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!
