around in chairs reading books.
Well, I love books. My only regret, really, is that thanks to all the sitting I’ve done over the years, my quads have become totally jacked, my glutes are retarded, and my pelvis is virtually frozen in an anterior tilt. Arg! This rotten movement pattern screws with my dancing and gives me a sore back, so I’m trying to fix it.
And I’ve come up with this plan. I call it “Burn Before Reading.” Because you see, while I regret that my rear end has become developmentally-delayed, I’m not willing to give up on reading altogether. Not hardly. So I have this little deal with myself. Whenever I want to sit down and read a book, I earn it by doing a behind-friendly workout first. Then when I do sit down, I try to adopt reading positions that don’t reinforce my crummy alignment patterns. That seems fair, right?
(Clearly, I’m not a doctor or trainer or anything, so I accept no responsibility if you follow my plan here and end up hurting yourself. Maybe you can just use my idea to come up with your own plan.)
Required for this workout: some lightly weighted object, a chair or wall to hang onto for balance if necessary, stretchy pants, and about 10 extra minutes before you want to sit down and read. Come on, doesn’t your behind deserve 10 minutes of your time? Oh, and also the book you want to read and some sort of book holder (I can recommend a good one if you don’t have this.)
In the interest of brevity I’m not going to go into detail about each of these exercises, I think they’re pretty straightforward, but if any are mysterious to you, by all means comment and I’ll explain further.
Warmup
- Forward and back leg swings with each leg
- Side to side leg swings with each leg
- Forward hip rotations with each leg
- Backward hip rotations with each leg
- Jog in place
- Hamstring stretches (gently!)
- Alternating side lunges
- Wide plies
- Any other stretches that feel nice
Strengthen – 10 or so each, 2 or 3 times through series
- Wide weighted squats
- Weighted side lunges
- Weighted rear lunges (be sure to lift front toes and contract glutes)
- Rear leg raises
- Side leg raises
Now you get to read! BUT you have to sit on the floor with your book in a book holder. Fidget through the following stretches and other postures, moving your book holder around as necessary. Only do the ones that feel nice, stay in each position only as long as you want to, and repeat until you find out whodunnit.
(If you think this is a really weird way to read, remember that the following “stretches” are just how we all used to sit around playing, coloring and reading when we were little. Your body knows how to do this.)
Seated Stretches
- Butterfly
- Half forward bend with each leg
- Half straddle stretch with each leg
- Full straddle stretch
- Firelog pose with each leg
- Pigeon pose on each side
- Lizard pose on each side
- Frog pose or wide child’s pose
- Half frog pose on each side
Other Postures
- Lie on stomach
- Lie on one side
- Lie on the other side
- Lie on back
- Full seiza
- Half seiza on each side with other knee up
- Criss-cross applesauce on each side
- Mermaid on each side
- Full hero
- Half hero on each side with other knee up
- Make up some pose that’s totally crazy
- Make up another one
- Make up another one
Bonus Points: If you fill a water bottle when you sit down to read, and keep guzzling on it, you’ll probably have to jump up a million times to go to the bathroom, and this is very good exercise as well:) When you do get up, try to do it a different way each time.
Let me know how this works for you!
The Dancing Bug 
What are your thoughts?