My morning exercise routine, which was a mentally and physically necessary burden during the pandemic, has changed into something new now that I’m back to work. I get plenty of exercise at work, so I’m not MAKING myself do exercise at home anymore—but it’s turned into something I would almost say I “want” to do. I apologize for that. It’s not something I’d want to hear from someone else, either. Super irritating. But here are some of the WHYS, which I feel/hope make it a little less irritating: it’s because the exercise is now something I’m doing privately up in my room (continued gratitude to Sundry for this life-changing idea); and it’s because I am now doing exercise in order to address certain specific issues I’m having with my active job, and/or for mental health.
So, I am not looking for videos that are STRENUOUS or unpleasant to do. I don’t want to SWEAT. I want to feel mellow and good, and I want my body to be a little stronger / more flexible, and I want to do something toward preventing my active job from injuring my body, and I want to occasionally try something and discover that I can do something I didn’t think I would be able to do (and/or find I can do it more than I used to be able to). So sometimes I choose stretch-filled videos for back pain (here are a couple I’ve done numerous times: Yoga for Back Pain; Upper Back Love); or sometimes I choose a SHORT video to work on core strength (I mostly like this one: 12-Minute Core Conditioning); or maybe for variety I choose one called something like yoga for anxiety or yoga for stress; or sometimes I choose a video with more details about how exactly to do a particular pose, to help me with another video (I am STILL not sure I know how pigeon pose works). If I am doing a video and the instructor starts putting us through difficult and/or rapidly-changing poses and I can’t / don’t want to keep up, I opt out for that part, and I do just little versions of what she’s doing: if, for example, the instructor were doing full sit-ups with crossed arms, instead I would do little tiny partial lifts with my hands behind my head. If she’s doing planks moving rapidly into cobra and then arriving at downward dog while I am just finally getting myself into the plank, I just stay with the plank, and then move SLOWLY to cobra, and at some point I skip ahead and rejoin what the instructor is doing. I’m getting some of the exercise, but I’m getting the amount I want, and I don’t have to get frustrated. If I do the video again another day, and I feel like I want to try doing a little MORE like what she’s doing, I do a little more like what she’s doing; otherwise, I stick with my own littler/slower version. Or I lie on my yoga mat and breathe and think about the nice dream I had the night before. Or whatever. It’s CHOSEN time; I don’t HAVE to do it. I can skip or modify.
And it’s pretty cool to start out with a sore back that was kind of bothering me during the night, and then do a video, and then my back feels better. Or to do a short core video a few times, and then find that at work I’m already feeling those muscles kick in while I work. And some of the stretches I’ve learned from the videos are helpful to do at work if my back feels like it’s getting dicey, or after work if I come home feeling sore.
I don’t AT ALL do it every day. I have my alarm set for the time I have to get up if I’m just going to shower and dress and eat breakfast and check email without being rushed before work. If I wake up earlier, sometimes I will choose to go back to sleep, or just lounge around; other times I will think “Ooo. If I get up now, I’d have time to do that nice back-stretching video before work.” Or sometimes I will reach for my phone and play Candy Crush until I have to get up.
On days I don’t have work, I’ve started seeing that waking-up time as a (again, I apologize for talking about exercise this way) treat. I bring my laptop upstairs the night before. I wake up when I want to. Then I play Candy Crush in bed for a little while. Then I get up and change into my exercise clothes, which I am gradually making improvements to (switched to a tank top, which I owned ONLY to keep myself from buying any more tank tops, and now my t-shirt doesn’t fall oppressively over my face in downward dog). Maybe I do the short core yoga video and then think that’s all I want to do, and I go on to take a shower and get ready for the day. Or maybe my back is sore, and so I pick one of the back pain videos with all the nice stretches. Maybe I do BOTH the back one AND the core one. Meanwhile, for all of this I am ALONE IN MY ROOM, and there is that “day off from work!” feeling, and the feeling of doing what I want and taking my time getting into the day. Anyway it’s nice, and it’s a nice change from “UG now I HAVE TO go on a walk.”
