Why You Exercise Matters As Much As Whether You Exercise

The intention behind why we exercise, and what drives that particular session or our overall motivation to exercise, often comes up when I’m working with people and their relationship with movement and exercise.

Simplistically, there are two kinds of exercise (in reality there is much more nuance):

There's exercise that resources you. It fills something up. You finish and feel more like yourself — clearer, calmer, more present.

And then there's exercise driven by something else. Something more urgent. It’s exercise that is really a form of management — of feelings, of self-image or of the anxiety that moves in if you skip a session.

The tricky thing is: it can be challenging to determine which one it is……