Exercise vs Movement: is there a difference?

Spoiler alert: maybe? Probably not. But perhaps.

Exercise vs Movement

You might notice that I go back and forth between the words “exercise” and “movement” quite a bit. That might give the impression that they’re pretty much interchangeable. They kind of are, kind of aren’t. It boils down to semantics, really.

Exercise usually refers to any type of physical activity done with the intention of improving physical fitness, while movement is a word that’s become popular over the past decade is reference to a hyper-specific type of exercise that masquerades as “natural movement” - a proxy for the kind of movements a “primal” hunter/gatherer-type human would do throughout their day. Movement also became analogous for a type of deconstructed dance-exercise, as well as a version of hand-balancing. 

Movements common definition refers to the changing physical location or adjusting the position of the body. So exercise is a type of movement, generally, but not all movement is exercise.

This distinction becomes important when we start to assign exercise “form” (a particular technique with which an exercise is performed) to the actions we take during the day - stuff like taking out the trash, getting up out of bed, picking something up, etc.

When the dominant narrative becomes that the exercise form is the only “correct” way to perform a movement, and that the instinctual way we perform the movement is “wrong,” we start to value exercise over the ingrained patterns of the body, and that’s just not realistic. 

Exercise is compartmentalized movement: we break it down into different categories in order to study better study and understand it, but in practice, it is a combination of all the parts of movement, changing based on the variable factors (load, volume, tempo, complexity), personal experience with the movement, and how the personal feels mentally/physically/emotionally in the moment.

Exercise helps us envision different situations and play through them in controlled circumstances. It can be a type of imagination, creating the space for us to try things out. We can 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.

Exercise is not the only way to move, though: It’s a controlled, deconstructed version of human movement, not the one true way the body should, can, or does move.