I was a collegiate athlete, and continued to play for a few years after graduation (which was 100 years ago.) This year has helped SO MUCH in breaking my mindset of exercise needs to be demanding and exhausting to count.
I developed an actual allergy to exercise (primarily sweat inducing or hard cardio) in the past five years and so I just didn’t do anything. Like at all. Adriene’s videos have convinced me that there are things I can be doing that feel good, that are helpful and meaningful, even if they aren’t what my brain says “counts.”
One thing I have been doing is really concentrating on how my back and hips will feel during the morning yoga, as I am going to sleep. I’m visualizing the good feelings and kind of falling asleep looking forward to that time. It is wild how well that works.
As an aside, a few of my faves that target lower back and hips are: Revolution day 22, Dedicate day 8, Gentle Yummy Yoga, and Cozy Flow!
Yes! I was a childhood exercise-hating bookworm in a family of enthusiastic ‘sporty’ people and it’s taken me decades to shake off that mentality. That exercise doesn’t have to be a competitive thing. That it doesn’t matter if my bloody mother was back in her size 8 (that’s a US 4, people!) jeans 3 weeks after I was born and I was the cross country champion of her school or that my dad, aged almost 70, can still run marathons at a faster rate than I can run a 5k.
It was an absolute revolution to learn that whole thing from Legally Blonde – endorphins make you happy and happy people don’t kill their husbands – was *highly relevant* to surviving first life with small kids and then lockdown. I actively look forward to going for a run or carving out half an hour to myself for a Pilates video now. No comparison, no competition, just me stretching my body, moving my frame, learning new things and firing those endorphins. I never thought I’d be one of *those* people but it turns out I am if it’s on my terms.
Argh, typo. *she* was the cross country champ, I most certainly was not.
I feel like, for me, exercise is good only for the mental health benefits. I do not see any weight loss or really any physical changes, but it is SO GOOD at making my brain stop galloping ahead like a terrified horse. And since I have figured that out, I do find myself craving it, which is weird and makes me feel apologetic too. 😂 I am opposite to you though – I need heavy breathing and sweat pouring down my face, which honestly makes it all the more weird that I like it. (I hate heavy breathing and despise sweat.) If only it hadn’t taken FORTY YEARS to figure this out though.
Yes! As much as I want and enjoy the physical benefits of exercise, I am only truly motivated by its mental health and emotional benefits. It took the pandemic for me to learn this–or 41 years, however you want to think of it, lol.
Another later bloomer here- at least, I never played sports in school (instead I had marching band and hiking with my Girl Scout troop. What?) I started “running” (jogging) in my 20s and haven’t looked back. It works for my brain like turning off the computer and turning it back on.
Also, Swistle, I want to hear more about your workout fashion choices. There are so many cute and practical options out there now! Old Navy and Target especially are making some great knockoffs of higher end brands.
Because I’m just in my own bedroom, my workout stuff is not cute (yet: that’s my NEXT upgrade!), and only partly wearable in public. I had some clearance Old Navy sweatpants (MODERATELY cute but not CUTE cute) left over from when I was making myself walk in the mornings, and I first combined those with one of my many political t-shirts—but the t-shirt kept falling over my face irritatingly. I had a tank top in my online shopping cart when I remembered the tank tops I have in a drawer so that I don’t buy any more tank tops, and I tried them all on, and one of them fit…fine. It’s not great, but it’s fine, and it’s a fun color (BRIGHT pink, and the clearance sweatpants are like a faded green-apple green, so I am…bright!). But I would not be able to wear it in front of others (I’d even feel a little awkward letting PAUL see me in it), as it is not at all designed to be worn braless, which is how I am dressing for exercise now that I am not doing anything jouncy. So my NEXT purchase is going to be some sort of built-in-support/sports tank-top, if/when I find one on clearance! And then perhaps I will get cuter pants to go with it!—though the ones I have are fine, and comfy enough, and cute enough that I don’t feel UNcute.
