from zero to one

building the habit of exercise

Lifting weights is a snooze fest, sorry. It’s hard, it hurts, and in my opinion, it’s innately boring. The gym smells and it’s crowded. More than anything, it’s embarrassing to be the new guy or girl. At 5’7, 130 pounds, it never felt good to walk into a place where most everyone looks like modern day Hercules. Looking back, this was just a reflection of my self confidence at the time. I was weak in mind, weak in body, and lacked the discipline to do what I knew was good for me. 

Being in great fitness reduces your risk of dying to all causes, more than smoking increases it. Read that again, slowly. Being sedentary is a garbage habit and everyone knows it. I know I did at the time, and still, I couldn’t get to the gym. Like I said — for me, it’s boring. If you’re anything like me at the time, you probably agree. So how on earth did I get into something I didn’t like? How did I form the habit? How did I fall in love with traditional exercise? 

I grew up with a meat-head father who loved training and always wanted me to lift weights. To his chagrin — not my speed, I preferred video games. Although I loved camping out in front of the TV, I was also an incredibly active kid (I could’ve been one of the most elite peewee running backs of the 2000’s). Turns out, structured exercise just wasn’t my thing — at least at the time. I played every sport under the sun and loved moving my body, I just didn’t know it. As I grew out of organized sports, with no schedule being put in my lap, I pretty much became Baron Harkonnen. I tried for a few years to lift weights, because thats what exercise is right? Wrong. I failed each time, thinking “exercise” wasn’t for me. Wrong again. It wasn’t that exercise wasn’t for me, it’s that lifting weights wasn’t. I was out of shape, lazy, and wanted more for myself. My mental was a dumpster fire too. I knew that I needed to change. 

I was lucky enough to ask myself the right question — what was I doing when I was happiest and healthiest? Well, obviously, it wasn’t playing World of Warcraft for 12 hours a day insert Willem Defoe tapping his head meme. I had a realization that to be healthy, to be happy, to look good and feel good, I didn’t need to be doing bicep curls if I didn’t want to. I was in control of my fitness journey and I had the power to choose the activities that I liked. Most importantly, I knew that going from nothing to something would probably be net positive.

So that’s what I did — exactly what I wanted, every day, as long as it involved moving. There were no rules. I shot lacrosse, I played spike ball with friends, I ran and jumped rope, I played golf, I went skiing. I even counted my walk to class. In time, I realized I enjoyed calisthenics (still hiding from the gym), I started doing pushups and pull-ups. I started to really like running. I was just having fun — I gamified exercise. I wasn’t even focusing on the outcome, just the input — and shocker, I started to feel better, look better, my mental improved, and in time I started to fall in love with more traditional modalities. 

Yes, now I lift weights and do lactic threshold runs, but when I was getting started It wasn’t the “gym” that excited me. My goal was to become someone who lifted, I just didn’t know how to get there. In my experience, the key was to find an activity that I enjoyed — an activity that I WANTED to perform consistently. If your goal is to lift weights, but it’s not something you enjoy, you might be able to make it a habit by sheer willpower, but in my experience that didn’t work. You need to become someone who is active. Build “movement”  into your routine, have fun with it — do something, anything. In time, you might find yourself gravitating towards more structured training; and if you don’t, it doesn’t matter — I recently heard a quote, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly.” I believe that exercise falls into that bucket. Progress in fitness isn’t about intensity, it’s about consistency and intentionality. Become someone who moves regularly. Make it as important as brushing your teeth. 

Despite thinking the gym is boring, I pick up heavy objects and put them down regularly — I won’t just magically become Goku. Jokes aside, the benefits of strength training, or the outcomes there of, are what I enjoy. At this point, witnessing first hand what being sedentary does to the human body as it ages is enough for me to train and never stop. I want to be a badass 70-year-old. I want to dunk on my grandkids in pool basketball, get the groceries in one trip, and pick myself up off the floor without help. I want to live better for longer and you should too. 

I’m still 5’7 :( but my self confidence has improved beyond what I ever thought possible. I’m strong for my weight, fast, flexible, and have great endurance. More importantly, my brain is callused and resilient, and whether that’s real or fabricated, I believe it—so what’s it matter? I’m not some monster who can clean 315 pounds, and if that’s your goal, amazing, that’s the best part about fitness – it’s completely up to you! So stop making everyone else’s goals your own. Design a program that excites you, that keeps you showing up. If that’s walking to the coffee shop — fantastic. Take accountability, move your body, get strong, get fast, become mentally tough, and never quit. Exercise was the catalyst that sparked change in my life and I know the same can be true for you. So get up and go for walk or something, do 5 pushups before you get in the shower, do a squat when you walk through a doorway. For the love of your future self, just take that first step, there’s a zero percent chance you’ll regret it.