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• Overcoming Emotional Blocks to Exercise 

If you are not getting enough exercise, you are not alone! Despite the well documented health benefits of a exercise, a full 60% of adults are not exercising regularly. (ref 1) If you, or someone you love is having difficulty with the “Just Do It” slogan to get you moving, you may have developed a resistance to exercise. Exercise resistance can develop somewhere along life’s journey, where playing freely as a child evolves into workouts, fitness goals and body image driven results. Changes in your attitude toward exercise can arise along the course of your life, at times blocking your motivation to find physical activities that you want to stay with. More confounding, these blocks easily become self defeating beliefs such as, “ I was never athletic anyway” or “I was fit another lifetime ago”.

“This is my exercise routine. First I sit around for forty-five minutes arguing with myself over whether or not I should do it. It’s back and forth, “go!....no!...yes! ….no!....you should!....I don’t want to! I recite to myself a slogan I saw in an add a few years ago:”Nobody regrets a workout after it’s done.” But I lose the argument this time to my own fierce resistance…”If I have to get on those machines to the droning sounds of a newscast, facing all those mechanical people in the mirror…” and I head for the refrigerator.”     

Maura Dinero

Elder Caregiver

Santa Barbara, Ca.

Guess what?  All humans, even you, are designed both physically and psychologically to move.  Exercise is an innate drive, even if it has gone dormant.  Think back to childhood and remember what you used to enjoy doing.  In those days, exercise was known as playing.

“I used to ride my bike in the park, splash in pools, build forts in trees without wondering what body part might look better after I was tired.  Somewhere along the line, ‘playing’ became ‘work-outs’ and my motivation changed.” 

Saral Burdette 

Minister 

Santa Barbara, Ca. 

So what causes exercise resistance, a pattern of repeatedly quitting exercise plans,  resulting in on-again off- again workouts, or throwing in the towel all together and remaining physically inactive.  Certainly many life changes create shifts in our exercise drive, such as physical illness, time constraints from caregiving or demanding careers.

Actual resistance to exercise, can be a result of deeper emotional blocks that most people are not aware of.  Bob Green exercise physiologist, who worked with Oprah on eating and exercise describes:

The root of most people’s weight problems or any problems that relate to lack of motivation, is buried deep within.” 

Bob Greene’s 

Total body Makeover 

What buried emotional blocks could be thwarting your exercise plans?  Some common events can include a past negative relationship to a coach (common in younger athletes), rejecting experiences with team sports, fitness testing where you may have been weighed or experienced failure at required activities.  If you associate exercise with weight loss attempts or had a nagging family member trying to control your activity, it becomes drudgery resulting in feelings of dread associated with movement.  Some of you who were elite athletes as children or teens simply burn out and suffer an identity loss once your sport is over.  For others, the changes from unselfconscious playing as a child to body-conscious adolescence and adulthood becomes fraught with discouragement.  One study showed that looking at fitness magazines decreased motivation and performance compared to reading more neutral magazines such as National Geographic. (ref 2)

EXPLORE YOUR RESISTANCE (box in as a little test)

Read through the following statements typically made by those who resist exercise.  If you agree with any of the statements, you may be exercise resistant.

1.    I love the way exercise makes me feel, but I don’t seem to make it a priority to do it consistently .    You might ask yourself more deeply, why this is true.

2. I start exercise programs when I start my new diet.    I am consistent until I go off the diet, and then it takes months or years to jump start again—only to eventually quit.

3. I ws once very athletic.    That was a different lifetime, and I can’t seem to find the former “me”.

4. I have never liked exercise: I do it because I should.    Although I like the way it makes me feel, I dread the struggle with my workouts.

5. I dislike exercise and don’t do it.    I feel guilty and lazy, which only makes it worse.

6. I have never been athletic.    Even as a child, I was more sedentary and was the last picked on teams.    Its too discouraging.

7. For some puzzling reason, I get anxious when I exercise, so I barely endure it; mostly I avoid it.

8. I am too oeverweight and out of shape to exercise; I might injure myself trying.    I’m caught in a vicious cycle of being too big and yet unable to exercise to lose weight.

INITIATE EXERCISE FOR LIFE.    WHY?

