Bad Habits That Helped With My Health & Flexibility

Shaking your leg.

Standing up and shaking your leg.

Deep squatting (in a public space)

The three ways I sit on a chair Crosslegged, Squatting, and Seiza.

It's everything I was taught that was considered a bad habit or bad manners. But it turns out that it’s good for your physical health because it promotes flexibility.

Back when I was a kid, I did a lot of things that's considered bad manners.

As a gamer, we are mostly sitting at home for hours. Mostly moving your fingers then arms and maybe your upper body.

I was told by not just by my family but also peers. My family and the elementary school would say that shaking your leg is what poor people do. Or people who don’t have patients.

In fact, there’s a word for it in Japanese called 貧乏揺すり (Binnbou Yusuri). Which pretty much means “poor-man-shake” or “poverty-shake”. Like a poor-man shivering from the cold. I was also told by various people that this makes you look impatient. Even though I was and still am a very patient person.

I’m glad that I continued on with this. In my mind, it’s like a mini-exercise that you’re still using calories. You’re moving your leg, it’s also moving your joints.

Not too long ago, I was trying to look up how true what I was thinking was. Everything I was thinking about was true. As we are aging and not moving as we age, little movement seems better than not moving at all.

Especially as gamers where we are sitting on a couch or chair and only really moving our hands and/or arms.

Back during the 90s when I was playing the NES, SNES, and N64 I would play the games standing up. Since I was a very energetic kid, I didn’t like sitting down while playing. I’d sometimes be standing up and shaking my leg at the same time.

This seems like it’s only socially unaccepted if you’re Japanese as it seems like it’s accepted anywhere else. It is because we call it for two reasons, the

Since elementary school, I have this habit on sitting on my chair with both my legs crossed or on my knees. Sometimes I would be squatting on my chair.

I don’t know why it’s considered bad. It might be due to the fact that it doesn’t look natural when chairs are designed for you legs to bend forward and down.

I believe that this helps contribute to better flexibility.

When you are sitting on a chair, it's a incomplete position between squatting and standing.

I think that when you sit on a chair that is the furthest you'll go with your leg muscles. Conditioning them that this is the furthest it can go.

What's also happens on top of that is that I also shake my leg too while sitting.

When I was in elementary school, I had such bad sleeping posture where I would wake up with a very sore leg. It was because I would sleep on my stomach with my leg and foot on my chest. I’d be in that posture for hours since I was sleeping.

I remember being told that if I don’t sleep normally it’s bad for you. Like sleep on your back, or stomach, or side. Any other way is… untidy? I don’t know how else to say it as it was だらしがない (darashiganai).

I didn’t think much of it at first. Today, I heavily believe that it contributed to my flexibility and I wish I continued the way I used to sleep.

I remember another way I slept was basically doing a sit-and-reach. Except I wasn't reaching out with my arms. My chest would be on my knees with my leg straight and would wake up from that position.

Flexibility is more important to my physical wellbeing than strength. I still want to be strong, as I was never strong in the first place.

The reason for wanting to be strong is so I can be able to do more things like muscle ups to climb faster, making it easier to carry something, or even just looking good and healthy in general.

For a long time, I thought strength would mean that I would lose flexibility. But for 3 decades, I was wrong.

I thought strength equals bigger muscles. Bigger muscles equal less mobility as it visually looks like it gets in the way.

Fortunately, body flexibility can be done with just your body alone. Like sit-and-reach or toe touch and quite literally anything.

Your joints allow you to with the limit of your muscle and ligament tightness.

As time goes by I notice my flexibility was decreasing due to not utilizing it.