Fitness as Play not Work
As a child I tried every and all sports that were available to me – athletics, soccer, GAA, basketball, tennis and in college American football. Fitness for children and teens is always presented as being fun, a chance to learn new skills and with very little focus on how they look. This makes exercise feel like it’s more inclusive to all abilities, shapes and sizes. There were wins and losses, but it was always about the participation, the friends and the lessons learned.
So how do we get it so unbelievably wrong when it comes to extolling the virtues of physical activity to adults? Why is it when we’re adults that staying fit or getting started becomes work and not play? You only need to take a cursory glance at what you see and read on social media to conclude that getting in shape looks far too much like hard work.
In order to take care of your health and stay in shape you do need a certain amount of “hard work” but far less than what most people suggest and it’s those suggestions that put people off believing they could ever do it. All the “no pain, no gain” brigade do is push fitness further away for the average person that end up feeling like failures when they don’t get their six pack or eliminate their bingo wings after doing yet another six-week challenge. Training intensity needs to be properly managed rather than seeing how much damage you can cause in a single session.
You would NEVER tell a child that you better “go hard or go home” when they exercise so why do we insist on doing this with adults that want to integrate training into a busy life with jobs, kids, family and all the stresses that can go with a normal life? There is very little quantification with children’s exercise, they’re not measuring how many reps they’ve done, how much weight have they lifted or lost and they don’t see food as something to be controlled and carefully managed.
A far more positive outlook would be to become more childlike in your approach to fitness by seeing it as a way to enhance your life outside of exercise. Through playing a range of sports and in general play kids learn new skills, have fun and don’t become attached to the outcome. Adults can achieve this by ensuring exercise is always varied and focused on how you feel rather than solely how you look. A constantly varied training program that has a nice balance of mobility, strength and conditioning will make you more robust to injuries and ensure that you’re always learning new exercises or drills.
Fitness doesn’t need to be polarized – you don’t need to smash every single workout, increase your chances of getting injured and live on chicken, broccoli and rice to feel the positive effects and health benefits of regular exercise.
Done right you’ll get results, be healthier, more resilient, happier, sleep better and look better. Done wrong it’s all work and no play.