Odious!

One of my clients, while she was working out with me, was chatting about a friend of hers whose workout routine is a weekly Pilates class and some walking.  My client was wondering if that could possibly be enough exercise.

I’m not going to answer that question, at least not right away, because there’s a much more important issue here.

 

We have to stop comparing.

 

We have to stop comparing our workouts to other people’s.  We have to stop comparing our performance to the person next to us in class.  We have to stop comparing what we are doing today to what we were doing when we were twenty or what we did last week.  We have to stop comparing our bodies to media images, to our ex-partners’ new flames, to professional athletes, to our own younger selves.

 

John Lydgate, around 1440, phrased it this way:  "Odyous of olde been comparisonis, And of comparisonis engendyrd is haterede."  Or, in plainer, more modern English:  Comparisons are odious.

 

What we need to do instead is to be present.  We need to work out in the now, with today’s body, however that happens to be.  It is not possible to work out with our past body or our future body, and it’s even less possible to work out with someone else’s body.  So:  let’s mind our own business and get sweaty.

 

Now:  to the question of how much exercise is enough.  It depends.  It depends on our age, ability, fitness level, injury history, health status, hydration level, past experience, and a whole bunch of other factors.  Most of us, as a general rule, want to aim for about 150 minutes of cardio a week, a weight workout or two, and some kind of flexibility and balance work, but that is purely a starting point for the usual experimentation I recommend to figure out our own perfect blend of activity.