How to find exercise that you will do

Exercise is hard:

There is an article here about how a group of researchers offered to pay people to go to the gym.  It made very little difference to their attendance and very few hit personal targets.  If being paid to exercise doesn’t motivate people what will?

It’s about what you enjoy

I went to a conference a while ago on the best exercises to prevent low back pain.  We initially discussed the range of fantastic physio exercises has available to treat low back pain.  The effectiveness of these exercises is undeniable with loads of lovely science to back them up as treatment. Unfortunately, very few people find them engaging long term once the back pain is resolved and so for prevention, they don’t work

This pushed the conversation in a different way, we realised as with fitness, any movement is better than no movement.  The best way to encourage movement quickly became obvious; get people to exercise in a way that suits them. Don’t prescribe exercise let people choose exercise which suits them and their lifestyle

Do exercise you love!

If stationary, gentle exercise is your thing do Pilates or yoga.  If competitiveness and the outdoors is, do golf.  Love the water? Paddle board, swim or kayak.  There is such a range of activities in Auckland and even on the North Shore that there should be something to suit.  Whether its indoors like the gym, outdoors like runs on the beach or on the water like paddle boarding take advantage of the opportunity available. It is so much easier to motivate for exercise you enjoy and once you are doing something you’ll be amazed at how you can expand from that.

I know a lot of people I know who started with a local walk but once their fitness increased and they realised they had time to exercise they progressed to running 10 km or playing tennis and loved the energy they got from exercise.