Endurance used to come free

On an Old Order Amish farm in southern Ontario, there is no car and no electric appliance. The farm is worked the old way, with hard labour. When researchers handed 98 Amish adults a step counter for a week, the men averaged 18,425 steps a day and the women 14,196. The men also reported more than 40 hours a week of moderate work.

None of them calls it exercise. It is the farm.

01

The day used to do it.

For almost all of human history, endurance came with the day. People walked to water and carried it back. They followed game, gathered food, moved camp and walked to the next valley to see family. Foragers who live that way still spend hours a day on foot getting food. Most of it is not hard. It is steady, easy movement, the kind you can keep up while talking, and it goes on for hours.

Nobody needed a plan for that. The body was built for it, and the day supplied it.

02

Then we called it exercise.

Now the day asks almost nothing. The car takes us to work, the lift takes us upstairs and the shopping comes to the door. When smartphones counted the steps of more than 700,000 people in 111 countries, the average was 4,961 a day. The UK came out at 5,444, Germany at 5,205 and the United States at 4,774. Phones only count while they are in your pocket, so the real numbers are higher. They are still nowhere near a farm.

When smartphones counted the steps of more than 700,000 people, the average was under 5,000 a day. Amish men on a farm in Ontario walked over 18,000.

So we gave the movement that was left a new name. Exercise. Something extra, done on top of living, in special clothes, at a set time. That is why it feels strange to so many people. Walking for an hour sounds like a project, and an afternoon on foot sounds like a feat. It is neither. It is what your body did every day for most of its history, and you are far more capable of it than you think.

03

The engine is built easy.

Our method puts it this way: endurance is "your ability to move oxygen, fuel and waste in and out of your muscles, hour after hour." Think of it as your engine: your heart, your lungs and your muscles, working together for as long as you need them.

What builds that engine is time spent moving. Long, steady work makes your muscles grow more mitochondria, the small power plants inside each cell that turn oxygen and fuel into energy. With more of them, your muscles use more fat as fuel at the same pace and spare their sugar, so the pace feels easier and you can hold it for longer.

You do not need to suffer for this. Studies of elite endurance athletes find they do about four of every five sessions at an easy effort. We train the same way. Most of the work is easy, because the engine is built by a lot of easy movement, the very thing the day used to give everyone for free.

04

Everyday movement counts.

This is not only about getting fitter. Fifteen studies that followed 47,471 adults found that people who walked about 7,800 steps a day were 45 percent less likely to die over the next seven years than those who walked about 3,500. The benefit kept growing until about 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day for adults under 60, and 6,000 to 8,000 for older ones.

How you get from one place to another counts too. In the UK, a study followed 263,450 working adults for five years. Those who cycled to work were 41 percent less likely to die than those who went by car or public transport, and about half as likely to develop heart disease or die of it. Those who walked to work also had less heart disease.

Even the stairs count. In one small study, young women who did not exercise climbed a 199-step staircase at a brisk pace, building up to five times a day, five days a week. Each climb took about two minutes. After eight weeks, their aerobic fitness had risen by 17 percent.

05

Stop calling it exercise.

You will not get the farm back, and you do not need it. What you need is the movement, and most of it is still there to take. We just drive, take the lift and have things delivered instead.

So walk to the shop instead of driving. Cycle to work, or to the next train station. Swim to the buoy and back because the water is there. Carry your bag through the airport instead of wheeling it. Take the stairs, every time. Walk to see a friend, and go the long way home.

None of this needs a plan or a watch. It needs you to stop thinking of movement as something extra, and start using it again to get where you are going.

What this means for you

You used to get endurance for free. The day carried you through hours of easy movement, and that easy movement built the engine. Now the day does not ask for it, so it is up to you to win it back.

Take the stairs, carry your luggage, travel on your own power. Walk, cycle and swim to get somewhere, or just for the pleasure of it. It will change your fitness more than you expect.

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