8 Reasons You Should Play More

We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. 

- George Bernard Shaw

When's the last time you played? I mean, really played, like a kid at recess squeezing every last precious second out of your freedom from boring arithmetic lessons? Play is one of the most forgotten elements of being a human. Today, even kids are losing their grasp on play (though generally not through any fault of their own). Issues over children and play frequently pop up in the news, with American schools cutting down on recess time, and parents and advocates speaking out in protest of such playtime cuts, touting the virtues of free play for the mental and physical health and development of children. As a society, we seem to have lost touch with play and how integral it is to the human experience. 

But I'm assuming that if you're reading this, you're not a child, and in this post I'm primarily interested in addressing play for adults. When it comes to abandoning play, adults are the greatest offenders. Play has become an afterthought, prioritized about as much as cleaning the dust behind the refrigerator and going to the dentist. Many adults even scoff at play as something that's "for kids," suggesting that adults ought to hold themselves "above" such impractical pursuits that are done for the mere joy and pleasure of it. But I think we've got it all wrong. I think that play is not only valuable for adults and children alike—I believe it is an absolutely essential part of living a fulfilled life. 

So what is play? Well, it's difficult to pin down because play is, at its essence, spontaneous and uninhibited (the quintessential idea of play that comes to my mind is Calvinball, in which the only permanent rule is that it can't be played the same way twice). Play, as I see it, is something which is done for the fun of it, not for practical reasons—it is "purposeless," done for no reason other than enjoyment (though many practical benefits do derive from play by accident). In this sense, play is also very much a state of mind. The same thing can be both play or not play, depending on one's mindset. For example, a pickup game of basketball in which the focus is fun with friends would be play, whereas an NBA championship game in which the players are concerned primarily with the outcome (winning vs losing), and less so with how much they enjoy the experience, would not be play. Play can be both mental and physical, and can be done solo or with others. It is generally competitive in some capacity, even if the competition is only with oneself. Play is also a reprieve from duty and work—an opportunity to move and act and think freely, without extrinsic restraints and without obligation. Play can take countless, unique forms: anything from seeing how long you can hold a handstand, to participating in an organized co-ed basketball league, to playing "don't touch the lava" on the playground, to running through fresh snow. Regardless of what it looks like, play should be done because you want to, free from responsibility, practicality, and demand. 

It may seem a bit ironic to have a list of reasons (which in and of themselves are practical) to do something that is supposed to be done only for pleasure, not pragmatism. But we humans are funny animals, and sometimes it takes practical reasons to get us to do something that, at its core, is not supposed to be practical; so here are 8 reasons that you should start playing more, today.

