A visit to the dentist, a routine physical with your doctor, or a mind-numbing Zoom meeting with team members at the workplace is a less-than-enticing setting for some of us to participate in. Who wants to sit in a dentist’s chair with their mouth wide open and have their gums prodded with foreign metal instruments? Additionally, an annual doctor’s appointment to review cholesterol, insulin, and hormone levels in the body can be akin to the anxiety experienced of waiting to see the results of a minimum SAT score required to apply to a prestigious university. While web conference technology such as Zoom has accelerated productivity in our career and educational system, the anticipation of sitting in a chair and staring at a screen for hours can be daunting. Yoga classes, small group fitness classes, or personal training sessions can elicit similar scenarios involving a setting someone isn’t looking forward to being a part of.
For a gym rat like myself, I look forward to the sacred time I reserve to move my body, sweat, increase my heart rate, and breathe. I enter this setting, putting my phone on silent and telling everyone important to me that I’ll be out of pocket for a brief time. Barring family emergencies or uncontrollable extenuating circumstances like my home being hit by a meteor, these sixty to ninety minutes of exercise I set aside cannot be replaced by any other request for my time. This session is more than therapy to me. The ability to exercise utilizing the knowledge and skills from my life’s work of helping people feel happy, healthy, and strong to benefit my health and improve my life offers me an irreplaceable, engaging, and entertaining experience. However, I understand and appreciate that there is another side of the spectrum in which people have the opposite perception of exercise. Some people think exercise is boring, it hurts, and it’s simply a thorn in the side of someone with better things to do than check into the front desk at a local gym.
It should come as no surprise that compliance with an exercise routine benefits our livelihood. Increased functional strength, staving off pain caused by injury or degenerative bone disease, and a positive outlook in life are just a few of the positive features regular exercise offers. But for those of us who think that entering a gym to sweat, get dirty, and hang out with super fit people who we have nothing in common with is as undesirable as watching paint dry, what can we do to bypass that barricade of doing something that makes them shudder to the very thought of exercising?
A common misperception of exercise is that it must take hours of work per week to see a result of losing weight, getting stronger, and telling the doctors to leave us alone because we’re getting one hundred and fifty minutes of physical activity per week. While our doctors are correct in the fact that we should all move around more to fend off the advancement of arthritis, metabolic disease, and cardiovascular disease, we don’t need to look at the act of exercising in such a strict manner. A solution we offer to our personal training clients who detest exercise is to ensure they are consistent in their efforts to move more. Instead of counting the minutes of exercise achieved in a week, another worthwhile solution might be to count the number of days one can achieve in a week.
Troubleshooting tactics to resolve a boring exercise setting might include choosing physical activities one enjoys and feeling fulfilled after completing them. For example, many of our clients have dogs they enjoy walking and throwing a ball for at the park. Perhaps ensuring that you walk two to three times per week can be an attainable physical activity goal. Another suitable option people commonly overlook is cleaning a particular area of the house that has been on the back burner for a few months. Taking time out to complete a task like garage reorganization, tidying up the home office, or hanging pictures requires squatting down to pick things up, reaching overhead, and maybe stepping up on stools. Other hobbies might include recreational sports such as bocce ball, pickleball, or hiking. Two days per week of dog walking, one week of house reorganization, and one day of a social sporting event influence movement in the human body and can last around an hour each event. Looking at a calendar to fulfill specific tasks that are engaging, enjoyable, and someone looks forward to can replace a visit to the gym or signing up for a group fitness class.
Exercise is physical activity. If the vision of wearing a sweatband, putting on gym-appropriate apparel, and entering a local gym sweating isn’t the most desirable thought, perhaps looking into other forms of physical activity specific to an individual’s sense of enjoyment would be more appropriate. Humans are too sophisticated to have a cookie-cutter solution to getting more exercise. However, let’s look into activities we enjoy. There’s more than likely a cross over of enjoyment and physical activity that can be applied to our weekly schedule that can help us live happy, healthy, and strong lives.
Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.
