2023: The Year We Enjoy Exercise
It's January 1st. And if you're like me, you're lightly reflecting on last year and getting anxious about making the perfect SMART goals for the upcoming year.
This year is going to be different, right!?
Many of us are realizing that we could probably benefit from exercising more this year. But we don't want to become one of those people who gets a new gym membership in January to only slowly stop going by March..and failing to remember to cancel the membership until July.
As someone with multiple degrees in exercise, I know the science about the benefits of exercise on mental and physical health. In fact, my peers in the American College of Sports Medicine like to say "Exercise is Medicine". But that doesn't mean that I'm particularly good about sticking to an exercise program. Sometimes just thinking about exercise kicks up my perfectionistic scientist tendencies - and as I start to get back into regular exercise, I'll think, "I should collect data on this".
And two summers ago, when I got back into running, I did. I collected data from both my Fitbit and Map My Run apps. While on my runs, I would make sure to pause the apps when I'd walk up a hill so it "didn't ruin my average pace data". I wrote down the distance, average heart rate, and average pace on a calendar when I got home. In some ways it felt good to see that I was running regularly, but I never analyzed my running performance, made any of the cool graphs I'd imagined while on the runs, nor did I come up with a "perfect" exercise program to complement my running. So much wasted data!
But last year, in a conversation with my friend Danny - an avid ultra runner - for my podcast "Exploring Cannabis and Exercise", he shared that when he goes out for runs he doesn't know how far he goes or how long it takes. He just runs. I mean, he gets good and high before his runs, but still. This concept simply hadn't occurred to me since I started learning about exercise science.
So against all my exercise scientist instincts, I started running sans data. Like not even a stop watch. It felt revolutionary to me. I was free to walk when I wanted to walk, sprint when I felt like sprinting, and just enjoy running in nature again. I got good and high before these runs as well, but that's a story for another day.
It reminded me of a derivation of "Exercise is Medicine" that a student corrected in an assignment a few years ago when he wrote "actually, Movement is Medicine". There are so many ways that we can move our bodies and we don't need a perfect exercise program to see the benefits of movement. Movement can look like playing an instrument, juggling, or going for a walk while mushroom hunting - things that we wouldn't typically classify as "exercise", but ways of moving our bodies that we enjoy nonetheless. And as someone who enjoys juggling, I can tell you that you'd be surprised by how sore your abs and biceps can get from even 5 minutes of juggling. ;)
As we start this new year, let's start by reimagining exercise. It doesn't have to look the way you've always experienced it or the way the influencers tell you it should look. You can move by yourself or move with other people. You can be hardcore or you can be playful. You can return to an activity you enjoyed in your youth or pick up an entirely new activity. Exercise can be a celebration of movement instead of punishment. The more you enjoy it, the more you'll do it.
This year is going to be different.
This is the year you can simply enjoy moving your body.
