This is a guest post from Adam Quiney.
It’s April, and that means a couple of things. Â For a start, the beginnings of Spring are tangible. Â The sun’s getting up earlier and staying out later, the cherry blossoms have bloomed, and it’s getting easier to get up early in the mornings. I was even able to go out biking in a t-shirt yesterday.
It also means that most of the people that set New Year’s resolutions to exercise have now failed in that goal. Â I’m not being pessimistic or cynical about human nature here — I’m just thinking of statistics.
Why is it that so many people set off with such good intentions, only to give up completely in less than three months time? Â I think it’s because they’ve failed to follow the cardinal rule of exercising (and working towards a healthy
lifestyle): Have fun.
I mentioned New Year’s resolutions, but this phenomenon really applies to any “get fit” kick that people embark upon. After six months of not exercising, you run out, buy some new gear, and head out the door for a grueling 1.5 hours at the gym or a 45-minute jog. Â The results are predictable: You’ve got new gear and resolution-level motivation, both of which propel you through the workout. Â You’re not enjoying more than the first couple of minutes of it, and by the time you finish, you’re a heaving sweaty mess. Â You head home, crack a beer, and tell yourself that you’ll be doing that three times a week from now on.
However, when you wake up the next morning, your muscles are screaming in protest, and you can barely sit down. Â ”It’ll be better tomorrow, in time for my next workout”, you tell yourself, only to discover that that pain sticks with you for almost an entire week, holding your next workout hostage until it subsides. Â When you’re finally feeling whole again, you get yourself ready for the next workout, even though the only thing you can think about is the week-long pain that you’ve gone through, and the torturous upcoming hour or so that leads you down that path.
Does this sound familiar to you? Â If not, go away — this post isn’t for you.
The fact is, none of the above sounds like any fun. Â What is the motivation for someone to continue with the above routine? Â Getting fit? Â Being healthy? Looking good? Â These are all abstract, long-term goals. Â They are abstract because “being fit”, and “looking good” are very nebulous terms. Â It’s very difficult to tie those down to something tangible that we can point at and say to ourselves, “Look at what I’ve accomplished!”
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These goals are also at a disadvantage because they are purely long-term goals. No one gets fit after three or four workouts. Â No one is going to look good in a couple of weeks — it’s just not how the body works.
Yes, sometimes it is possible to get short-term results very quickly with radical dieting and over-exercise, but trust me, these short-term gains come with a very hefty price: the inevitability that in the long-term you’re actually training your body to put on more fat, and yourself to practice negative yo-yo habits, instead of positive lifestyle changes.
No, if we want to make changes to our lifestyle that are healthy and are going to stick, we must obey the cardinal rule. Â We have to have fun doing it. Â No workout will always be fun, but whatever activity we are choosing for ourselves needs to have some kind of intrinsic value that we can appreciate and enjoy in
the short-term.
There are a couple of factors that we have to account for in order to meet this goal:
Do something that you enjoy. It’s so easy, right? If only that were the case. Most people, when they make a resolution to get fit, choose either jogging or lifting weights at the gym, usually because these are the most obvious choices. Â Jogging doesn’t require much effort to start doing, and gyms are all over the place. Â When we think of getting fit, these are usually the first two choices that come to mind.
Does this make them the right choice for someone? Â Absolutely not. Â Just because a lot of people are doing a particular activity doesn’t mean that it’s going to be something you enjoy. Â Do you like being outside? Is planning a route going to be something that you enjoy?
How about the gym?  Are you comfortable working out around a lot of other people? Does lifting weights seem like something that you’ll enjoy?  Is there anything in particular about the culture present at a gym that will entice you to keep coming back?
Incidentally, this is an excellent reason to avoid the temptation to run out and buy yourself a new set of shoes, or a new tight-fitting t-shirt to wear to the gym. Â Doing so may temporarily inflate your motivation, but it will also lock you into an activity that you should be approaching with the intent to evaluate initially. This lock-in is motivated in part because of our tendency to be swayed by the sunk-cost fallacy. The motivation that you think you’ll get by buying-in to a new activity is artificial at best, and self-defeating at worst. Â By approaching something without investment, you’re allowing yourself the liberty of changing to a new activity if you don’t enjoy this one.
