I haven’t missed a daily workout in over a decade, but it’s not because I always love exercise.
Workouts, after all, are aptly named – they involve work.
And who wants to do more work?
The Risk of Pushing Too Hard
A great workout can be fun and energizing. It triggers dopamine production that plugs in my brain, helping me to focus better and setting me up for a productive day.
Sometimes, however, the “work” can overshadow the benefits of the workout.
While I love the structure of CrossFit classes, I often struggle with anxiety around doing complex lifts for speed. Or I feel rushed when working on the strength sets.
In my weightlifting workouts outside of class, I have a dual goal to build strength and learn proper technique.
No question that these are important goals. Building strength and bone density is crucial to longevity, and without proper technique I won’t be able to scale heavier.
That said, the vigilance of attending to my form and the pressure to push the load each time I hit the gym often create an extra level of cognitive fatigue that adds to the physical toll of any workout.
I often feel caught in a catch–22: I love the structure and community of class, but the workouts can be so taxing on my cognitive process and physical body as to be counterproductive.
When I leave a workout feeling frustrated or drained, it makes it harder to motivate for the next day’s workout.
This can create resistance to exercise, which, in turn, creates more work for my brain to gear up for the next day. I enter my next workout on the defensive, worrried about my movements and wondering whether I’ll have a repeat negative experience.
Resetting the Cycle
My weekend trampoline and flying trapeze practices typically interrupt and reset the cycle. They are a great form of active recovery that gets me out of the weight-room. And they allow me to work my mind-body connection in different ways.
On the rare weekends when I don’t have trampoline practice, I typically default to the weekend CrossFit class at my gym.
Recently, on an off-weekend from trampoline, I tried a new class at my gym called Weekend Warriors, which is coached by Pat Damiano. Pat is known around the gym as “The Kettlebell Guy” and his class is anchored around kettlebell complexes and other movements that use uncommon equipment, like bulgarian bags and weighted clubs.
As the name might imply, Weekend Warriors is hardly the “active recovery” I typically aim for on a Saturday morning. It was non-stop hour of intense movement.
Some of the movements were new for me to do with kettlebells. Others were completely new and challenging for my lack of coordination, like a “bulgarian bag spin.”
Click here to watch Pat demo this on TikTok.
Thankfully, there’s no video of my attempts at this. Each time I tried it, I would hit my head with the bag, until I finally modified the movement.
Usually this type of coordination challenge is a recipe for frustration for me. I recognized that this experience had the potential to cause me to quickly spiral.
Instead, I reminded myself to maintain a focus on active recovery and the goal to just keep moving.
I kept the kettlebells light at the start, and receiving feedback on my form helped me release some of my hyper-vigilance around form and technique.
The most important part of the experience was that I allowed myself to have fun with it. I felt no pressure to perform at a certain level or meet specific goals in terms of load.
Notably, I didn’t attach to an outcome of pushing my limits in the weight. I didn’t aim for PRs. I was just there to have fun and move my body.
The Benefits of a Fun Workout
Starting slow and light, and not pushing myself where the movement felt too complicated, allowed me to build confidence throughout the class.
By the end of class, I felt capable of challenging myself to swing a kettlebell at the heavy end of my range for 2 sets of 20 reps — a “volume PR.”
I walked out of class feeling confident, capable, energized, and excited for my next workout — even wanting more.
The benefits of my focus on having fun also impacted my recovery: it removed a layer of cognitive load that helped me recover faster.
Applications Beyond the Gym
I realized I need more workouts like this: Workouts where I can release attachment to an outcome and simply have fun.
This realization extends beyond the gym. It applies to the structure of my days and my work.
Obviously, results are important in work, and human beings thrive on a sense of progress.
That said, it’s important to cultivate the ability to detach from a specific outcome or result.
When the effort invested into a workout or work is always about the end result — or even the process — of building strength, improving technique, fixing what’s wrong, or achieving some other outcome, it can get rigid and dogmatic. It feels heavy.
That heaviness creates an extra layer of resistance that can stymie motivation and make it more challenging to show up and do the work.
Incorporating workouts that are just for fun, or even incorporating at least one fun component within every workout, increases my desire to return to the gym the next day.
Ironically, when I’m having fun I am more likely to push myself to explore my edge with heavier weights, or attempt movements that feel more challenging to me.
The same holds for my work: when I allow myself simply to have fun with a project or a process, I show up better for my work.
The Dance Between Work and Play
Weekend Warriors reminded me that having fun doesn’t have to be a reward for doing hard work; it can actually help me to do the work in a way that keeps me energized and engaged.
Whether it’s a workout or a professional project, bringing a sense of fun and playfulness to the work facilitates doing the work more efficiently and effectively.
As I continue to explore my own delicate dance between work and play, I invite you to reflect on your relationship with routine and the unexpected benefits you might gain by infusing fun into your daily endeavors.
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