It's the start of a new year and I've made a few resolutions around fitness. Many are the same as the ones I made last year, which gives you an idea of how well these things tend to go for me.
I regularly see both a PT and a soft tissue therapist. Both are excellent (if you are in the Bath area and want a recommendation, give me a shout). My problem is that while it's very good for me, I don't really like the gym. I find picking up the thing then putting it down again entirely pointless and I don't really get much from the weight getting bigger. I've been trying to explore my thinking here with these two fine folk and I think we've finally brought together some disparate thoughts into something helpful.
First, I see the gym in general as a support activity rather than a means to an end. Rather than finding the activity and any progress compelling in themselves, I only get enjoyment when I see other activities getting easier / faster / better as a result. When I was younger, I did a lot of martial arts training - that was my exercise endpoint and I took pleasure getting better. Gym and other raw cardio training helped with the martial arts, so I enjoyed it. I have been out of martial arts training for some time, and I've been trying to use the gym as a substitute. This doesn't work for me, and I need to find an alternative.
Fortunately, I have just the thing. I have been a keen badminton player since I was a teenager and during my adult life I've been in and out of playing depending on time (ie work) and availability of people to play against. I've just started playing again and it is a lot of fun, while also being a great focus as a reason to get fitter.
Second, talking to these professionals has helped me realise there a third kind of fitness. Previously I've thought about fitness as important for health - which is obviously the most important thing, but really boring when abstract - and to power other sport as above. However, there is also the fitness that powers our ability to do basic "athletic" things like twisting and jumping.
Like many, I work a desk job and my current employment is remote. If I don't make the effort, I can easily clock in about 200 steps in the course of a day - sedentary doesn't really cover it. Continental plates move more than I actually need to, which is why I force myself to walk a few miles every day after work. Being like this is not that unusual in the modern world and many people of my age really struggle to walk any distance or jump a stream or physically twist. Our bodies atrophy and generally forget how to do these things. I realise I find this frustrating, and retraining simple jumps and twists and so on is something that I enjoy - and I get a lot out of seeing my progress. Some shifting around my training schedule has changed the focus and this has really helped with my engagement, which means I push harder and get a lot more out of it. Of course, training snowballs - when it starts going well it builds on itself. Getting started is often the hardest.
I'm sure many reading this will finding it blindingly obvious, but I have never really understood my own positive triggers when it comes to exercise and maybe recording my thinking here will help someone in my position. As I've said many times before, half of writing this blog is a way for me to arrange my thoughts so I understand myself and any readers are here for the ride...
Plus, it means I get to write about playing badminton again (and winning :-) ).
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