1. Play relieves stress. There are no shortage of perceived stressors in the world today. The media bombards us with daily horror stories and gloom-and-doom outlooks for the economy, world relations, and national health. In addition, work and personal finances are a constant stressor, and with our advances in technology and connectivity, the pressures of work can now follow us home easier than ever before. So how do we get a break from this stress? Play! Play gives our minds a break from thinking about the stressors of daily life, and many forms of play involve physical activity, which is known to relieve stress. Play has also been shown to reduce stress hormones and lower blood pressure. The more we are stressed, the harder it may be to find time and motive to play, but the more we truly need it. I am reminded of a great quote about meditation: "You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day — unless you're too busy; then you should sit for an hour." I believe the same applies to play. Think you're too busy to play? That probably means you need to play more. 
2. Play improves our health. This one piggybacks easily on play's ability to relieve stress. Numerous studies have shown that chronic stress has catastrophic effects on our bodies, and therefore the stress-relieving effects of play will carry over into improving general health and well-being. In addition, play encourages physical activity, releases endorphins, and fosters social interaction, all of which positively contribute to our health. Studies have shown direct positive relationships between physically active leisure and physical and mental health and well-being. Other studies on play deprivation have demonstrated the tremendous influence of play on mental health, with deprivation being associated with a myriad of mental and emotional health problems such as depression, lack of adaptability, lack of self-control, predisposition to violent or addictive behaviors, and relationship problems.
3. Play helps our productivity. This one may seem a bit outlandish at first glance, but taking time off of work to play can actually boost your productivity. A study at Cornell University found that workers were more productive when they were received reminders to take regular breaks. In addition, a study out of New Zealand demonstrated that after a vacation, workers had large increases in productivity and performance, better outlooks, and lowered heart rate. Additionally, Netflix and Brazilian company Semco have instituted "unlimited vacation" policies with great success, finding greater worker satisfaction, loyalty, and overall productivity. Whether it's a quick game of frisbee in the park, a round of "trash bin basketball" in the office, or a two week vacation to the Bahamas, more play seems to mean higher quality work.
4. Play gets us moving. While not all play involves intense physical activity, most types of play involves some movement, and it often gets us into the great outdoors. There are volumes upon volumes of evidence demonstrating the mental and physical health benefits of regular physical activity and time spent outdoors. In a time when our rear ends spend about 90% of their time smashed into an office chair, car seat, and plush couch, we need every excuse we can find to get ourselves moving. In addition, play gives us a chance to find joy in movement. The ability to move is such a fundamental and yet oft-forgotten element of the human experience—it is a type of knowing and a way of experiencing. Yet for so many of us, the blessing of movement is squandered and ignored. Ask anyone who has lost a limb, who has lost movement or control in part of their body, who has had their ability to move permanently altered in some way, and they will tell you how much we take for granted our ability and freedom to move. Play gives us a chance to enjoy and relish in our movement. Dancing, running, dribbling, throwing, running, rolling, jumping, spinning, wrestling, balancing—our bodies are built to move, and when we play we can find joy and insight in that movement. 
5. Play connects us to others. While some play is done solo, most involves playing with others, either in competition or cooperation. Research shows that play is of central importance in the development of social and emotional intelligence in children, and that it helps to improve cooperation, communication, and empathy. However, similar benefits extend to adults. Research on "rough and tumble" play has shown that when we play, we are able to test our relationships, to simultaneously cooperate and compete, to develop trust, and to explore boundaries. Play is very much a social activity, and it often acts as a safe space in which we can explore and develop the social skills that we rely heavily on in "real life" situations with graver consequences. Cooperative play (whether strictly cooperative or competitive against another team) teaches us how to communicate in numerous ways, helps us develop trust, and challenges us to support and encourage others. 
6. Play fosters creativity and exercises our mind. Play is as much (if not more) a mental exercise as a physical one. Play requires problem solving and assessment of challenges and situations, it gives us opportunities to creatively find solutions, and it is a chance to simply create without the externally-imposed restrictions. The freedom of play makes it very much a creative endeavor. I often think of how children free play, making up new rules as they go and cooperating (and often competing) to develop an objective and negotiate challenges or obstacles. Play also exercises the imagination: imagining a historical event you are reenacting, imagining a new gymnastics or dance routine, or imagining a new design for a snow fort. Stuart Brown, a psychologist who has devoted his studies to the role of play throughout the lifetime of humans as well as other animals, provides considerable evidence for play's integral role in developing and shaping our brains both in childhood and adulthood. Somewhere along the way we got it into our heads that our mental abilities only grow in the classroom or with our noses in a textbook, but this couldn't be further from the truth. 
7. Play is in our blood. Humans naturally want to play. Look at how kids behave when left to their own devices (and when not captivated by electronic devices): they sprint and jump and hang, their imaginations run at full steam, they cooperate, they engage in friendly competition, they test their physical and mental abilities, and they are unconcerned with the passage of time or stresses of life (it of course helps that kids don't have taxes to worry about). Some scientists believe that play has a role in sexual selection, and therefore tied to our evolution and development as a species. Psychologist Dr. Peter Gray postulates that play has been integral to humans developing into what we are today, with our social, cooperative, and problem-solving abilities unparalleled by anything else in the animal kingdom. Play was a large part of hunter-gatherers' lifestyle. After making a kill or gathering food, they would have unrestrained leisure time—they would play. Today, however, we are more likely to commit our "leisure" time to work-related activities, flopping in front of the television, or doing housework.
8. Play helps us explore ourselves and the world. A large part of play is exploring the world and what we are capable of doing in this world—not because someone has asked us to, and not because we are focused on winning a competition—but because it is satisfying and we want to. "I wonder if I can swing from this branch to that one." "Let's see if I can make this basket from half-court." "I bet I could throw this stone half way across the lake." "I wonder if I could make a catapult with this scrap material I have lying around the garage." Play is a time to explore and enjoy our human abilities, physical and mental, without obligations and pressures. It is a time to get lost in just being human. And in this sense, personal growth is very much a part of play. When we play, we are not focused on becoming better, on reaching some concrete goal, or on scores or numbers or statistics. We are just focused on doing what we are doing and enjoying it. But unthinkingly, as a happy accident, we contribute to understanding the world, getting to know ourselves, and leading fulfilling lives.

Now that you've got more than enough reasons to play, it's time to forget the reasons and go play. Play should be done because it satisfies you and because you want to, not because someone on the internet told you it lowers your blood pressure or makes you more productive. Enjoy some time being detached from stress and preoccupation and thoughts about outcomes, and go be human and play!


---

Be sure to subscribe, share, and comment.
Follow me on Twitter @PSprimont and on Instagram @PSprimont

Strong of heart, strong of mind, strong of swole.

On Self-Experimentation

See my previous post, On Action, for some additional ideas on why I believe self-experimentation is so valuable. 