Have fun while you’re exercising. Don’t start out with a goal that is far-fetched and ridiculously challenging. Â Give yourself a goal that is reasonable, and that will give you the space required to appreciate the activity that you’re doing.
When some people first start jogging, they run intervals, jogging for five minutes, and walking for one minute. Â This kind of approach is great, as it lets you ease into your new workout regime, and gives you time to look around you and really enjoy what you’re doing.
If at any point during a workout you start to feel that you just want it to be over, maybe you need to dial back a little bit and take it a little easier. Â Be willing to adjust the goal that you set for yourself at the start. Â Remember: it’s much better to adapt your goal and succeed than to adamantly stick to your initial goal and then give up on your routine all together. Â Your goal is to find something that you are going to make a part of your lifestyle, not to simply get through the current workout.
Push yourself. This advice may seem to conflict a little with the above item, but it’s important that you maintain a healthy balance of the two. Â Above all, your number one goal should be that you’re doing something that you enjoy, and that you’re doing it in a manner that allows for that enjoyment. Once you’ve found that balance point, take yourself out of your comfort zone and push yourself. It doesn’t have to be a lot, and you don’t need to go overboard. Â Just be willing to make yourself work, and to get yourself sweating.
“Fun” may prove elusive for someone that is only just beginning a new workout routine. Â The longer you workout and exercise, the more in-tune with your body you will become, and the easier time you will have understanding when you are ready to push yourself further, and when you need to dial back a bit and give yourself some time to simply be present in the moment.
Remember that, above all, in order for exercise to become a lasting part of a healthy lifestyle, you really have to enjoy it. Â You’re not going to be able to force this, so be willing to look until you find something that is right for you. Â If you discover that you hate lifting weights at the gym, don’t treat this as a failure on your part — treat it as an opportunity to adapt your goals and to try something new.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
100% true.
I see it at the gym, I see it on “The Biggest Loser,” I see it on the hundreds of what I call “jogblogs”: the idea that running is the be-all, end-all of aerobic exercise. Sure, you blow off a lot of calories, but what if you despise the very idea?
I tried jogging for awhile when I was 18. I had to start with tiny, tiny intervals (run 30 seconds, walk 90 seconds). It took months to work my way up to a full mile, nonstop. In the meantime, I was losing weight no faster than when I started walking every day a year prior. I never got to the point where I really liked it.
Now that I’m older and an occasional gout sufferer, I think running would be a very poor fit. Not to mention that I’m still firmly in the 260′s. No sadder sound than a really big dude’s feet going “whap! whap!” on a treadmill belt…
I’m open to suggestions! There are very few exercise/athletic activities I enjoy, and those very few are impractical to do on a regular basis (I’m not in any position to kayak three times a week, for instance). In addition, most “fun” activitites tend to frustrate me, since it’s hard to find adults as incompetant as I am who are willing to play — and when I play against someone who is athletic, I’m apalling! So what is fun, individual, and convenient to the average person?
Laura – I would definitely suggest checking out racquet sports. I’ve found that the culture and community that surround sports like tennis, badminton, ping-pong (seriously) and squash (my own love) can really enhance the amount of fun you have, and your desire to continue participating.
Racquet sports also naturally provide you with a partner for which you are accountable to (not showing up on your partner after you’ve booked a match isn’t really acceptable), and something to motivate you to push yourself (I want to beat this person, so I’m going to try harder).
Most of the club’s where I live (Victoria, BC) all have free drop-in/social nights, and also encourage new players joining by providing ladders, as well as lists of people that are at your level that you could play against.
