Hey you, that's right you sitting there behind your computer or phone screen- get up off
your lazy keister!
Get up on those feet you bum, because today we're going to be finding out what happens
when you don't get to sit for a whole week!
The Infographics office is as fond of reading about medical studies as you are, and when
it comes to sitting or standing it seems scientists can't decide on which will kill you first.
So for the sake of our viewers, we decided to put our world-famous science team on the
case to figure out just how bad standing can be, and no, it's not just because some of
our staff saw a documentary on flamingos and thought to themselves- hey, what would it
be like to just stand all day?
We're doing real science here, folks, and to crack this nut we're once more putting
your favorite lab rat, and our writer with the best medical insurance on the entire staff,
on the job!
Day 1: No sitting for a week.
I read the words over and over again in my inbox trying to make them sink in.
Is this even humanly possible?
I guess it's my job to find out.
Alright, so I immediately thought about how in the world to accomplish this.
I went online to find out if there was a world record for standing, and I found a site full
of records set by average joes.
Things like- and no I'm not making any of this up- 'longest time balancing a table tennis
ball on nose while standing', 'longest time to stand straight on someone's shoulders'
and my personal favorite, 'largest group to sing happy birthday while standing on one
foot'.
Apparently you can just submit your own video proof to set a new record, and this record
can be for literally anything someone else hasn't done before.
By the way, this site appears to be quite popular with Indian people, who submitted
like half the records.
Way to go India, you guys are the world record holders for setting world records I guess.
I found another site where world records for standing still were recorded, and incredibly
an Indian man- no surprise there- once stood perfectly still for an astonishing 35 hours
and 22 minutes, stopping only due to an insect bite.
It must've been one heck of an insect bite.
I couldn't find any records for people actually standing though, just the standing-still ones.
I definitely don't plan on standing still, I've had my fill of lying under camouflage
and trying to be as perfectly still as possible with bugs and reptiles crawling on you.
I'll be living my normal life, just no sitting allowed.
How I'm actually going to do this is another thing entirely.
The rules are that I have to remain standing at all times, which includes sleep.
No, I can't cheat going from standing to laying down, I have to stay with my feet physically
touching the ground the whole time.
This is going to be insane, but I figure that the best thing to do will be to keep busy.
Day 2: Alright, yesterday was the most exhausting day of my life, and I'm honestly not sure
I can physically accomplish this entire challenge.
My day started out normal enough I guess.
I got up out of bed and kissed sitting down goodbye for seven days, then hopped in the
shower.
The girlfriend and I have this game now where I don't tell her what my new challenges are
unless they're taking me out of the house like to live in the woods or something, and
instead she has to guess what it is based on my behavior.
She's smart as a whip that one, and the moment that I started eating my breakfast standing
up she guessed that I wasn't allowed to sit.
She laughed, then asked me for how long, and her eyes kind of went wide.
She said that she doesn't think that 7 days is humanly possible, and I kind of agreed
with her.
Then she asked how I would feel because of my physical issues due to service-related
injuries, and I kind of shrugged it off.
Thing is, she's right.
Due to some pretty severe bone fractures and general wear and tear on the body, I don't
have the stamina I used to and my back and legs are prone to pretty bad aches and pains.
I almost got a medical discharge after fracturing lower back and hip, but after a few weeks
of recuperation I showed up at training wearing full kit and determined to prove that I didn't
need to be discharged.
It practically killed me, but I managed to convince superiors not to push a medical discharge.
Maybe now it's clear why I'm so determined with these challenges, and why I take them
so seriously.
I do not make it a habit of quitting.
So today I found out how hard-wired we are to sit.
I went throughout my day and kept having to remind myself not to sit whenever I saw a
chair nearby.
It was just sort of a reflex, and even when I went over to the Panda Express nearby for
lunch I had to remind myself not to sit at a booth.
I guess we really don't realize just how much sitting we do.
Of course I had to walk to that Panda Express, because driving a car would mean sitting.
I'm thinking though that I might buy one of those hoverboards and just bill it to Infographics-
walking around all day long is kind of exhausting.
First day was rough, not going to lie.