When it comes to self-care and self-improvement, most people have a serious lack of confidence in their own abilities and sense, and (if you ask me) a serious over-confidence in the abilities and sense of just about everyone else. Many of us are all-too-willing to take the advice of an online guru or a health/wellness professional as gospel, assuming that as long as we type the right combination of magical words into Google or pay a trained professional a large enough chunk of cash, we will get a simple and guaranteed solution to our problem or a foolproof means to reach our goals. We believe that there must be someone out there who has the exact answer to our exact question. 
And then, when things don't go perfectly, we are dumbfounded and upset that the guru we trusted in is, in fact, not an omniscient oracle or faultless virtuoso, and we give up and decide that our quest must be an impossible one.

Of course there are situations in which it is not at all prudent to rely entirely on your own abilities, and times when it is absolutely necessary to seek out a health professional. You're not going to have any luck "self-sufficient-ing" yourself out of cardiac arrest, and you're probably not going to win any Olympic medals through self-coaching and self-education alone. There are times when it is necessary to utilize the services of a coach, physical therapist, dietician, etc. to allow you to reach the next level or address a more serious problem, and to take advantage of the countless hours that they have (hopefully) put into developing an up-to-date understanding and practice of health and fitness.  
But for all the middling, low-risk problems, queries, and pursuits in self-care and self-improvement—all of the things that we face on a day-to-day basis like dietary choices, getting stronger, addressing minor aches and pains, getting leaner, moving efficiently, feeling energetic and positive, etc.—so many of us are far too afraid to get our hands dirty and learn and figure things out ourselves; it's much easier and more comfortable to put all the onus on someone else and blindly hope that they'll do all the thinking and work for us. Too many of us are too lazy to put in the legwork to educate ourselves and too afraid to take action to really learn about ourselves. 

Note, also, that burying your nose in books and peer-reviewed health and fitness journals 'til the cows come home is not enough. Education and understanding is necessary for making the most of our health and fitness, but it is only one part of the equation. We also must act; we must think critically, try things for ourselves, test, observe, and retest. 

Be your own lab
Life does not occur in a vacuum, and the human experience is so variable and complex that we cannot control for (or even be aware of) all variables. Because of this, any evidence-based prescription derived from results from other people is necessarily a generalization—a probable estimation of expected results. In other words, what works for a group of 40 subjects in a randomized, controlled study will not necessarily work for you. (And of course, any non-evidence-based prescription is just speculation.) This is where self-experimentation has its immense value: with an awareness of what current evidence suggests and an understanding of the underlying mechanisms involved in human physiology, you can then conduct N=1 "trials" on yourself to determine what works for you. We cannot absolutely determine what works for everyone, but with self-experimentation, data collection, and attention to detail, you can determine what works for you.

One hell of a laboratory that would be.¹

This of course comes with a long list of caveats.

First and foremost, self-experimentation is not an alternative to knowledge, evidence, or scientific rigor—it is a supplement. Self-experimentation should spring from generalized evidence and understanding, and a heaping dose of common sense (and self-preservation instinct). Conducting a self-experiment in which you see if cyanide is a good weight-loss supplement isn't going to get you very far, and you're going to have an awfully hard time collecting and analyzing data when you're dead. Be smart and have a good idea of what you're getting into before you go all mad scientist on yourself. 

In addition, the results of self-experimentation should not be taken as anything other than just that. Self-experimentation is an excellent way to determine what works for you, not for your friend or your great-aunt or your dog. All else being equal, the greater the sample size, the more universally applicable the results. A sample size of 1 does not lend itself to any sort of universal applicability. Additionally, for the same reasons that a trial examining the effects of high repetition squats on knee joint stability within a group of 35 professional bodybuilders utilizing performance enhancing supplements does not apply to a geriatric patient recovering from a full knee replacement, your results cannot be taken as true for anyone other than yourself. All self-experimentation should be conducted with this awareness. 

Self-experimentation is also limited by available resources. Your experiment is limited to whatever factors you can control and whatever tools you have at your disposal. For most folks, the tools at our disposal are quite limited. On the one hand, this limits the depth and diversity of the trials we can conduct on ourselves. But on the other hand, it does not always limit real-world applicability. While I may not have the tools available to measure the electromyographic activity in the hamstrings during a wide-stance squat, I can fairly easily determine if a wide-stance squat strengthens my hamstrings with very basic "tools." 

Self-experimentation does face a considerable challenge insofar as the researcher is also the test subject. Because of this, introducing a placebo or a control group is virtually impossible. Results of self-experimentation must be viewed with this in mind. However, because the results of your self-experiment are not being applied to anyone other than you, the placebo effect does not change your results, only the broader application of and underlying reasons for your results (in other words, just because something works doesn't mean it works for the reasons you think—this is where your ability to control variables and repeat experiments comes in handy). In addition, because you are your one and only test subject, you must be aware of the influence that one trial can have on another when conducting self-experiments. Your starting point for each trial you conduct is necessarily different, particularly if you are conducting sequential trials addressing the same general hypothesis or inquiry. 

