|
 |
Too sedentary. Any tips? | ||
Tags: Passive | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3954 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes  Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 25 of 64 31 July 2013 at 1:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't hit the gym. Ever. I prefer doing things: hiking, paddling, cycling, working outside. I also walk for over an hour every day. Honestly, I think that - compared to the average person - I'm probably more physically active than most. It's just that I went from an on-my-feet-all-day job to sitting for hours every day. And I don't like it at all. I wasn't really looking for advice on getting more exercise outside of my studying, although that might not have been clear from the original post. I was looking for ways to make language learning itself less sedentary - and I got some great ideas here! I especially love the ideas of rigging up a standing desk or a treaddesk, and using audio while on the move! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4819 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 26 of 64 31 July 2013 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
How can people not do much exercise/sports?
Very easily. All you need is a lot of bad memories tied to sports, eventually a health problem lasting over a year to break the few good habits you have. :-D Or a kind of health trouble (staying with you forever) that reduces your choices to just a handful. Really, I dislike the dogma "sport is awesome and fun and you are just lazy and would love it if only you put away your useless hobbies and tried and your life is much less worth because you don't love sport". Sure, laziness is smaller or larger part of the trouble nearly always but there are more things. The path to finding sport or kind of exercise you like may be long, just as finding your taste in music or books or finding out what do you want to do for living. Hell, it took me over 20 years of my life to find sport/exercise activities that would make me trully excited and looking forward to more every time. (And listening to foreign music is part of the fun. It is not active learning but just a small and pleasant piece of immersion.) Stelle, I wish you a lot of success with this transition. One more thing that I remembered: how often do you make pauses? For exemple the pomodoro technique is based on working for 25 minutes and than having 5 minutes exactly to stretch your legs, walk to the kitchen for some tea and so on (and around 15 minutes after every four pomodoros). Of course, the times can be adjusted to your needs. Perhaps maintaining such set times for getting some movement might help you as well. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mezzofanti Octoglot Senior Member Australia mezzoguild.com Joined 4558 days ago 51 posts - 112 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Arabic (classical), Arabic (Egyptian), Irish, Arabic (Levantine) Studies: Korean, Georgian, French | Message 27 of 64 01 August 2013 at 7:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||
The point of me saying that you should take a break from the books/computer and get some exercise is that by doing so, your learning time won't feel so sedentary (plus it's better for you anyway).
I never said or would agree with anything of the sort. The point I'm making is that this "sedentary" feeling is most likely coming from spending hours sitting in front of a screen. At the very least, take your learning material to the park. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5576 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 28 of 64 02 August 2013 at 12:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
mezzofanti, as you are so in favour of science, did you read about how long periods of
inactivity like watching TV are tied to cardiovascular disease even in people who get the recommended time and intensity of exercise, and the conclusion that it probably is better to go back and forth between higher and lower levels of activity than to remain active or inactive for hours at a time? :) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| anime Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6170 days ago 161 posts - 207 votes Speaks: Spanish, Swedish*, English Studies: German, Portuguese, French, Russian | Message 29 of 64 02 August 2013 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I agree, I think the benefit of high intensity exercise is being exaggerated a lot, and the benefit of good sleep and relaxation understated a lot. Nowadays in the Western world it's like if you don't jog 10km a day or hit the gym you're a lazy slug. I have friends that sacrifice sleep just to get up real early and hit the gym or whatever. This is nuts and your health will eventually suffer from it 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| overscore Triglot Newbie CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4373 days ago 23 posts - 38 votes Speaks: French*, English, German | Message 30 of 64 02 August 2013 at 6:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
From experience, the "outgoing, fun smiley" people always have crappy foreign language skills, if any at all. It takes
a great deal of time sitting down with the books to acquire a large vocabulary in a foreign language. Corollary, people with attention spans of 30 seconds have trouble with vocab. At least that's what I have observed. Couch surfing types always surrounded by native speakers, can't speak the language worth crap and act surprised when you bust out a "rare word". Anyway, It's good to be social, IMO it's just a bit useless to develop foreign language competency. The good old input/output war yet again Edited by overscore on 02 August 2013 at 6:46pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4940 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 31 of 64 02 August 2013 at 7:12pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Absolutely. It seems that a few here are equating sports to be the opposite of a sedentary lifestyle. It's not. Physical activity is. There's just as much benefit from getting way from a desk and going for a walk for a half hour, an hour, as there is doing any other physical activity. There's no reason you can't also do something physical AND study, or at the very least, review simultaneously. R. == Edited by hrhenry on 02 August 2013 at 7:13pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3954 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 32 of 64 02 August 2013 at 11:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think this is a bit unfair! I know plenty of "outgoing, fun smiley people" who do very well when learning languages. I consider myself a relatively upbeat and outgoing person, and I don't think that in any way correlates to having "crappy foreign language skills". Many of my outgoing students do very well, especially in conversation classes. That said, I'm not sure what being outgoing has to do with being physically active. Are you suggesting that sedentary is the opposite of outgoing? 2 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
