Rethink What Counts As A Workout

“Rethink what counts as a workout. We’re building a body equipped to deal with life, and I want you to think of a workout as anything that will improve your resilience. Good sleep improves your ability to bounce back from stress. Meditation sharpens your mind. Maybe today you plan a week of healthy eating and then go to the store. Congrats–you just worked out.”
–Joe Holder

I was at a baseball game with my cousin a month ago. We made a day of it, playing wiffle ball earlier in the afternoon, grabbing lunch, and then catching the game. In the late innings, I asked him what he was up to for the rest of the evening. He said he wanted to get a workout in, but didn’t think he would have time with the other work he had to do. There was a tone of shame in his voice.

I read this concept from Joe Holder a few weeks prior to this, so I shared it with my cousin. I told him that I considered our wiffle ball game as a workout for myself, since the purpose of working out was to be a fit, active, healthy person. If he didn’t have time to get an official workout in anyway, what was the harm in considering our wiffle ball game as momentum toward the goal of an active lifestyle? 

If you want to build a habit of working out, you better redefine what working out means to you. The thing that gets in the way of habit development is feeling like our small steps aren’t meaningful enough to pursue.

James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, argues that habit development is as much about identity development as it is about changing our actions. B.J. Fogg, the author of Tiny Habits, developed a habit framework around doing the smallest possible version of a new habit. Floss one tooth. Read one sentence. That’s how he gets people to start. 

What Joe Holder is trying to get us to do is believe that we are active and healthy people, and then develop a lifestyle around it. The sum of our small actions is much greater than any single large action we can take.