Why You Always Quit the Gym: the Science of Enjoying Exercise

if you are able for one day to experience the perspective of a truly active person you would feel this you wake up and your body is already buzzing straight out of bed shoes Keys run you chase the endorphins down with a huge breakfast get into work your mind is clear your body and art time flies as you rush to your evening workout pushing yourself truly in your element alive you wrap up the day ready to feel the bed on your stretched sore and stronger body [Music] this is definitely not my experience of life I've always hated exercise as a child I never played sports or wanted to go outdoors I never even learned how to ride the bike which I still can't do and I was described by everyone who knew me as physically the laziest girl ever I even plotted seven years worth of physical steps data which show inconsistent guilt-ridden movements that range from doing 30 steps a day to forcefully having to move in hospital or work and it's not just silly things like arbitrary steps and biking it's the fact that when I'm depressed my instinct is to just stay in bed and if I can I will do it for weeks or even months which makes everything so much worse and I've suffered from chronic back pain from genes and also terrible posture and it has done nothing for my self-esteem to feel constantly uncomfortable in my own body to feel slow and heavy and sad and useless and lazy and uncomfortable and so so embarrassed to have a theoretically healthy physical body and yet to be able to do almost nothing with it I have always been so jealous of people who seem to naturally enjoy exercise and it is so difficult to fall in love and to consistently exercise and work out when you've only ever hated it your whole life and you are so bad at it and I've tried it's been exactly 10 years ago when I first bought my gem card and since then I have gone into cycles of quitting and starting exercise again feeling defeated and yet determined because I'm sure that there's always been something out there that I just can't seem to get recently I've been working out semi-consistently for about four months when I felt that I was getting close to wanting to quit and I just paused thought I'd get some professional help and decided the scariest thing I've potentially done in a while which is that I was going to do some form of exercise every day for 30 days determined to figure out and teach myself if I could how to fall in love with working out and it's now been a month and a half since I started this daily exercise thing and I can truly say that I feel like a different person I move differently I walk differently I sit differently I stand differently I even breathe in deeper my life has truly changed now I'm definitely not an athlete and there are still so much more on this journey that I want to do I'm curious to see and I want to share but for now I'm still an absolute expert in someone who hates exercise and so today I wanted to share the four things that I wish I would have done differently in the whole 10 years that I was approaching exercise because I'm sure things would have been so different for me I'm going to be talking about finding the correct type of motivation to exercise and also goal setting the things that I believe were the reasons that I was quitting all the time in the past and also what the elements of genuinely enjoyable exercise sessions are for me now I'll describe how I accidentally managed to be consistent and stick to a routine when I hate habits and lastly I have some miscellaneous tips on how to enjoy exercise if you're an Elizabeth sort of person a lot if not all of these are things that I learned through working with and being Guided by Candice my personal trainer whom I was gifted by Coke pilot an online Fitness training coach who are also sponsoring this video this is a Forbes ranked online personal training service and I'm sure they disagree with me but I genuinely think it's much more impressive what they've done with me and my body as if you're of this video if you want it you get two free weeks of online personalized training where you get paired up with an expert human on the other side who gets to know you your goals your current level and puts a personalized plan and a lot of technical support on the side which I'm going to talk about a lot later if you're interested in that but for now let's get straight into not hating exercise as Newton very smartly observed a body at rest will stay at rest unless a force is applied to it and if like me you are starting from a position of doing nothing there needs to be a strong motivation or a strong force to induce a change when it comes to why to exercise in general my belief is well you know it's it's common sense it's good for you but the thing is we're not very good at sticking to Common Sense things as Teresa motto from Cambridge University very interestingly pointed out we do stop swimming when we see a sign saying these are shark and festive Orchards but we respond very differently to warnings about lifestyle Improvement and I believe that there can be a lot of mental and emotional barriers to doing things that seem obvious if you are healthy as someone who has a lot of personal trauma around my body image and my self-image any changes in this Direction become automatically a lot more difficult when I had my first call with Candace my personal trainer we talked about so much but one of the first questions that she asked me what was why I was there specifically and also what my goals were but the why it caught me by surprise because it was something that I hadn't necessarily put that much thought into and exploring this question with her and thinking about it a lot in my own time I think really really changed my perspective on how to approach exercise and change things drastically for me so my first huge bit of advice is to find a really really strong emotional and personal reason that you want to exercise which is connected to the sort of person that you want to become and keep being and also the sort of Journey that you want to be on in your life I'm going to share my own three main motivators which are really really personal my first source of motivation is that I wanted to be a mom one day I would be absolutely mortified if I was as lazy physically as a mother as I have been as a girl and woman now it terrifies me and also the thought that there is any part of myself that does not want to go out and play with my children honestly makes me want to cry that that could be the case and so it's such a strong motivator for me to think that I cannot be this lazy person in the future this needs to change and it needs to start changing soon is a super