When fun is not part of fitness, failure is almost certainly guaranteed. The futility of the fitness-for-the-sake-of-fitness approach is shown by a recent occurrence in my neighbourhood.
A nationally famous sports magazine for many months ran a weekly feature on various exercises designed to keep women in shape. This included a remarkable series of calisthenics which improve muscle tone and over-all flexibility.
Several of “the girls” on our street, my wife included, jumped eagerly at this very challenging and, incidentally, workable method for correcting their most obvious physical gaps; namely, wobbly behinds and Santa Claus tummies.
So they formed a club.
Each day “the girls” clad in jeans dutifully assembled in one of the houses. Then the leader for the day would direct them through the week’s series of manipulations. This naturally was followed by coffee and pastry.
You can imagine the delight of us, husbands, in watching the metamorphosis in the external shells of our wives. For a whole month wifely silhouettes became more and more enticing. And then the roof fell in. The girls were exercising because they felt they should. They were not exercising for fun. They were also gaining weight!
Undoubtedly not 1 percent of this respected magazine’s circulation performed these exercises to the end. And of that small percentage, one doubts that any have kept this up as a permanent good habit.
I tell my patients that embarking on a program of fitness is not a now-and-forever commitment. At any time they wish, they can discard their physical recreation. After all, fitness is not “good,” nor slothfulness “bad.” Having pointed out that exercise for the sake of fun is essential rather than exercise for the sake of fitness, I further point out the similarities among three very common ailments-slothfulness, alcoholism, and tobaccoism.
All of these are social and economic ills-not evils.
However, of the three, slothfulness is the commonest. Not for a minute should a voice be raised in absolute opposition to planned laziness (a necessity in our civilization), to the social drink, or to the relaxing cloud of eye-watering smoke. It is only when these habits become excessive that they are dangerous. And just as with alcoholism and tobaccoism, we all have an uncanny facility for diagnosing slothfulness in others but not in ourselves.
If you should decide to have a few workouts, you will notice possibly for the first time since your pink-cheeked youth the pure fun, relaxation, and exhilaration that you earn each and every time you have a workout.
Your spirits will improve, your gait will become a bit more springy, your clothes will become a little looser around the tight areas, and your colleagues will exclaim, “What has come over old Zilch?” You will have fun. You will not need will power. Will power only helps to do unpleasant jobs. And physical fitness is anything but unpleasant.
If you are not in shape now but want to be, analyze objectively why you are not. This should be relatively easy. Now ask yourself why you do want to be fit.
The answer to this is important because it tells you just how genuine and therefore how long-lasting your interest in fitness may be. But if you have to resort to the cold logic cited above, if you have to go looking for reasons why you should exercise, and if you exercise purely for your “health,” you are doomed to eventual failure.
Fun and not fitness should be your main goal. This is the only way to find everlasting fitness.
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