Questions...

When I meet with clients for the first time, I ask them tons and tons of questions.  Some of them are the expected health questions about heart disease and injury and other important stuff for safety.  The more interesting questions, however, concern history and preferences.  When we are getting back into working out, here are some questions we can ask ourselves:

 

1.     What fitness stuff have we done in the past?  Maybe we played softball when we were nine, or did gymnastics, or lived to tackle quarterbacks.  Some of us rode bikes everywhere or swam as much as possible or danced all night.  Even if we haven’t done whatever it was in a long time, the body remembers and has built patterns around that activity that we can use or reprogram.

2.     What do we do in our spare time?  (“Spare time”—that’s funny!)  Do we like to cook?  Watch movies?  Garden?  Shop?  Read?  Build battle-bots?  Please notice that this is not about fitness or fitness-related activities, just stuff we like to do.  When I ask clients this question, I am looking for information about things like whether they like to be inside or outside, sitting or standing, intellectually challenged or soothed.  This helps me plan workouts that meet them where they like to be.

3.     What fitness activities do we actually like?  Very few people hate every single possible kind of fitness activity.  And most of us can get all the fitness we need without having to suck it up and do unpleasant things most of the time (there will always be a few necessary evils, but we try to minimize those).  There are approximately eighty-seven gazillion kinds of cardio with new ones springing into existence every moment.  Trainers and instructors everywhere constantly come up with new kinds of classes that blend cardio and weights and flexibility and all kinds of good stuff.  With all those choices, we can find something that is fun, even if the usual choices don’t do it.

 

With the answers to these questions, we can begin to piece together workouts that feed the body and don’t deplete the soul.