I am a professional yoga teacher, working mostly with private clients (all of whom have different goals/issues/mobility). You are doing an advanced yoga practice that many people never achieve, because it is almost impossible for some to overcome the idea that “more physically taxing = “advanced.” Kudos to you. I hope you continue in your practice.
I am in a frustrating stage of exercising no longer helps me lose weight like it did when I was younger. I have had to work hard to change my mentality and tell myself that it is still beneficial and I feel better and stronger even if my pants size hasn’t budged a bit. Argh. I spent a LOT of time in 2020 sitting on my couch drinking wine and eating snacks and it has been a difficult hole to dig myself out of, both physically and mentally.
Now it’s summer and the kids are home full time and my husband has been on a work trip that started the day school got out (how’s that for planning) and I have recently discovered that going upstairs to my apartment gym is a welcome change to my routine. I normally do workouts in my living room or bedroom but the kids are all still HERE, where they can find me, and talk to me, and I can hear them bickering. Running up to the gym to walk on the treadmill and so some weights for half an hour or so has been completely sanity saving. Even if I’m really just walking and listening to a podcast.
I love this so much: “It’s CHOSEN time; I don’t HAVE to do it. I can skip or modify.”
Honestly the key to making exercise a regular part of your life is to find something that works for you. For some people it’s the sweaty stuff, for others it’s the stretchy stuff, still others need a team activity.
I hate that high school PE was not a class designed to help everyone find their preferred fitness activity.
It was life changing to realize in my 20s that I didn’t have to do any sort of competitive sport or activity to get exercise and I liked just exercising for exercising’s sake. I’ve now been a gym regular (barring the pandemic) for 24 years, and have taught a fitness class since 2002. I taught through both my pregnancies even!
But despite LOVING the class I teach, I still tell people who are new at the gym that the key to long-term fitness is finding something a) you like and b) you can fit in fairly regularly without aiming for doing it too often. I’ve seen people come to the gym pretty much every day and exercise like crazy, and I’ve seen people come to the gym a couple of times a week: guess who is still around a couple of years later? 9 times out of 10 it’ll be the one who balances the gym with the rest of their life’s priorities. Slow and steady wins the race unless you genuinely enjoy something so much that you love being fanatical about doing it.
I love this approach! At the start of 2021 I was feeling terrible (low energy, foggy brain and just uncomfortable in my own body) but had zero motivation to actually do anything about it. I have done more diets and exercise binges in my 46 years than I can even count and I am just over it. I told myself I didn’t have to do anything strenuous, I just had to do something. I started with walks a few times a week, and then a friend recommended a yoga class that was very low intensity. I really enjoyed yoga and started going a few days a week. A few months later I added a beginners tennis class to the mix and absolutely love it. It’s become a slippery slope of exercising, in the best way, which is all very unlike me.
I keep joking that being unmotivated ended up being the best thing that happened to me when it comes to my mentality around exercise and health.
“I apologize for that. It’s not something I’d want to hear from someone else” SO FUNNY AND SO TRUE. I really miss doing weights at the gym – it’s the kind of exercise I most enjoy. But I did finally start doing some yoga and it was embarrassing (needlessly, I was alone) and frustrating and I stopped early and STILL things hurt less the next day. So I will keep up with that. But I really do need to find some shorts that don’t look stupid or feel bad – for exercise and for weeding without showing the neighbourhood my ass.
Thank you for this post. I have aches and pains that physical therapy exercises truly help and I have not done them for a year.
I want to feel better, and I think I will move my exercise stuff into my room to do it.
I’m totally going to try doing yoga alone in my bedroom now!
I’m happy for you that you’ve found exercise that you like and makes you feel good! I found that yoga and some weight lifting/HIIT videos make my pandemic life a lot more sane on the days I am moving. The endorphin glow after exercise keeps me hooked.