You Don't (Necessarily) Need a Gym Routine. You Need a Movement You Actually Like.

I started – and stopped – exercising seriously when I was 17 years old. Our basketball coach got us a trainer and we were doing squats and deadlifts and bench and shoulder press and all the serious things one does when they are trying to get truly strong.

I quickly discovered I was kind of good at it, especially the deadlift. Within a few months I was lifting some heavy weight. I loved the sense of freedom I got internally feeling like I could move heavy things around, and this is still a motivating factor for me in lifting weights today.

The thing is: I dreaded these workouts. I remember I skipped school once for Yom Kippur and I wasn't allowed to lift that day because I had fasted and I was so happy to just be watching everyone and sitting on the sidelines.

Some people I know just love exercise and always have. It's not an issue for them and they feel off without it. For those of us who don't feel that way naturally, the idea is that if you find a program and stick with it, eventually you'll learn to like it. Or at least tolerate it. There's this whole discipline-over-motivation thing that's everywhere. It's not totally wrong, but it skips over something kind of important, which is that most people don't actually want to do the thing they signed up for. They want the results. The activity itself ranges from "fine I guess" to "I actively dread this."

And so what happens is predictable. You do it for a few weeks, maybe a couple months. It gets boring or your schedule shifts or you just don't feel like it one day, and then that one day turns into a week, and then you've quietly stopped. And then there's the guilt about stopping. And then six months later you try a different program and it starts over.

I've watched this cycle in myself and in basically every person I've ever worked with. The pattern isn't a discipline failure really. It's a design failure. You started with something you didn't actually want to do and then tried to willpower your way through it.

So what if you just, like, didn't do that?

What if the first question wasn't "what's the optimal workout plan" but "what's a way of moving my body that I'd actually want to do?" Not tolerate. Not survive.

This is not rocket science, and I am not the first person to say this. But my hope is that in hearing this you have that feeling that's kind of like, "Oh yeah, I know this, but something about hearing it now penetrates deeper and I feel like I can actually take it on." Exercise, and lots of behavior change, is like this. It's not that you're lacking the information exactly; it's more so that you're just in the iterative process that happens in life where you need to revisit things over and over again for them to really stick.

My relationship to exercise did really change when I started thinking of it this way. I wanted to find something where the exercise was incidental. Golf is my favorite thing, and it does burn some calories, but let's be real — no one is getting in sustainably good shape from golf alone. The thing that really got me over the hump was martial arts. I've been doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu now for nine years and it's a crazy workout, both endurance-wise and for lots of tiny muscles you'd never think to use in addition to the big ones. And then aside from getting me in shape through the process, it made me want to supplement with other cardio and weightlifting to get better at jiu-jitsu. I find working out is easier and more intrinsically motivating if you are training to get better at something or compete better at something in particular.

At our gym, on your birthday you have to spar for the number of minutes you are old with no breaks. So even having that challenge in itself every year makes me want to stay in shape so that isn't an absolutely brutal activity.

The point here is that we need to start with something you enjoy doing that moves your body. That's it. In my case, even if I stuck with golf for a long while, at least that's something. Some people walk or run with a friend in the morning. Some play in a rec league — softball, basketball, volleyball, whatever your friends are doing on Sundays. Or tennis. Or pickleball, which apparently everyone on Earth is playing now. Dancing. Swimming because you've always liked the water. Hiking somewhere that's actually beautiful. Playing with your kids at the playground — like actually playing, not sitting on the bench scrolling. Gardening, if you're the kind of person who loses two hours doing it. Yoga because of how it makes you feel. Riding your bike places. Rock climbing. Skating. Paddleboarding. Whatever.

The specific thing doesn't matter at all. What matters is that it's something you do because you want to. Because when you actually like the activity, you keep showing up. That's the thing that changes your body and your health — not the perfect program, not the optimal split, just showing up over and over again because you're into it.

Now — does this cover everything your body needs? Not really in the long run. But that is a later problem. So we learn to supplement with weightlifting and cardio over time as that desire arises. And honestly, the more you move the more you want to, so that thing they say about how when you stick to a routine you start to crave it is true. So you will likely stay consistent and want to work in more and more things. But the point is that is secondary. Enjoy first. Fill gaps second. That's the order that actually sticks.