But despite all these limitations and caveats, self-experimentation still stands as the most effective tool for learning about yourself, about how you respond to different changes/stimuli, and about what does and does not work for you.

Some guiding principles
I am not an expert on experimental methods, and so I won't claim to have the master formula for the most accurate and precise method of self-experimentation. However, I'll leave you with a few principles that can help you formulate effective and useful trials.

1. Be honest. Being honest with ourselves is one of the hardest things to do, but it is a huge asset in learning about yourself and becoming better. Don't let confirmation bias overrun your experiments, and don't be that guy so entrenched in his beliefs (regardless of their origin) that he can't see a plain-as-day fact staring him in the face. Emotionally separate yourself from your experiment and be an objective observer of yourself. This is one of the most valuable skills you can have in life.

2. Be observant. Observation is a cornerstone of the scientific method. When you are conducting a self-experiment, it is imperative that you observe and be aware of variables and changes. It is important to consider what variables may influence your experiment, and to notice any changes throughout the experiment, even if (especially if!) they are not the changes you were looking for.

3. Collect data. Simply put, your experiment is about as factually accurate as a fairytale if you are not collecting any data. This ties in closely with being observant: observe variables, observe results, and then record them. Conducting an experiment in which you examine the efficacy of a "squat everyday" program on your 1RM squat will not yield any valuable results if you don't record your 1RM squat at the start and at the end of the experiment. "Well, I think I feel stronger" is not data.

What kind of data should you be collecting? Before conducting any experiment, you should consider (and, if possible, discuss with someone else) all of the possible factors that could affect your results. Just about every self-experiment should consider factors such as: sleep (quantity and quality), diet (calories consumed, additions or omissions, timing, supplements, caffeine and alcohol), stress (general stress level, new/additional stressors, leisure time), general activity levels (time spent sedentary, low-level activities like walking/hiking, etc.), sun exposure, exercise regimen (intensity, frequency, any general changes), daily practices (meditation, movement, stretching, posture), hydration, injury or illness, and of course, your starting data points for whatever you are observing or attempting to affect change in (this could be anything from a blood panel, to a 1RM bench press, to skin condition, to joint range of motion).

4. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Because your lab of one is limited to, well, one, conducting multiple trials is important for ensuring the accuracy of your results. 
Let's say you are conducting an experiment in which you examine the effects of performing a daily 15 minute breathing exercise on your run times. You notice that, during this 3 week trial, your run times progressively go down. Obviously the breathing exercises helped improve your breathing efficiency or capacity, thereby helping your running, right? Not necessarily. Let's say you perform the same 3 week trial a month later, and your run times plateau and then begin to increase in the 3rd week, despite performing the same breathing exercises. You look at your data (because you are recording data, right?) and find that during the first 3 week trial, you were sleeping 9 hours per night, work was minimally stressful, and you were eating a small caloric surplus. During your second 3 week trial, you were sleeping 6.5-7 hours per night, work was a stress-fest, and you were eating in a caloric deficit to try to lose some pounds. 
The more we can repeat our trials (and observe changes/consistencies in variables between trials), the more accurate our results can be. Obviously there is a limit to this. Repeating a 1 year trial on yourself 50 times is not a worthwhile investment of time and energy (and remember, time itself is a variable!).

5. Remember to still be a human. Self-experimentation should be for the sake of self-improvement. Therefore, if your experiment is requiring you to completely abandon an enjoyable and enriching life, you're missing the point. Be reasonable. Don't turn yourself into a guinea pig and lock yourself out of a fulfilling life in an effort to control all of the variables in the name of science.

---

Just working in the lab.²

This self-experimentation business probably isn't foreign to most of us. Whether you're aware of it or not, there's a good chance that you've already conducted some form of self-experimentation on yourself in your lifetime. Have you ever eliminated something like dairy or soda from your diet for a few months to see how it affects you? Ever tried increasing your training volume to see if you could progress faster? Ever added supplements to your diet to see if it made an observable difference? This is all self-experimentation. It is how we best learn about ourselves.

Don't let someone else's generalization be the final word on how your body operates and responds. Put on your lab coat and get out your data sheet and see for yourself.

NOTE - I'll say it one more time, just so we're absolutely clear: don't be stupid and go destroying yourself in the name of self-experimentation and knowledge. That's just not cool. 

---

Be sure to subscribe, share, and comment.
Follow me on Twitter @PSprimont and on Instagram @PSprimont

Strong of heart, strong of mind, strong of swole.

---

1 photo credit: DSC_0294 via photopin (license)^↩
2 photo credit: via photopin (license)^↩