Staying Healthy When Working in Video Production

I'm not one to write on here (or anywhere) about health and the importance of keeping fit. I can’t help but cringe inside whenever I see someone on LinkedIn post about how their 5am gym session has been a fundamental part of them having a record breaking month… But that said, I am very aware of the importance of staying fit and healthy, especially if you’re working in an industry such as video production.

I’ve always tried to stay on the right side of being fit, but two years ago after seeing a photo of myself that I absolutely hated, I knew it was time to make some wholesale changes.

I’d completely stopped exercising throughout Covid aside from the occasional walk, but when normality resumed I'd gotten really lazy and adopted a mindset of 'if I'm out filming regularly, that's exercise enough.' Yeah, that's sort of true... However, that mentality tends to cancel itself out if you're eating garbage on shoot days! I was paying little to no attention to my eating habits and particularly on jobs I would be grabbing whatever was convenient, which as we all know, usually isn’t healthy (see Exhibit A below).

During the pandemic I had also become a lot more conscious of this dull pain I was having in my feet that gradually worsened and worsened. Between 2021 and 2023 I’d seen multiple podiatrists and physios, each giving me a different (and wrong) diagnosis, before finally a rheumatologist at my local hospital diagnosed me with rheumatoid arthritis.

I was already firmly on the healthy living path at this point, so it wasn’t really a wake up call, but it was a stark realisation that if I want to be filming for decades to come then I need to seriously look after myself. I do not want to be solely an editor or a producer, I want to be out with clients filming for as long as I possibly can - that’s what I truly love.

Although I’m by no means pleased to be arthritic, I am relieved to know what the issue is and it’s now being managed. I dread to think what state I would be in if I still hadn’t been given a proper diagnosis and treatment plan. Some days were so painful that it was a real mission just getting out of bed, but thankfully I’m now in a place where I can walk 10,000 steps without much issue and rarely find it impacts shoots. Don’t get me wrong, lugging heavy equipment around on your own is a challenge, but that is the absolute worst of it. I know I’m not cured and will have to manage this condition for as long as I live, but it’s not the end of the world if it means I can do this job for many more years.

That does however mean no more boozing due to the medication I’m on, as little processed food as possible and going to the gym 3 times a week minimum.

Truth is I can't say I enjoy going to the gym and I do miss occasionally drinking, but the long-term is always lingering at the back of my mind whenever I'm presented with an opportunity to break my own rules. I don’t want to live a little, I want to live a lot, and although my lifestyle may now seem a bit boring, this is one of those rare situations where I find myself not caring what other people think. I’m doing this entirely for me.

Like I said at the top of this post, I’m not going to talk about how vital health is in business, but when it comes to specifically filming it can be a tough gig and you need to be physically able to do it - cameras are heavy, you're constantly moving in unnatural positions, it involves long days on your feet and often plenty of rushing around! If you have ambitions to do it into your fifties and sixties, you need to look after yourself so that when that time does come you’re still capable of doing an excellent job.

That doesn’t mean giving up drink or eating clean seven days a week, I should stress I’m only doing that because of my condition, but making healthier choices the majority of the time and exercising when you can should, in my view, be fundamentals.