Playing It Safe Is Just About The Most Dangerous Thing You Can Do
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Hello there,
So it’s been quite a crazy few weeks, I’ve been studying for my fitness exams (passed with 92% and 94% first time, hoorah!) teaching extra classes to children as young as 4, to older people of up to 94 and everything was thrown around a bit when I had a bike accident and ended up lying in the middle of the road, thankfully yards in front of a car and not underneath a lorry (that alternate ending is still playing in the back of my mind).
It’s all made me think a lot about safety, especially as one of my participants recently had an injury in my class (only the second in my time teaching).
When things go wrong you go over them in your head, how could I have done it differently? In both of these recent accidents the answer is that we were doing everything right, but sometimes accidents happen. (I say we were doing everything right, I don’t include the driver that swerved in front of me, but that’s another blog.)
There is no such thing as 100% safe fitness, there is no such thing as 100% safe travel, because there is no such thing as 100% safe life.
In fitness we strengthen bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, blood vessels, nerves, brain, senses, lungs, skin, blood and our ability to recover by working them; putting them under stress, pushing beyond our comfort zone. If we don’t use it, we lose it.
This is even more crucial for small children and older people, even though we have to be more careful to avoid accidents. The sad statistics are that this generation of children is now estimated to have a life span 5 years shorter than their parents due to over consumption and inactivity. Even taking into consideration advances in medicine, very little can compensate for poor diet and lack of exercise.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Because it’s “safe”. A child at home, watching television or playing a computer game is safer than outside playing football, even if supervised. They might trip and fall, they might get upset when they lose...
Why eat junk food? Funnily enough I was reading Usain Bolt’s autobiography in which he talks about his famous winning of two gold medals on a diet of 100 chicken nuggets a day. Why was he eating chicken nuggets? Because he was scared of the food in Beijing, he was worried about getting a stomach bug before the race, so chicken nuggets were safe. But that’s 10 days. In his normal training regime Usain doesn’t go near junk food - he loves it, but he cuts it out when he’s getting in shape. You do not build a body like that on chicken nuggets.
I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about dementia and one of the areas of research into dementia is neurobics - continually trying new things; new foods, new sounds, new scents, new visuals, new activities, because these all help create new neural pathways in the brain. Staying safe, living the same routine can make our brains weaker. Taking chances, trying new things is central to staying vibrant for as long as we can.
We go for the safe option because we’re scared, but if we keep choosing the safe option our ability to step out of our comfort zone gets weaker, our instincts become dull because we’re nervous about everything new, and our lives get smaller and smaller.
We want to be safe, so we buy massive cars with side bars to protect us from impact, we buy great computer games so our kids don’t have to go outside, but all this safety is killing us.
80% of adults do not take enough exercise to get basic health benefits.
Let’s put this into context, that’s 5 or more sessions a week of 30 minutes at about a third of our maximum, it’s walking or cycling to work, the shops or even the pub. Just this little bit of exercise will cut massively risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, depression, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, falling, obesity, Type 2 diabetes and overall mortality. The cost of driving is far too high - not just petrol but the cost to our health and on a societal level the NHS.
But... safety is just an illusion. According to The Guardian, of the 134 people killed on Greater London's roads in 2012, 14 were cyclists, 27 were riding a "powered two-wheeler" (motorbikes, moped, scooters), 19 were in cars, 5 were in a taxi, bus or coach, or heavy goods vehicle, 69 were pedestrians.
Sadly the pedestrian, Liam Roche, who was killed in the centre of Wimbledon in April will be part of 2014’s total.
Last week a lot of people questioned whether I was going to carry on cycling and it has been in my mind, especially when I had another near miss, this time with a bus that tried to overtake and then we both got stuck, not able to move forward or back. But as the statistic above, and the statistic that far more pedestrians than cyclists are injured by buses show, I may be safer on the bike. In fact just last week I was crossing the road at a pedestrian crossing in the centre of Wimbledon and, even though the green man was telling me to cross, a bus sped through the crossing closely followed by a white van. This was maybe a hundred yards from the fading flowers in the centre of town where Liam Roche was killed.
I’ve researched online the best tactics for avoiding danger on the road. It seems cycling further out from the curb, not closer, is the way to prevent dangerous overtaking according to experts. As much as my instincts (and the occasional car beep) may urge me to the curb, leaving a good margin on the inside gives me more chance of avoiding hazards like pedestrians stepping into the road, debris (including several hub caps this week) and somewhere to go when a large vehicle does get too close. And, of course, leaving plenty of time so I have the option of pulling over or hanging back when I see a potentially dangerous situation.
We all need to think twice about just what is safe, because those new experiences, like that walk or cycle to work, the new foods you try, the new Zumba Fitness class you take with me(!), the new path you try, might just save your life.
I love this advert from Channel Four because it puts all this into just over a minute.