super strong thing and also I believe that children learn a lot by seeing and I want to break the cycle and create a home environment where people respect their bodies and where there is a hygiene around working out the second reason is that I want to become like the people I admire and the people I am closest to who are the most mentally stable the kindest most balanced and wonderful people all happen to really really work out a lot they have black belts they do gymnastics backflips front flips they are running every morning um obviously not or by the same person but they have such a strong workout ethic and it's almost A coping mechanism for them they would be stressed if they couldn't do their morning run or if they couldn't go to their training or their sparring or whatever they're doing and it always surprised me I wondered if this was genuinely a factor that contributed to their piece and I just wanted some of that I want to feel what endorphins are like I don't think I'd ever had them before and they sound really cool and thirdly I want more of that feeling that I have in those brief moments in life that I've been a bit fitter than before I know what that feels like I feel lighter I have a spring in my step I'm actually in my body and I have a strong connection with my body I usually I'm very separated from it in the sense that I hate it I'm frustrated I want to punish it and like make it do things and it's so annoying but I feel like after a workout or after a consistent workout I feel much more present and centered and I definitely much prefer that state of being even sharing this with Candace was quite vulnerable I think but it made us a lot closer now moving on to goals this was something that I was really dreading when um meeting a personal trainer because I know that they are very goal focused and I have a really bad experience with setting body goals um in the past seems to be like weight goals or having ABS or having specific kind of desires for a body shape and a day and up and really really dangerous places sometimes so I was really scared I told her this immediately and we came up with some more reasonable goals that I'm actually really excited about still I'll give them in detail the rest is to do the splits because it looks really really cool and I've always wanted to do it um secondly really random but I want to squat my body weight just because I think it sounds cool to me and I want to be able to do that next is to do a single pull-up they look so difficult I have no upper body strength and um this is something that I think would be such a good moment for me to feel that I've come so far from where I used to be nasty and very importantly is to one crave and to enjoy exercise my recommendation for goals is to pick things that are directly helpful for your life and the kind of career that you have for example I have these personalized workouts for after Hospital days when I've been standing for 10 hours or after editing where I've been sitting for 20 something hours a day and these are really helpful to work out the opposing muscles or the muscles that are used in this context but also to pay pick goals for things that sound like they would be cool I've always really liked gymnastics and things like that so being able to do the splits I think is just a really fun thing and this fun motivation is a lot better honestly this conversation exploration was something that I'd never done in such a healthy way and I would really recommend just pulling out a piece of paper and writing out these things and exploring them for yourself now when it comes to the act of actually working out looking back now I am genuinely so surprised I even worked out as much as I did because it is a no-brainer to me that I was about to quit this is such a big takeaway for me and something I want to say right off the bat which is if you're actually trying really really hard at something and you're failing at it listen like there's something wrong and I wish I wish I would have sensed this sooner for context let me try to explain what a breakout session would look like for me I would go to the gym and I'd maybe try to do a bit of cardio which I really really hated I'd get super tired very fast um I don't like to do kind of weight exercises because I knew that my form would probably be very off which would potentially harm me but even worse embarrass me if people were to see if someone was using a machine that I wanted to use I would just get really uncomfortable and um kind of awkward just feel really awkward standing around and basically try to Fumble about trying little things here and there and then just leave and go home and it was really hard for me to get a half hour proper workout in um and just the whole experience was really really terrible I would feel good only because I'd done it but I knew that what I'd done was really poor and I just had a terrible time what was I doing genuinely if I can get across one thing in this video this is the magic of structured variety the more you know exactly what you are going to be doing before you go to the gym where everything is planned out and structured and set the better that workout is going to be you need to have a plan do not introduce chaos and Randomness into the actual workout process I'm going to talk about where to generate this brandness Randomness later but do not go to the gym not knowing what you're going to do it's like you're at a massive Supermarket shopping for food for another family of eight people when you don't even know what they like to eat there you have no clue you don't know where to start it takes ages it's so mentally draining it's so confusing it's so difficult it's just not going to happen I first saw my exercise list I'm not gonna lie I kind of panicked I'd never done anything so organized before and knowing how chaotic I am I don't know if I would enjoy it but that first session was the best session I had ever had so basically what I had was the amount of minutes or seconds that I would do an exercise how many reps how many weights how many sets of it how much pause between sets and I just press play and then I start doing the workout following everything on my phone and I like to use my phone for this you can also use your watch but I like to really use my phone because I get to see the actual exercise and what my body is supposed to be doing and check my form at the same time so I can follow along without needing to Google something or check something somewhere else or kind of doubt myself the whole time and I am just following along I there's nothing going on in my head or in my mind and no stress apart from just showing up and doing the thing when I say my anxiety around