Understanding Fitness Through Personal Perspective
If you’ve spent your life engaging in physical activities, pushing yourself in sports, and maintaining a consistent exercise regimen, you might believe that you’re fit. But what happens when life throws unexpected challenges your way, like surgery or other stressful events, that pull you far from your fit self? This article explores how to redefine fitness and find a connection to exercise that’s meaningful to you.
Defining Fitness: A Personal Truth
Fitness can be defined in multiple ways. While there are objective measures of physical fitness like VO2 max and grip strength, the definition that matters most is the one you create for yourself based on your lifestyle, goals and values. Medical professionals tend to view physical fitness in terms of disease prevention, longevity enthusiasts focus on enhancing the quality and length of active lifespan, and athletes look at specific performance metrics. However, says Boston-based sports psychology coach, Emily Saul, the most important aspect is what feels meaningful to you.
Connecting Fitness to Personal Values
For fitness to become a consistent part of your life, it should be connected to your core values. Maybe hard work is a value you hold dear, and you show this through your determination to keep up an exercise routine, even on days when you’re not particularly motivated. The key is to find that deeper meaning behind your fitness efforts and build your identity around it. “The reason most people [exercise] is not because there’s always that strong internal motivation or desire for it,” says Saul. “It’s that doing it is in alignment with who I know myself to be— or with who I really want to know myself to be.”
Finding Your Fitness Threshold
Exercise scientist LaJean Lawson, PhD, suggests finding an “unrelenting identity as a fit person” and establishing a basic threshold of fitness that you can’t fail. This could be as simple as performing an intentional fitness activity daily like walking to work instead of taking a cab. The idea is to create consistent fitness behaviors that make you feel on track, even on days when you can’t fit in a full workout. As Lawson says, “In the end, being able to claim your identity as a ‘fit person’ is as much a state of being as it is a state of doing.”
Maintaining Consistency in Fitness
The key to long-term fitness success lies in the consistency of your actions. People who have managed to maintain active and healthy lives for years have made being active a consistent part of their lifestyle. This consistency allows them to retain their identity as active, healthy individuals, even in times when they miss workouts. As Carpenter, a fitness coach, mentions “Self-compassion and self-love do involve being brutally honest with yourself, too.”. This honesty helps us take account of our actions and ensures we’re moving towards our fitness goals consistently.
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