I'm in good shape, but standing all day is rough.
Especially when your back and hip is completely shot.
Sleeping was interesting.
I took inspiration from a documentary I saw on the international space station though.
On the ISS, astronauts actually crawl inside a sleeping bag of sorts and zip themselves
up so that they don't just float around in zero gravity.
I don't know, I think if I was an astronaut, I'd love to sleep while floating.
It must feel amazing, though I guess bumping into walls would be an issue.
Anyways, so I took a sleeping bag and cut two slots in the back.
I ran 550 cord- some of you may know it as parachute cord- through the two slots and
then wrapped it from the top of the door to the bottom of the door.
Then what I was left with was a sleeping bag securely fastened to the back of our bedroom
door.
Sleeping was as easy as sliding inside and zipping it up- the 550 cord wrapped several
times from the bottom of the door to the top of the door was more than secure enough to
keep me up.
The girlfriend had a difficult time adjusting to my sleeping arrangement though.
She said that I looked like a man-insect in a giant cocoon, and that in the dark it kind
of really freaked her out to see me just hanging there.
Also she was worried that the cord would snap or something and I'd break my neck in the
middle of the night, but I reassured her that 550 cord got its name from the minimum requirement
of being able to hold at least 550 pounds.
It was originally used in parachutes after all.
I'm not going to lie, sleeping standing up is probably a lot easier for horses and astronauts
in zero G.
It was not pleasant at all, but luckily I was so tired from standing all day that I
did manage to fall asleep.
Lurching forward the entire time was incredibly uncomfortable though and left me with a huge
crick in my neck, so I managed to flip around inside my sleeping bag and end up in a slightly
reclining position instead.
That made sleeping easier, but in all seriousness, this is probably in my top 3 worst sleeps
of all time.
It's a new day though, and I'm not looking forward to it.
Day 3: Last night's sleep was likely worse than the first night.
I managed to give the cord keeping my sleeping bag propped up a bit of slack so that I'm
reclining more while still staying up on my feet, but honestly this is just the worst
challenge ever.
To add insult to injury, the girlfriend got up in the middle of the night for some water,
and in her groggy half-asleep state she forgot I was tied to the back of the door, so when
she came back in and the door barely budged open because of all my weight, she basically
She-Hulked the door backwards and smacked me against the wall face first.
Yeah.
Honestly, I'm hating this challenge.
My second day of no sitting was worse than the first.
I tried to keep myself busy, but my back is seriously starting to hurt and so doing any
work was out of the question.
The one person who's ecstatic about this challenge is the dog, who got taken for like twelve
walks today just so I could keep myself away from the temptation of sitting.
The girlfriend and I had our date night yesterday, and I'm always determined to not let any challenges
ruin it.
I had to think about what in the world we could do with me not even being allowed to
sit inside a car, and I got a brilliant idea.
I dug up our old rollerblades that we haven't used in years and told her to throw them on.
Then we rollerbladed down to the beach, taking our dog with us on the leash.
We spent the evening going through an art crawl and the food trucks on the beach and
then played our favorite game: we separate and one of us walks- or in this case rollerblades-
far away from the other, then approaches and pretends we've never met.
The object of the game is to try to 'pick up' each other with the most ridiculous or
outrageous pick-up lines we can think of.
We play this game everywhere, and typically this means there's an audience for our ridiculous
pick-up lines.
One time we were at a very fancy lounge and while I had been away a guy had tried buying
her a drink, only to have me come back, look her up and down, and say, “Was your dad
a boxer?
Because you're a knockout!”
Then she started laughing so hard she almost shot her appletini out her nose, grabbed me
by the collar of my shirt and kissed me- all while the poor guy looked completely baffled.
By the way, tonight's winning line?
It came from her rollerblading up and asking, “Are you Israeli?
Cuz you Israeli hot!”
I gotta admit, she's not as creative as I am at this game but that one was damn good.
Despite this ridiculous challenge, still managed to make date night fun, and I'm kind of glad
I wasn't allowed to sit in a car and drive us somewhere.