exercising just disappeared when all the cognitive load and stress of how to do something was gone and I was just doing the thing it was transformative I do not know how I thought it would be possible for me to make smart decisions and choices and kind of learn how to exercise from absolutely no about having no information or experience in My Mind by my myself obviously that was going to be a disaster you'll have a lot of input on this planning I'm sure depends on your initial starting point by someone with no instinct to no experience no knowledge and no insight into what I needed this just changed everything it was everything I didn't know I didn't know and Beyond a very clear very set very organized very structured following your goals routine for your exercise on a daily basis the next level to making this amazing is to introduce personalized variety because I'm still a chaotic person at heart and as much as I enjoy exercising I don't think I could do two sessions that were of the same because I would get bored and this is where the variety comes in not only do I always alternate so I have an upper leg day and a lower leg day and I now have these full workouts four days a week and then the rest of the days I will do yoga and other kind of calmer exercises but on my four Heavy Weight Workout days I will do upper leg day your leg day upper leg day lower leg day again but then also I will have a different set of exercises every single time so Candice has like personalized all of my ex exercises so they're always very very different and even though I might be working out the same muscle it's always a different set a different combination a different style so they remain highly highly variable and different so I'm excited to see what I'm doing every single time and also because they're personalized to me and at the end of every session I will text her I've been texting Candace daily basically for a month and a half but I will text her what I enjoyed what I didn't enjoy what I found surprisingly easier or surprisingly harder I'll always try to change the weights and the wraps and push myself to do more but the benefit is that the experience is always really really personalized and personalized risk and personalized Health experience has been shown by studies to be highly effective there's a big study done in Finland where people were given personalized health information and personalized risk scores for themselves and they action this a lot more than National random statistics so this is where I found things to be really different I find following along with classes or things not just a bit boring because they get repetitive but more important they're not done for me having someone who knows me personally as a person with my quirks and my fears and desires and my goals and needs and the things that I enjoy and the things that I don't enjoy like Dynamic exercises which I could trip and for because I'm super clumsy and I don't like to do um in public because I get embarrassed um but also how I push myself and what motivates me so so helpful to get this purse perfectly customized way to work towards my goals for an hour an hour and a bit and it seems obvious now that I would enjoy it but given my history I I genuinely didn't think that I would just a note here if you're also looking for external input copilot is a lot cheaper than other Alternatives in person personal training tends to cost so much more it's around 70 to 90 pounds per session at the gym that I currently go to which is why I've never bought Services if I still get daily contact basically 24 hours or six days a week and customization and personalization for everything I'm doing next I'm going to talk about creating routines as a chaotic person which generally has not even felt like creating a routine this time around for some reason but I have two main pieces of the device the first one is is the hill that I will die on which is you absolutely can have an effective workout in the evening you know the example I had in the beginning of the video I've wanted that so bad I have this dream in my mind that a healthy person just wakes up early goes on a run has a nice long shower has this healthy breakfast that they cook with orange juice and then they get ready and go to work and that's just been my imaginary life of Health that I've always wanted to achieve the reality is very different I am not a morning person I wake up at nine if I can and I am a groggy and miserable and I just my brain is working at a third of the speed I am so stiff and unmotivated to do everything it takes so long for me to get into my day but I have these random spikes of energy at seven eight nine pm and that's the ideal time of for me to work out I'll be working out in the evenings and it's been absolutely fine there is nothing magical about morning workouts so I would say if you want to have a specific day that you know that you want want to do some movement in do it when you feel like it on the day and having that flexibility rather than setting something in stone is super helpful you know your body you know when's the best time for you to work out listen to that and don't try to change everything don't try to be like a morning person and a gym bunny in the same time that's not gonna work it's gonna be miserable so pick your battles pick one and for me evening workouts 10 out of 10. it's great funny enough I do enjoy yoga in the mornings but that's the only thing that I would be willing to do when I wake up the second main piece of advice for enjoying something frequently is introduce variation no two sessions the same mix it up mix up your goals mix up your routines mix up the things that you are doing I know that there are people that enjoy running I still don't get that but I I could not do the same thing again every day um can't do it so try to find different exercises next thing really helpful for routines is accountability um everyone in my life knows Candace by name and they know that she does so much for me I do not want to disappoint this woman so even if I'm really really exhausted on a certain day or right after and I use track of time and I'm like oh my God the gym closes in an hour and a half how am I going to get there um people know that I will like show up even just for that and that's been really really helpful having someone in your life that you are embarrassed to say that you haven't done something um pick someone like that so you're not fully comfortable with them and have them keep you accountable if you can for working out is super helpful the last piece of advice I have for keeping a routine is how to not make things painfully painful so when it comes to working out I love being picked up