finding joy in exercise

If thinking about going to the gym and exercising doesn't exactly inspire you, you're not alone.
It seems to come as a surprise to my students when I share with them how I go through periods of a lack of motivation; periods where I don't go to the gym and give it my all, or periods where sometimes I don’t even go to the gym at all.

People often assume that because of my job, I'm always working out, but that simply isn't true. I teach most of my one-on-one sessions, whether they're in person or virtual, demonstrating as little as possible. For the sake of the student, unless they really need to see me do something to understand it, I try to help them understand the exercise through their own body, giving them tactile feedback and spoken cues to illustrate ideas. I ask them to articulate how they feel in each position to sharpen awareness and learn how to replicate truly effective movement. It's their felt sensation that matters most, and I'm working with them to guide their focus into their own body. When I teach a group fitness class like yoga, I do ending up “working out” a little bit more. But I'm often looking around the room, making sure everyone is following along, and doing my best to give individual adjustments here and there. I'm putting in an average of 40-50% of the effort I would be putting in if I were practicing on my own. 

So getting myself to the gym to give 100% of my effort to exercise isn't a given. And while relying on a community of people we like to see at the gym is of massive importance--being socially supported makes a huge difference in showing up consistently and experiencing joy in the process--I find it's still not enough for me.

The exercises I'm doing need to spark a sense of play, inspiration, and the empowering feeling of being stronger than I thought I was. At the beginning of my movement journey, I was a dancer. As I got older and realized the need to cross-train was important, I started falling in love with yoga. When yoga on its own started causing more harm than good, and I had shoulder pain I couldn't resolve by doing more chattarungas, I found the world of mobility training. That moved into kettlebells, then barbells for about 5 or 6 years. But in the last year or two, barbells started to feel like I had to drudge up a sense of motivation that just wasn't there. The joy of deadlifting 325 pounds like this slowly faded. 

I've always loved handstands-- I love the feeling of being upside down. It makes me feel like a kid. And as I followed my desire to stay in the air longer, my sense of curiosity, motivation, and inspiration started to grow. I started learning other skills, like doing a human flag. 

And even though these skills were hard, in some ways just as hard as the barbell deadlift, they began giving me joy. Because gymnastics is so upper body dominate, I knew I needed to find something for the lower body that would be just as fun. Besides doing things like a dragon pistol, the single leg kettlebell deadlift became a fun way to move. Because of the strength I developed with my deadlift, lifting about 2.5x my bodyweight, on a single leg, I should be at 1x my bodyweight, and begin to exceed that. 

You can take a look at my latest single leg deadlifts and the rest of some recent progress here.

When you've hit a wall in your progress, it may be the time to find some new inspiration. Reach out, and let's find a new set of exercises that will bring you strength, but more importantly—joy.