"Being active every day makes it easier to hear that inner voice."
Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Getting more active is perhaps the single best thing you can do as a sedentary writer. It has been found that only about 1 in 5 people (21%) in the USA get the recommended levels of physical activity.
There is a tremendous amount of pleasure from moving.
It could be a vigorous walk up a hill or a gentle stroll through streets and a park. It might be a yoga session or a game of squash with friends. A round of golf stolen on a summer’s evening, a sweaty session in the gym, or a few laps of the pool will all give you a boost. There are an infinite number of ways to get moving, to be physically active and have rich experiences of activity. It was common advice in The Healthy Writer survey. Take breaks, be active, find the activity that suits you and do it regularly.
If you are going to get more active you also need to consider your own reasons for it.
What are your goals?
Do you just want to be able to play football with your kids?
Perhaps you want to be able to walk up a flight of stairs or walk up the local hill without feeling floored by the effort.
Maybe you are still harboring ambitions to run a local race or swim a mile in the pool. You might just want to feel a little more comfortable in your skin or you are shocked at how you looked in a photo.
You will need to understand your own reasons if you are going to get your active mindset right.
Moving more can find its form in all sorts of different activities. There is no right way.
It doesn’t have to be running. For many people just setting out to be more active running is likely to be too much, too soon. It is not for everyone in any case. It does get mentioned frequently here because it is the exercise I do most but all the advice is transferrable to your preferred activity.
If you are going to get more active in your daily life, then you need to adopt an active mindset. You need to start looking at the world slightly differently. Those of us living in the so-called developed world need to fight against public spaces that tend to discourage movement and encourage us to spend more of our time in a car. One of the best ways to build movement as a habit is to seek opportunities for it and to appreciate its simple joys.
"The best exercise for you is the one you’ll actually do. The one you look forward to. The one you enjoy."
Kristine Kathryn Rusch, from KrisWrites.com
It is worth considering your existing relationship with exercise and activity. Identify where you are now on this list below. Be honest. There's no one watching! You have to know where you are and where you want to be, in order to make a change.
Completely inactive
You are not even walking much. Running is unimaginable torture and you have no desire to take it up or it feels like an unobtainable goal.
You know that exercise could help you, but perhaps you don’t know where to start or you feel too embarrassed to take it up. You would like to do more to get the benefits but you haven’t enjoyed doing physical exercise in the past. So you keep putting it off.
If you fall into this group, then you probably have the most to gain by moving more.
There is no right answer for the type of exercise you should do. One of the first things you could do to is start by keeping a record of your activity. Fitness trackers work well for this, but you shouldn’t feel you have to spend money to do something that is, at its heart, free. The next chapter has some more strategies that can help.
Inactive
You are doing far less activity than you would like. You would be open to trying other kinds of more vigorous exercise like running but it still feels a long way off at this point. You would like to build up to it.
You may benefit from setting specific goals but the first aim should be to build and consolidate your habits. The advice in the next chapter will still be important to you but you may be able to move on quicker.
Intermittently active
You have enjoyed doing physical activities and exercise in the past but you have not managed to be very consistent. You may be in a lull at the moment or you are aware that you have not managed to develop good habits around exercise and activity.
This is the group that is most likely to have a gym membership but often be on the brink of canceling. You may hang onto it as your exercise waxes and wanes.
Consolidating your exercise habit should be your number one priority.
Identify factors in your life that have resulted in you falling off the wagon. You need to look at your habits and try to identity ways in which you can be more consistent in your approach.
Active
You don't need much motivation as you have already experienced the benefits of being physically active. If anything you want to ensure you keep grooving in the good habits and want to avoid falling back into old bad habits.
You might need to consider further consolidation and planning for times when your activity dips (for instance when approaching a deadline or over vacation periods when you have extra family commitments).
Also consider whether you are getting enough rest. Be careful not to over-train, as it can be damaging to your health and creativity.
You may benefit from setting a challenge and a goal.
You are already in the minority of people who meet and probably exceed the recommended amounts of activity. Take pride and encourage your friends and fellow writers!
"Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest."
Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Exercise-related challenges and goals
Goals are important to many people but I don’t find races and events work brilliantly well for me and it's certainly not necessary to be active.
In recent years I’ve done just three events: the Snowman Triathlon in the hills of Snowdonia in Wales; the Alpe d’Huez triathlon that cycles up the famous French hairpins to the ski station; and the Ring of Steall SkyRace in Scotland (29km and 2500m of running). They were all hard but were within my limits given the amount of training I do. Just.
I find that I get very stressed by these events. In two out of the three races I had terrible stomach related problems including cramps and nausea. I didn’t enjoy them and my gut highlighted how much they stressed me out. I never get these issues when I go out by myself and I love exercising in the hills. The events were both firmly in the category of type 2 fun, the variety that you only enjoy in retrospect. So, I’m wary about committing to events now.
Many people will find themselves hugely motivated by their goals. For example, Joanna is a goal-orientated person, as she outlines in Chapter 2.12 about walking a double-ultra-marathon in a weekend. This personality type always need something to get them out, to force them out the door when they don’t quite feel like it. It could be a 5K race or a sponsored walk. It doesn’t matter. It could be anything.
So, as with the writing life, it's about knowing yourself. If you are in that group, then carefully select goals that are realistic. Don’t feel they are necessary to be active and enjoy exercise. It’s about your well-being, and you are not compelled to do anything.
Exercise is too painful for me
Developing an active mindset involves recognizing the difference between pain and discomfort.
Many people have very negative associations with exercise. It could be psychological, with memories of humiliation during sport at school. It could be the memory of serious and unpleasant physical pain through exercising. The mantra of “pain is weakness leaving the body” isn’t helpful and I don’t believe that doing exercise should be painful. However, I do know that there can be times of significant discomfort.
For me, I know it sometimes hurts a little to run uphill and I know my legs will ache afterwards. I wouldn’t call it pain, it’s an enjoyable discomfort, but it can be a fine line and recognizing your own limits comes with experience.
Exercising through pain is rarely a good idea. Exercising through a level of discomfort is probably going to be needed at some point.
This leads us into one of the most important aspects of getting fitter.
The most important principle about getting fit
So here it is: you do not get fitter during the actual exercise.
Exercising makes you fitter by putting a strain on your system. Your body then reacts to this stress through our incredible adaptive mechanisms. This is the idea of progressive overload. You need to do enough to get your body to recognize it is under additional stress and then the magic is in the recovery.
This highlights an important point about doing exercise to get fitter. You need progressive overload to get fitter and you then need time and rest in which to adapt.
It is the adaptation that makes the difference. It is one of the most remarkable qualities of skeletal muscle and all the muscles that move us around that they have this capability to change and adapt. The same is true for our hearts and lungs and their ability to move oxygen around our system to get to the muscles. All of these can, and will, adapt and improve if you put them under some strain.
It’s brilliant. It is also forgotten by many people.
If you just go out and run or bike or lift weights over and over again, you never give yourself the chance to adapt before you are broken. You can't get fit in one day.
This is relevant to anyone who is aiming to get a bit fitter. It takes time.
Be patient, persistent, and consistent. Good principles for the writing life in general.
"I’ve found that maintaining a regular running schedule has helped enormously with controlling my stress levels, while giving my brain plenty of creative brainstorming time to get myself out of plot holes and writing slumps."
Carrie McAllister, The Healthy Writer survey
Questions:
- What are your reasons for wanting to get more active? Write them down.
- What activities have you enjoyed in the past? Could you get back to them again now?
- Do you have negative associations with exercise? What are they? How can you tackle those and be more active?
- Do you have any goals with your exercise? Are they realistic? Have you shared them with anyone else? Will that help you?
Resources:
- NerdFitness.com. A fitness website for nerds and average joes. There are lots of different websites and communities online that will help with fitness and diet, so you are likely to find one that resonates with you and fits with your body and choices. This one made me laugh, so I thought I'd include it here, but it's just a start.
- What I Talk About When I Talk About Running – Haruki Murakami