in a workout and the pain that I have later is just Blissful it's so good because I know that I am growing in a certain direction and when I've rested those muscles properly the feeling that I have right before my upper body day or right before my leg day is so great I'm a bit painfully paying for is not knowing what you're doing but also not knowing how to do the things small things like doing a set of something without the weights to show your body how to do the exercise and in my case I do have videos of all the exercises I'm supposed to do as they're happening so um I get used to them sometimes for some I don't need to see things anymore for others I really do lastly I have the more Elizabeth specific advice which either will be completely unhelpful and irrelevant or be completely life-changing as it's been for me so this is a 50 51. the first one being it's actually quite fun to work out alone um if you're a bit kind of socially awkward or on the other end if you go with someone you're very close to you just end up chatting and not actually working out as much I feel a lot better and in my own space when I do my workouts and I don't enjoy it more to doing classes or to doing things with other things very brightly I will go um to the gym with someone but 99 of the time I will do it by myself and it feels absolutely fine a huge pair of headphones on and you can just ignore the world and do your thing and kind of forget that there's even anyone else there and the second one and this is quite a big one for me is have a mental space that you go to when you are doing your workouts and I I really mean this it really helps me especially when I do yoga this is something that I generally do is that I have a a place so I almost associate where I have this scenario and I would recommend doing something like this it can be a place that you've been to before that you've been really calm or that you've kind of seen in a movie or a remix of various different things that you've seen and just create this this I have this place where I it has a smell it has a feeling it is a social space and there are certain people there or there's no one there and I just go there every time when I'm in yoga and it feels genuinely like such an escape from reality and it makes me really really really enjoy the experience um I still do have some intrusive thoughts and I think of you know what's happening around me or what I've forgotten to do or need to do but for the most part it really makes the exercising a true escape from the daily craziness of life and that's very very helpful with my more intense workouts I do tend to just put on a fictional book and do that while I'm working out it used to be really intense music surprisingly on these organized workouts I enjoy music a lot less and I think I'm finally kind of in my space which is crazy the these sounds more but they really enhance the experience of working out where it's a proper escape from reality for me and I crave the physical feeling and the mental Escape equally so that's really really helpful and last more thing is breathing is super important I'm a quite anxious person and I first of all my resting heart rate is something like 19 but also my breathing I feel like I'm a natural shallow hyperventilator where my breathing all the time that's bad and you very quickly during exercise I can't keep that up so I've tried intentionally to breathe a lot deeper I tend to do this anyway again but also just during the day but um even when I'm anxious it's very helpful box breathing look it up really great it really helps expand that lung space and even though I fall back to my Baseline during the day um after exercise for a really long time I'm just like a lot physically cover and I can breathe a lot deeper which is absolutely great this is my favorite part of videos because if you're still here I know there's a lot fewer of us and a lot of people who will have clicked on this video will not get to this part but I feel that only after I've made my case and explained things properly can I actually genuinely State how much I adore a door and how much this app has completely changed my life honestly co-pilots and Candace have single-handedly been one of the biggest positive influences when it comes to my body and my physical life my body am I moving is such a genuinely touchy subject for me and it's wrapped up with so much guilt and shame and embarrassment that I could not believe genuinely that anything could have impacted it so significantly so quickly and so lastingly before it's genuinely been incredible and when I hear statistics like over 75 of people who are actually using copilot after 100 days are still exercising which makes them nine times more likely to stick to their goals it does not surprise me one single bit and there has been nothing that I have downloaded on my phone watched on the internet been told before of your advice before been shown before that has impacted my physical health more than this it's been life-changing I chose to say it with my whole heart that I am so grateful that this whole thing came my way and it is one of the biggest positive influences that I have had because of starting this YouTube channel so it's been absolutely incredible the two weeks are absolutely free please please try it I hope the things I have mentioned can help you make the most out of that time with your personal trainer ask them the questions they can hands kind of think of things the way that you want to and hopefully this can really even in that short amount of time have some some difference and some change to the way that you approach working out in general if that is still something you are interested in and as I said this is starting to become a really important part of my life so if you have any specific questions or anything that you want me to talk about please put them down below because I'm thinking of making maybe if I have the time and the Chance a whole series of deep Dives on why we exercise at all why is it so difficult to go to the gym why people stop exercising um what is it about the whole industry what is necessary what's the minimum amount that's that's effective and what's the maximum and what is too much and all of the stuff I'm so so curious to talk more about it and to learn more about it myself so please do let me know if you made it so far thank you so much for spending this time with me I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day be kind to yourself and others I don't believe everything you think thanks bye

Channel: Elizabeth Filips

Views: 154,935

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Id: Vf576vbmrd4

Length: 25min 4sec (1504 seconds)

Published: Wed May 03 2023