@ Laura:
I’d recommend checking your local park district programs. The ones in my area have a large variety of different activities that they offer for different levels. My Mom is a horrible athlete but has been really enjoying both tennis and and golf with park district groups and some other family members that are about equal level but just want to get out there and walk or play because it’s good exercise and a good excuse to socialize.
@ Laura – Try crossfit. Those metcon workouts are brutal.
I enjoy how you mention exercise as part of lifestyle. It shouldn’t be something that you “have to do” or something that you bemoan making time for. Staying/Getting fit is an intrinsic part of our overall well-being.
Can we honestly say that we enjoy life when we don’t enjoy maintaining our phsycial health?
I play DDR as a workout. It’s a lot more fun than 30 minutes on the treadmill and I can do it in the privacy of my own home. Gettin’ pretty good at it too!
@Laura I think finding what’s fun for you is really the hard part. I tried all sorts of sports in middle school and high school, and eventually realized that I hate competing with other people. Jogging also always seemed more like torture than exercise. You wouldn’t think that leaves much, but I became an avid swimmer, and now do some yoga as well. Yoga can be about as relaxing or athletic as you want, and there’s nothing more convenient once you form a routine to do at home.
I agree with you Olivia. I noticed another interesting thing once I found a sport I loved (squash). I started looking for other ways to help improve at the sport, and that started me down the path of cross-training.
Although I’d hated biking when I was a kid, people kept telling me that it was an excellent way to cross-train for squash. I hopped on a bike and gave it a go a couple of times, and now find that I enjoy it so much I’m even getting up early in the morning to get a ride in before work.
It’s like becoming rich and the first million you make (I’m still waiting on that…) – finding that first one correct exercise is the hardest part. Everything else starts to flow from that.
What about dancing? Look around you, and I’ll bet you’ll find a few community groups built around some type of dance. It’s fun and social, and more exercise than you may realize. Secret desire to learn to salsa or ballroom? Take some lessons. I love my Irish dancing group and lessons, and boy, what a workout!
While I agree that enjoying your workout will help, if you talk to a lot of the people who’ve successfully stuck with an exercise habit for years or decades, you’ll find that many of them don’t find it “fun.” There’s a great passage in Haruki Murakami’s book “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,” where he encounters an Olympic runner and asks him whether he ever feels like staying in bed in the morning instead of going out for his training run. The runner looks at him as if he’s crazy. “Of course,” he says. He would always prefer to stay in bed.
I don’t think most dedicated runners, cyclists, etc. think of their exercise as “fun,” but rather they are satisfied by the personal challenge. That’s what motivates them: to do better, to beat their last record, to see what their body is capable of achieving.
The writer William Zinsser put it similarly when talking about writing: he said that he doesn’t like to write, but he likes having written. Most good writers find writing to be very hard work, frequently frustrating, often demoralizing. But when you’re done with a writing project and reasonably happy with the result, there’s a sense of accomplishment.
I think it’s the same way with exercise. Maybe in the beginning it’s important to find something that’s fun, but eventually you’re likely to get bored with it. If you shift your priority at that point from “fun” to “continuous improvement” or “challenge,” you’re more likely to stick it out for the long haul.
@Brad
Good comments Brad. Some points:
1. I think that comparing Olympic athletes with the common person hoping to stay in shape is a bit of a stretch. I think it’s certainly possible to enjoy being outside and feeling the wind against your face when you go for a jog, even many years after you’ve taken on the sport. However, as I said, no workout will always be fun. There’s going to be some that you don’t find enjoyable.
2. What you describe as “satisfying” or “personal challenge” is important. In my mind, this is the same category as fun, but perhaps worded a little more succinctly than I did originally. The most important thing is that you are able to find something in your exercise from which you derive pleasure, satisfaction, or motivation. I personally believe that there is a connect between all three of these things, but that is simply my own outlook on life.
I’ve been playing and training squash for four years now. While there are definitely some days when I don’t really want to get out there and train, on average, and in the long term, I derive great pleasure (fun) from the sport. Although I respect what you’ve written, I sure hope that my own experience continues to prove otherwise
.
–Adam