QUESTION: “What do you mean ACTIVITY?”
Often when I teach fitness principles people ask me what I mean by “Activity”.
I will ask questions about what kinds of activities people like to do and what kinds of activities they don’t like to do. The range of answers can be incredible.
I Don’t Like to…
Frequently people start with what they Don’t like… to run, to swim, Push Ups, strength training, etc… “I have bad knees”, “my Dad believed in sink or swim as a means to teach me how to swim”, “I can’t even do one”, “I don’t want to bulk up” – these are all real answers I’ve heard when I ask why. In truth, the reason why (almost) doesn’t matter at all, the fact that they don’t like or enjoy the activity means that to them it is Work, not Exercise. And the changes one can make with Exercise can be completely different (and often more desirable) than those changes made with Work.
Being physical while you do something is NOT automatically Exercise… even if it’s cute, it is still Work.
Another interesting piece to this process is that people automatically think I am asking exclusively about working out and their first response is to tell me what they won’t do; immediately dooming their progress and ultimately their success.
I Like to…
About one quarter of the people I ask will tell me about the things they enjoy doing; fine dining, dancing, needlepoint, reading, softball, rugby, etc… these are Ways of Life activities… “I love food”, “music and people”, “it’s my meditation”, “I’ve been playing since I was a kid”, “I’m part of an international community” – again, all real answers as to why they like doing these things. When it comes to activity if you enjoy what you are doing you are more likely to continue doing it, maybe even for the rest of your life. So I want people to find as many Activities as possible that they enjoy. This is also why I say “Exercise creates permanent change and Work creates temporary results”.
The best components on Bruce’s bike is enjoyment and pleasure, because he found it in his training.
SUMMARY
By definition what makes an activity exercise is that you enjoy what you are doing. Remove all onus of obligation or need, turn it into want, and it is then considered exercise. This isn’t some Pollyanna, hyper-optimistic, Denise Austin inspired opinion; it comes from Dr. Ken Cooper who has built a fitness database (beginning in the early 1970s) comprising hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of entries, I do not believe there is another database anywhere in the world equal to it – I attended a talk with Dr. Cooper in 1995 where he expressed that the data shows (absolutely) that there is a specific component to an activity that defines it as either “exercise” or “work”, that component is enjoyment or pleasure…
Basically anything you do falls into the category of Activity. To me there are only two types of Activity, exercise and work. Decide what you consider exercise and go enjoy it, because if you like what you are doing, then you might actually do it.
Exercise is only effective if you do it!