5 reasons to exercise
Spoiler alert: none of them are weight loss
Exercise is a tool.
Just like any tool, how we use it depends on what we want to get out of it. That is our purpose. Purpose is what guides our physical practice - it informs every aspect of how, where, and what you do when engaging in physical training/exercise.
Most marketing in the health/wellness industry is focused on changing the body: aesthetic results like weight loss, toning, muscle gain. Most of the remainder of the market is built around somehow transforming the body into an injury-proof machine that will never age, get sick, or break down. The unfortunate truth is that eventually all of these things will happen. It doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything to help improve our quality of life, it just means that squats can't cure cancer.
Here's 5 reasons to exercise that don't involve any of that stuff:
1. Feeling better
Bodies like to move, especially when it’s in ways that feel good. Movement can also inspire physical confidence: the belief in our capability to handle physically challenging situations. Movement can also release endorphins and other hormones that improve mood.
2. Resilience
I know I just said that exercise can't entirely prevent illness or injury, but we can decrease our likelihood by engaging in (reasonably) challenging physical activity alongside of other stuff like sleep, hydration, community support, etc. Exercise can help increase our resilience against pain and discomfort: we can’t entirely prevent injury, but we can create more movement confidence by engaging in exercise and movement.
3. Capacity
Exercise can help improve physical, mental, and emotional fortitude through intentional exposure to stress. If we want to do more stuff (go on longer hikes, pick up heavier objects, move through the world with more grace and agility), we need to create the capacity to do so. Exercise is a great way to get that ball rolling. Of course, doing that stuff is always more important than doing the cross training - getting better at exercise is never the goal, only increasing our capacity to do the stuff we want to do.
4. Skill Acquisition
Exercise is a great way to try new activities we might not otherwise. Learning how to do new things with our bodies can be fun and empowering.
5. Creativity
Movement can be a source of self-expression. Most exercise is utilitarian, but it can help us build the basic skills we need to pursue other physical arts, and there are versions of it that can be cathartic and expressive - like the feeling of joy and accomplishment we feel once we've done something we didn't think we were capable of doing.
Exercise helps us imagine different situations and play through them in controlled circumstances. The purpose of exercise is to try things out and take that experience into actual life, so that when we need the skills, we have an extensive library of priors from which we can pull.
Use exercise as an experiment into how things feel - physically, mentally, emotionally - within your personal limits, of course. It is a valuable tool to recreate movement situations and envision new ones - not just a way to change the way our body looks.