Don't have a sedentary approach to fitness

We all know that modern life, especially in urban environments, tends to make us sedentary. We sit, we drive, we take escalators, we take lifts. For some of us, there could be hours in the day when the only parts of our body that we move are our fingers, on the keyboard, scrolling on our phone screen or messaging, no movement. Obviously, we all know that this way of life is eroding our bodies. We all know that we have to be more active.

But ever since fitness became an industry, a money making enterprise, we've been made to believe that there are only certain approaches to exercise that work, only certain places where fitness can be pursued. And that pursuit requires equipment, instruction, membership, and even special outfits to wear. This creates a kind of sedentary approach to fitness itself. Lift this for that many reps. Do that machine for so many minutes.

These are the only options if you wanna get in shape. But, of course, that's nonsense. You can create your own exercises, your own training style, and you don't need a gym or equipment or membership or anything else. You can literally take any everyday mundane activity, like walking up a short flight of stairs, and just do it differently. What are all the ways that you could go up the stairs?

Don't let your mind become sedentary about fitness to where you can't see all of the different ways of doing something that could make it more physically challenging, more fun, and more of a workout. In any city, you can find endless places to exercise exercise if you have a creative approach to exercise. It doesn't have to be a gym or a park. Every city street is full of objects, structures, ups and downs, turns, things that can be climbed, jumped over, crawled under, hopped on, and what have you. You don't have to be a parkour expert to utilize the environment around you to enhance your fitness.

This is what we all used to do as kids. Age does not make you get out of shape. You get out of shape because you stop moving and interacting interacting with what is around you in an energetic, physically dynamic way. I honestly believe that this is the best approach to fitness. And it will give you the functional strength, the endurance, the mobility, the flexibility, and the agility that encompasses the best kind of fitness.

And most importantly, it actually helps you see and interact with the world around you with greater energy and freedom and breaks that sedentary mindset. So don't think of yourself as someone who's out of shape, someone who can't do this, who can't do that. Just try. Just look at some object in the street or outside your office building or outside your house and think about what you can do. Can you jump over it?

Can you jump on it? Can you climb over it? There's endless options. You might be able to do it, and then you'll surprise yourself, and you'll gain the confidence of that. And maybe you'll fail, but you will understand what the mistake was.

And then you can try and improve on it and then do it better. And then, eventually, you'll be able to do the thing that you were hoping that you could do. And then you'll start to imagine and think about all of the different things that you wanna try. You'll start to realize how absurd it is when people think that they have to go indoors to a gym to exercise when outside is the biggest gym there is.