Much love, Pearl x
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Hello there,
So it’s been quite a crazy few weeks, I’ve been studying for my fitness exams (passed with 92% and 94% first time, hoorah!) teaching extra classes to children as young as 4, to older people of up to 94 and everything was thrown around a bit when I had a bike accident and ended up lying in the middle of the road, thankfully yards in front of a car and not underneath a lorry (that alternate ending is still playing in the back of my mind).
It’s all made me think a lot about safety, especially as one of my participants recently had an injury in my class (only the second in my time teaching).
When things go wrong you go over them in your head, how could I have done it differently? In both of these recent accidents the answer is that we were doing everything right, but sometimes accidents happen. (I say we were doing everything right, I don’t include the driver that swerved in front of me, but that’s another blog.)
There is no such thing as 100% safe fitness, there is no such thing as 100% safe travel, because there is no such thing as 100% safe life.
In fitness we strengthen bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, blood vessels, nerves, brain, senses, lungs, skin, blood and our ability to recover by working them; putting them under stress, pushing beyond our comfort zone. If we don’t use it, we lose it.
This is even more crucial for small children and older people, even though we have to be more careful to avoid accidents. The sad statistics are that this generation of children is now estimated to have a life span 5 years shorter than their parents due to over consumption and inactivity. Even taking into consideration advances in medicine, very little can compensate for poor diet and lack of exercise.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Because it’s “safe”. A child at home, watching television or playing a computer game is safer than outside playing football, even if supervised. They might trip and fall, they might get upset when they lose...
Why eat junk food? Funnily enough I was reading Usain Bolt’s autobiography in which he talks about his famous winning of two gold medals on a diet of 100 chicken nuggets a day. Why was he eating chicken nuggets? Because he was scared of the food in Beijing, he was worried about getting a stomach bug before the race, so chicken nuggets were safe. But that’s 10 days. In his normal training regime Usain doesn’t go near junk food - he loves it, but he cuts it out when he’s getting in shape. You do not build a body like that on chicken nuggets.
I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about dementia and one of the areas of research into dementia is neurobics - continually trying new things; new foods, new sounds, new scents, new visuals, new activities, because these all help create new neural pathways in the brain. Staying safe, living the same routine can make our brains weaker. Taking chances, trying new things is central to staying vibrant for as long as we can.
We go for the safe option because we’re scared, but if we keep choosing the safe option our ability to step out of our comfort zone gets weaker, our instincts become dull because we’re nervous about everything new, and our lives get smaller and smaller.
We want to be safe, so we buy massive cars with side bars to protect us from impact, we buy great computer games so our kids don’t have to go outside, but all this safety is killing us.
80% of adults do not take enough exercise to get basic health benefits.
Let’s put this into context, that’s 5 or more sessions a week of 30 minutes at about a third of our maximum, it’s walking or cycling to work, the shops or even the pub. Just this little bit of exercise will cut massively risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, depression, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, falling, obesity, Type 2 diabetes and overall mortality. The cost of driving is far too high - not just petrol but the cost to our health and on a societal level the NHS.
But... safety is just an illusion. According to The Guardian, of the 134 people killed on Greater London's roads in 2012, 14 were cyclists, 27 were riding a "powered two-wheeler" (motorbikes, moped, scooters), 19 were in cars, 5 were in a taxi, bus or coach, or heavy goods vehicle, 69 were pedestrians.
Sadly the pedestrian, Liam Roche, who was killed in the centre of Wimbledon in April will be part of 2014’s total.
Last week a lot of people questioned whether I was going to carry on cycling and it has been in my mind, especially when I had another near miss, this time with a bus that tried to overtake and then we both got stuck, not able to move forward or back. But as the statistic above, and the statistic that far more pedestrians than cyclists are injured by buses show, I may be safer on the bike. In fact just last week I was crossing the road at a pedestrian crossing in the centre of Wimbledon and, even though the green man was telling me to cross, a bus sped through the crossing closely followed by a white van. This was maybe a hundred yards from the fading flowers in the centre of town where Liam Roche was killed.
I’ve researched online the best tactics for avoiding danger on the road. It seems cycling further out from the curb, not closer, is the way to prevent dangerous overtaking according to experts. As much as my instincts (and the occasional car beep) may urge me to the curb, leaving a good margin on the inside gives me more chance of avoiding hazards like pedestrians stepping into the road, debris (including several hub caps this week) and somewhere to go when a large vehicle does get too close. And, of course, leaving plenty of time so I have the option of pulling over or hanging back when I see a potentially dangerous situation.
We all need to think twice about just what is safe, because those new experiences, like that walk or cycle to work, the new foods you try, the new Zumba Fitness class you take with me(!), the new path you try, might just save your life.
I love this advert from Channel Four because it puts all this into just over a minute.
Much love, Pearl x
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