4 Ways to Fall in Love with Exercise: Part 3

Hopefully by the time you’re reading this, you’ve been looking into how your exercise goals link with your personal values and that you’ve been making an effort to build small, yet powerful habits to make your exercise experience more frictionless and doable. In today’s article, we’ll discuss how to make exercise more personal and fun.

#3: Make it Fun

I’m not surprised if you groaned when you saw the title to part three of this series. “How on earth can something as tedious and painful as exercise be fun?” Exercise doesn’t need to be tedious. There are hundreds of ways to move and strengthen your body that don’t fit into the typical running or lifting weights category. In fact, I’d be surprised if you’ve tried all of them.

I want to challenge you to go out and try a new method of training as soon as you’re able. In fact, many exercise organisations such as Body 20 make a one-hour free trial available for you to try. I’ve found Body 20 to be much more enjoyable than a traditional gym because clients not only get their own personal trainer to train them, but these trainers are friendly, interesting people who are great at making conversation. This ensures that if you join Body 20, that training will never be a lonely experience for you.

Other interesting forms of exercise could include joining a casual sports team, joining a dance studio, taking up individual sports such as tennis or squash, going on park-runs, or even playing Augmented Reality video games such as Pokémon Go or Zombies, Run!

The great thing about most of these suggestions is that they’re both physical and social experiences. Being active can be so much more enjoyable when you do it with people you enjoy being around.

You may be reading this having tried loads of different ways to be active, but are still struggling to get yourself to exercise. This could be because most of the activities you’ve tried are either too difficult or painful for them to be enjoyable. I can relate to this somewhat. While my wife and many of my friends enjoy ballroom dancing, I was always really put off by it because it was way too difficult for me to learn and remember all the moves while trying to lead a partner in a dance. However, when I realised that if I was patient with myself, and took my own time to learn the moves, I began to understand the moves better, performed the moves better, and began to enjoy them. You may have gone to a fitness class that was too intense for you, while it looked much easier for others. Be patient with yourself and start with an easier exercise. As you begin to improve, you may find that your enjoyment of the activity starts to slowly grow with it. Train on your level. The beauty is more in your improvement over time than what you can do today.

Be sure to look out for part-four of this blog series on how to fall in love with exercise. In the meantime, let us know what you thought of this article. If you have any suggestions for future articles, drop us an email at moreletavillage@body20.co.za. We’d love to connect with you.

Keep Growing

Dave Roebuck