So You Hate Exercise, Do Ya? NO YOU DON’T – I’LL PROVE IT!

When people drop by our gym for a tour, often they bring a friend or two.  Occasionally, a person accompanying the one interested in joining makes it clear that they are not remotely interested in any type of “working out”, but are just there with the friend.  This always seems to happen when the topic of “cardio” exercise is broached.  Further, they make a point of telling me that they “hate exercise”.  Not able to resist, I ask if I may respectfully reply.  They always agree and I always respond with “No you don’t”.    The person interested in joining the gym usually laughs and backs up their friend’s conviction – “No, you don’t know her, she will not exercise.  Dude, she absolutely hates exercise”.  I hold defiantly “Actually, she really loves exercise”.  I then prove it to them.

From there I continue “Here are three examples that prove you love exercise.”  “DANCING, SEX AND WALKING!”  Now suppose you were never allowed to do any of these activities again.  You are at a friend’s wedding and have had a great dinner and a few glasses of wine.  Your favorite song comes on and all your friends get up to dance.  You join a circle of your best friends dancing and laughing, wine glasses in hand.  Nope …sit back down, sorry, but remember you hate exercise.

Here are a few more examples.  Your hormones are raging, the most beautiful and sexy man/woman wants you terribly.  You are mad for this person.  The time is right and excitement peaks.  Your heart beats fast and the bedroom beckons.   Stop…sorry, you would prefer to not move.  Remember, you hate exercise.  Here’s another one:  it’s a beautiful fall day, the air is crisp and the leaves have just started to turn, you live 5 blocks from your favorite coffee shop.  These blocks are lined with local shops and neighbors that you love to visit on the way.  An old friend is waiting there with a great story they have to tell you and you can’t wait to talk to them.  It’s the start of a new morning and you would just love a fresh, strong cup of coffee.  The sun is up and it is the start of a beautiful fall day.  Stop, sit down, and figure out another way to get there because walking is exercise.  Ridiculous examples you say!  I agree, just as silly as the statement “I hate exercise”.

I’ve never lost this argument.  Sometimes people will counter with “Yeah, but I was talking about working out; you know on treadmills and stair machines and in those bootcamps”.  This misinformation on what constitutes exercise represents the problem entirely.  Our fitness industry had managed to re-define something as simple as moving your body to include only the most boring, painful, myopic, and in the end useless forms of such a natural idea.

You never hated exercise; you hate what we have unfortunately come to know as exercise – huffing and puffing on some torturous cardio machine in a gym, hating every second of it; watching the clock and anxiously waiting for it to end.  The vast majority of us do in fact hate that, and perhaps that is exactly why the fitness industry is failing us miserably as we become fatter and fatter.