It's been a while since we just went out without a particular destination in mind, and I really
liked the fact that we didn't have to be doing anything special for it to feel special.
This morning I woke up with some pretty severe aches and pains.
A lot of it I think is my body and old injuries, but a significant part of it is the act of
just standing all the time.
Sleep is damn near impossible, and I think if I hadn't had almost a decade's experience
sleeping in the most uncomfortable places in the world, I wouldn't be able to manage
more than an hour or two.
If the military teaches you one thing, it's how to sleep anywhere at the drop of a hat.
I'm not looking forward to a third day of this mess though.
Day 4: Alright, I had to throw in the towel on this challenge.
I believe that this is officially the first challenge I've quit on my own.
I've failed one other challenge before, but it wasn't my fault- true challenge fans will
know exactly which one that is by the way.
I managed to power through my day, but it wasn't easy at all.
The girlfriend could tell how much of a toll this standing up was taking on me, and she
very sweetly tried to rub my shoulders and lower back throughout my day as much as she
could.
She told me that she can already feel knots forming on my back, and it's not surprising.
Normally I have to follow a pretty strict yoga and stretching regime to keep my busted
back and legs from aching and hurting, and obviously I'm not able to do so when I can't
lay or sit.
Honestly, I can deal with the terrible quality sleep in my very weird man-insect cocoon I
jerry rigged, it's the creaking aches and pains that made this unbearable.
Maybe if I had tried this when I was younger, before damn near a decade of lugging around
almost a hundred pounds on my back.
I had an interpreter once tell me that Taliban fighters call American soldiers 'donkeys',
because of the ridiculous amount of gear we carry everywhere we go.
I'll also admit that rollerblading for a few hours the day before was not as great an idea
as I thought.
That exhausted my legs, and while we had a blast on our impromptu date night, it severely
drained my stamina for this stupid challenge.
Also do you have any idea how hard it is to put on and take off rollerblades when you
can't sit?
I had to hang on to the girlfriend the entire time so I wouldn't fall flat on my face.
I'm not a fan of quitting anything, no matter how psychologically or physically hard, but
sometime late last night my legs literally just quit on me.
I got a horrible cramp in my left leg and my knee just buckled, sending me to the bottom
of my sleeping bag cocoon.
I got up, determined to keep going anyways after the cramp subsided, but the girlfriend
had woken up and was really concerned.
She told me no, she was pulling the plug on this, and then demanded I get in bed with
her.
I really did want to keep going, I probably take these dumb challenges too seriously just
like she always says, but it's important to me not to quit.
She insisted though, in the very stern way that she only ever does like once, maybe twice
a year, with something she is not willing to compromise on.
These things are almost always related to my health, safety, or well being, because
I guess I do have a habit of putting all three of those things in jeopardy.
The only other time she's done it this year was a few months ago when I wanted to buy
a full-sized Xenomorph from the movie Alien, and well, in hindsight I guess she was right.
I mean it was awesomely life-sized too, it stood over seven feet tall; but i guess waking
up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and running into that thing would
likely lead to a heart attack.
So I've failed my challenge, and the girlfriend's booked me a pretty intense massage therapy
session with our local Thai massage place.
I go from time to time for a deep tissue massage, and let me tell you, those little Thai ladies
are absolutely brutal.
If the CIA wants 'enhanced interrogation techniques' forget waterboarding, just have these feisty
little ladies go at the bodies of terrorists with their elbows, feet, and knees.
It works though, and you may leave in a world of pain but the next day all the knots in
your muscles are gone.
What did I learn from my three days of standing up all day?
Honestly, not much other than the fact that it sucks exactly as much as it sounds it would.
Maybe if I was younger and 'fresher' I could've gone the distance, but also it's surprising
how hard-wired we are to want to sit when we see a chair or sofa.
It's practically an instinct- if you fit, you sits (extra s not a typo).
Also, eating your food while standing is just weird, though it beats the time I couldn't
leave bed and had to eat everything lying down.
At least you don't feel like you're choking to death with every bite.
0/10, would not repeat.
Worst challenge ever.
For more challenges and other great videos click on the video here or check out out this
video instead over here!