Enjoy Your Workouts

Research is proving more and more that exercise is just one of those necessities in life -whether we like it or not. If we want to achieve or maintain good health, we need to break from a sedentary lifestyle. Exercise is known to have many short and long term benefits, but why does it feel like such a chore? Wouldn't life be so much better if you found a workout you are passionate about? You would love it enough to do it, and do it regularly. In this blog we’ll explore 3 ways to discover yourself and your true physical drive.

There are countless activities out there and some are more strenuous than others. Let's just say, for the purpose of this article, the goal is movement. This can be defined as getting off the couch, minimizing online screen time, and increasing your heart rate.

Start with the end in mind- In Stephen Covey's book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, habit 2 encourages us to think about the end result. What do we hope to accomplish? This can be helpful to figure out the type or intensity of the workout. Do you need to lose a few pounds? How about create a healthier network of friends or battle depression?

Knowing this makes it easier to narrow your choices.

If you seek a specific health outcome, your primary care physician may offer some suggestions.

Start from the beginning

When you think about the younger years, what activities did you enjoy? The breeze flowing through your hair on a bike ride? Hitting a ball around? The sense of achievement behind running races? Reminiscing the good ole days can offer familiarity, keeps things simple, and can add some fun. There are even workouts for those who loved playing in the mud.

Another way of looking at this approach is a healthy habit re-boot of sorts. As children we learn play, social interaction, and recess are crucial to our day, but this focus often gets lost as we age.

However, revisiting how we prioritize our day may help our workout seem more important and then less hurried. More companies are embracing the increased productivity that often accompanies exercise and will even allow time for walks during the day.

Personality match

If you want to gain greater insight into yourself and your intuitive workout choices, try taking a personality test. There are several workout matching websites that correspond to the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory. There are also phone apps available to determine your Myers Briggs score that are relatively inexpensive, available on both IOS and Android. Like many standardized tests, accuracy may wane, but it may act as a general guideline.

The results from pairing the Myer’s Briggs personality types with exercise can be quite interesting. One website identified INTJs would enjoy martial arts. An ENTJ would enjoy Chess Boxing. Other sites like The 8 Colors of Fitness assign a personality to a color. Each of the eight colors have a corresponding workout theme such as green (ISFP & ISTP) for nature. Gold personalities (ESTJ & ESFJ) prefer traditional workout activities with a social element. If you take the test, I invite you to write us and tell us if you found your kinesthetic match.

These tips offer a few ways to discover enjoyment in your fitness regimen. Finding the right workout mechanism will not only feel more naturally integrated into your lifestyle, you may even reach some of your goals with less effort.

So whether you are trying to find the one exercise to motivate you off the couch, or you are trying to vary your cross-training, there are countless activities out there.

Be tenacious!

Erica is a psychotherapist and humanitarian aid coordinator who has a background in health psychology, global health, and addictions. She has over 16 years of counseling, teaching, and coaching experience. Erica has several masters degrees, is a licensed counselor, and has an addiction certification. She has worked with all ages in the US and abroad. Follow Erica on Twitter. Se habla español.

Main Photo Credit: Kzenon/shutterstock.com; Second Photo Credit: Syda Productions/shutterstock.com; Third Photo Credit: Pavel L Photo and Video/shutterstock.com; Fourth Photo Credit: Karin Jaehne/shutterstock.com