Enjoy exercise by breaking the rules.

Rules. They are everywhere. On posted signs, in handbooks and in your mind.

Some are very handy, don’t get me wrong- but today, we’re going to examine the ones you have in your head about exercise.
Here are a couple examples clients and I have discussed and dismantled over the past few years.

1.) A client admitedly had a rule of what clothes constituded as workout clothes. Therefor, she had to change before she could workout. Now, there are better clothes for movement and there are specific clothes for elite sports training, but what this woman and I discussed were the ‘bare bones’ of what workout clothes had to do in order for her to move in the way she wanted to (or planned on moving)

First, they had to be comfortable. She would test this out using the ‘squat test’ and making sure they didn’t rise or fall down. She reported back that some of the clothes she felt fine in were her pajamas. So she made up her own rules: “in order to work out, clothes have to be comfortable while performing a squat”

2.) Another client came to me and said she had a wonderful gym session. I asked, “what made it wonderful?” She said that she always thought that there was a specific order to exercise “warm up, cardio, lift then stretch” (now- i’m not knocking the importance of a warm up and a cool down here) but her and I spoke about mixing up that order and what it felt like for her. Her gym session went great because she walked a little on the treadmill and then did some hamstring stretches, then she did some shoulder presses and peddled on the bike for a while. She said that mixing up what she thought was the “right” order was fun.

3.) It has to be a continuous hour. Another client and I played with this rule they had for themself. They performed different activities throughout the day with goals of ‘getting breathy’ with each one. so they went for a walk/jog for 15 minutes and then during lunch did a push up/lunge/squat combo in the kitchen while making their sandwich. They reported back that they enjoyed it more when it was spread out and they were able to fit chunks of it into their day better than a full hour.

Now, what you have to have in order to do this activity is some sort of self awareness of the internal dialogue that’s taking place in your head space. In order to know what rules you have, you have to listen to them.

What rules come up for you when it comes to exercise? I’d love to know!