I recently had the honour of being a guest expert on a podcast and the topic (can you guess?) was exercise. And more specifically RELATIONSHIP with exercise. It might sound a bit weird to think about, but yes you have a relationship with exercise. So do I. It's been an evolution for me to say the least and it will continue to evolve as I do.
When I think back, my relationship with exercise did not start out very positively. When I was in elementary school I thought exercise was hard and uncomfortable and that I wasn't good at it. My peers were faster than me, could jump further than me and do an activity for longer than me without getting tired. I think this had a lot to do with my lack of confidence in what I was capable of, but it always just seemed hard. I really loved being active - playing at the lake in the summer, sledding in the winter and playing tag on the playground at school. But when it came to running a lap around the school field or participating in an event at the annual track and field meet I was never the fastest or fittest and I often felt defeated afterwards wondering why.
I was usually always up for trying something new when it came to activities or sports - I tried gymnastics, t-ball then softball, swimming, tennis, short distance track and field events, skating, cross-country skiing and soccer. It took a long time for me to find something that stuck - and if you check out the podcast, you'll hear that soccer was the one that stole my heart. I think the biggest reason for this was very situational in terms of how my confidence was able to build - I was in an all female gym class in Grade 8 and it allowed me to feel more freedom and less self-conscious than when I was in a mixed-gender class. It's so interesting to look back on now, but it's amazing what being on an even playing field in terms of gender (or perceptions of gender) can do for a female's confidence. Think about how it feels to step foot into a public gym (can you even remember what that's like right now in the mids of pandemic lockdowns) - what area or equipment to you tend to migrate towards? Do you confidently step up to the Olympic lifting platform and start loading up plates or do you head into the group fitness studio for a class that's predominantly female?
Over the years as my self-confidence slowly began to bubble up and I started becoming more interested in biology - especially human biology - my relationship with exercise really began to evolve. Exercise started to become a passion. I loved learning about how my body reacted to exercise and how it made me feel. I loved playing a team sport because I felt that it pushed me outside of my comfort zone much more than exercising alone - I wanted to try harder because other people were relying on my effort. My motivation in this situation became more extrinsic because I was relying on an external factor to drive my efforts, but it's where my journey really started to change. But also this type of exercise was FUN to me. It was social and competitive and I loved it.
In this conversation with the beautiful hosts of the Relationships Reclaimed Podcast I posed some tricky questions that got them thinking. What type of exercise do you ENJOY doing? What type of exercise is FUN for you? And why do you need to care about what OTHER PEOPLE think about that type of exercise?
After finishing university, my relationship with exercise began to evolve again. I began running more and found myself wanting to challenge myself physically. The FUN of soccer was starting to waiver for me after experiencing two knee surgeries and the team that I had been part of for years dissolved. I found it hard to connect with a new team and new dynamics so as my athletic interests changed, I turned my focus to something that scared the crap out of me - triathlon. I wanted to do something that seemed unachievable to me - something that would make me stronger both physically and mentally. Entering the endurance sports realm definitely built my confidence, but it also did something to my relationship with exercise. It began to dictate my worth, in my mind. If I had a good workout and hit my pace times or watts or distance I would feel great. If I had a rough workout and wasn't able to keep up with others or my pace times were off, I would usually spend some time in my head berating myself. My mood could often fluctuate depending on how a workout went and there were points in my Ironman training that I began to resent those specific types of exercise - especially my long outdoor rides because they were the part of my training that brought out most of my limiting beliefs. Have you felt this way about exercise? That your worth or value is dependant on how you perform in that specific workout?
Now comes to the most recent evolution to my current relationship with exercise - my experience during pregnancy and postpartum. I had this vision of a super fit pregnancy and being able to keep up with what I was currently doing for workouts throughout my pregnancy and then I'd give birth and be back at it 6-8 weeks postpartum. Hah! What a reality check. Exercising during pregnancy stirred up ALL THE FEELINGS of failure in terms of exercising. Each time I got demoted to a slower swim lane, I had an internal pity party. When I came to the realization that I needed to stop running around 20 weeks due to pelvic pain, I tried to be ok with incline walking or the step-mill but it just wasn't the same. I felt so out of control of my body and my mindset suffered. After I had my first son in 2017 I had all of those images in my head of "fitting back into my pre-baby jeans" and "running races with a jogging stroller" that we seem to be bombarded with by social media. My relationship and expectations of exercise postpartum had to change drastically in order for it to still be part of my lifestyle. THIS is where I really learned to accept that the length of time of exercise or type of exercise mattered much less than the actual mental health effects it brought to me. Exercise became my biggest coping mechanism for postpartum depression. It just helped me feel a little more like myself when I was doing it so I looked forward to that tiny glimpse of myself each day that I could manage to find it. It was the point for me that exercise became so much less about what it could make my body look like and SO much more about what it could make my mind feel like. It's been liberating. So much so that I've developed a program specifically to support other women through the postpartum exercise experience called Postpartum STRONG.
So what feelings or words come to your mind when you think about the word EXERCISE?
And if you need help navigating this tricky relationship I'd love to chat with you during a FREE discovery session to see if I can help you understand it a little better. Because YOU matter.
xo Jen
PS - Here's a sneak peek of the podcast. If you want to listen to more of the conversation head to your favourite podcasting platform and search for Relationships Reclaimed or click HERE to listen online. Enjoy!
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