Tuesday, August 15, 2017

The Workout



My favorite workout during the summer is swimming. I like to do a HIIT swimming workout just before sunset. I love doing swimming workouts in the lake because I prefer to do all my workouts outdoors. Lake Ontario and Lake Huron are my gym in the summer.



My workout routine has changed a lot over the years. In my early twenties my main motivation for working out was to lose weight or become fit, it was all about beauty. During my late twenties my motivation changed and became all about performance. My focus was on getting faster,stronger and better. I was focused on getting a better PR every year and winning medals. After getting injured a lot I decided I was done with trying to prove my worth through fitness and sports. It's astonishing what us humans will do to ourselves in the search for meaning and self-worth.


Today my motivation for working out is to take good care of my body. Some weeks I treat my body well, I eat healthy and reach my goal of four workouts per week. On other weeks I eat more cupcakes than green juices and do zero workouts. I have to admit that it was easier to find motivation to work out when what motivated me was fear of not performing well enough or fear of not looking good enough.


Today I'm very content with how I look and I no longer need to have a good PR to feel that my life has worth or meaning. The downside is that contentment sometimes leads me to choose watching TV over going for a bike ride. On the other hand, I still remember what it used to feel like to obsess about my level of fitness. A few years ago I used to work out 5-6 days per week, sometimes twice a day. Today I do 3-4 workouts per week (on a good week). I have a peace, joy and contentment about my body and performance level now that I never want to lose. My body and my strength are gifts to enjoy, but it's not what my body looks like or how fast I can run that gives me my worth as a human-being.


What can easily happen with things like a sport/fitness is that we make it the source that will give us our worth in life. We become addicted to the praise and approval we get from others when we look fit or perform well in a certain sport. But fitness isn't the only thing that can make us addicted when we start relying on it to give us our sense of self-worth. We can get addicted to things like our careers, our achievements, our social status etc. We get addicted to the approval we get from these things so we have to have them.


We know we have become addicted to something when without it we feel insecure, anxious and like we aren't good enough. Good things like our work, relationships, sports etc. have the power to enslave us if we start basing our identity on them. There is a big difference between being good at a sport and needing to be good at it constantly to feel good about oneself.


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