The many health benefits of exercise are most likely well-known to each of you..improved cardiovascular health, diabetes risks, longevity.  These long term health benefits are curiously not a motivator to deeply rooted exercise resistance.  Here are some alternative concepts that may help inspire you and some steps to take to work through your resistance.

First is to take the “should” out of exercise and consider it your birthright.  It is important that you intrinsically do it eventually just for yourself, not to please someone else.  Second, studies now show us that exercise directly helps us feel psychologically better right way.  Forget the the “no-pain-no-gain” slogan and just look forward to measurable relief from symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression (ref 3).  Keep activity planning separate from weight loss or body image goals.  Being physically active is something we can give to ourselves to improve the quality of our day, increasing our sense of empowerment and well being at any size.

HERE ARE SOME STEPS TO FURTHER EXPLORE AND HEAL RESISTANCE.

1. Become curious about how your resistance might have deleloped

• When did playing as a child turn into ‘exercise’ and move from being something natural and fun to something required?  
• Do you exercise primarily to improve your weight or body image? If so, how does that make you feel about exercise while you are doing it?  
• Has anybody in your life nagged you to exercise?    did you have a coach, a parent or spouse who seemed over-involved in your exercise habits?  
• Were there any changes in your behavior or attitude about exercise during your development through adolescence?    Sometimes the clothing can increase vulnerability.  
• Who are your role models for fitness?  Are they unattainable body types that you compare to?

2. Next: Here is a surprise!    Decide to honor resistance and plan a temporary time-out from all activity.    Cancel your unused gym membership or hopes to start next Monday and schedule a period of neutrality between you and your inner critic.    During this time-out period, work through your own history of exercise and consider the sources of your resistance.    Be kind, not critical with yourself.

“When Francie told me that I was not allowed to exercise…I was supposed to put my feet up, and stop making promises to myself that I would only break…I felt a true desire to go running again surface out of nowhere!” 

Looking for name of client

3. The next step involves your imagination.  After giving yourself permission to go with your resistance and reflecting on your exercise history to find emotionally difficult periods, your are then invited, in your own time, to consider what kind of activities your ‘whole self’ would like to do.  Whole Self?  Yes…that would include the part of you that might like to be outdoors instead of in a gym.  Ask yourself what she/he might like to do to make your actual day-to-day life more fulfilling.   what would the competitive side of you like to do?  Try a new sport?  Go back to baseball for your age group?  What would the ‘inward’ side of you to consider?  Yoga?  Tai Chi?  Pilates?  Is there a dancer in there?  What if size or ability didn’t matter?  More and more options are opening up if we open up to them.  Let yourself really consider what it is you might enjoy doing for the actual experience of it rather than going for results only.  Lake kayaking, getting on a bike again (new wide tires make it easy!) ballroom dancing, getting a trainer and commitment to a program from a new place.  the bottom line is that we are all very unique and not one can tell us how to move.  We will do it our way if we are going to do it at all.  Consider doing what you can do at any size.  Use a workout to train for a vacation planned around around exercise.  Risk being yourself and re-claiming your own interests at any age, weight, or stage in life!

4. Making a Contract:    Once you have acknowledged any painful emotional events connected to exercise resistance, it is time to make a deeply rooted personal contract with yourself to reconnect to activity for life.    Personal contracts work, like a marriage contract you make between your personal self and your body.

“…you must first get in touch with some truths about yourself, and that will include making a lifelong commitment to taking better care of yourself by signing a contract with yourself.” 

Get With the Program 

Bob Greene 

“My contract after my husband died was to walk on the beach again…an activity we only did together.   After ten years from his death and ten years of inactivity my contract with Francie was to draw a line in the sand and step across that line which signified my new life, own my own, sadly without him, but represented my final decision to continue on it this body in this life.” 

Source needs to be contacted 

5. Once you have committed to ‘marrying’ your own body, on your own terms and connecting to its need to be active, then the next steps are simply to stay with the commitment, even as it will change.    When things get stale, don’t jump to divorce, create more variety.    It is common to change activities every few months, so rather than quit…change!

6. Take small steps!    Be determined to experiment with new activities until you find the right activities that work, while you are encouraging with yourself.    Talk to yourself like you would a good friend or child that you love.    Stay firm but kind.

7. Keep a sense of humor as you go!    It is your life and you deserve all the rewards that being physically active will bring to you!

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