and 13)
In the last post, I urged you to take up at least one activity that will help you claim the title "athlete." Commenter Mary asked rhetorically, "If I just do exercise videos, what kind of athlete would that be?"
A reasonable question. It's hard to feel like an athlete if you're "just" doing exercise tapes at home… all the more reason I encourage people to try to find ways to add activities that seem "real athlete stuff." It's worth a great deal of sacrifice, at least for a short time period, to remake your self-image in that way.
When I began to exercise, I took up swimming precisely because it engendered feelings of "being an athlete" in me: I could measure my time in a 50-yard sprint, or see how many yards I could swim in 40 minutes, or how many breaths I had to take in one lap, and so I could easily measure my improvement from week to week. And I could read articles about swimming, by competitive swimmers and swim coaches both amateur and professional. I felt very soon that I was a member of a group, even though I don't belong to a team or anything like that; that I could call myself "a swimmer." And as I put in time at the pool and got to know the lifeguards by name, recognize other regular swimmers at the Y, I began to feel even more part of a group. This redefining of myself from basically sedentary, to athlete, gave me a huge confidence boost.
But many people have constraints, and have to deal with them. If you can't run, swim, or bike, can you still have an athlete's attitude toward your sport?
Here are five different athlete's attitudes. One may fit you.
1. You're an individual athlete.
2. You play a sport.
3. You're working on the fundamentals.
4. You're in rehabilitation.
5. You're a cross trainer.
Who fits each profile?
1. You're an individual athlete. Some activities are tailor-made to develop this attitude:
running
swimming
rock and ice climbing
cross-country and downhill skiing
weightlifting
cycling
mixed competitions like triathlons
kayaking, canoeing, and rowing
Let's check this against the list of characteristics of an athlete I developed in the last post: Their enthusiasts claim an identity, e.g., "I am a runner." They are specializations. Performance goals are easy to set, as are levels of ability. Lots of books and articles are available for enthusiasts, as well as personal trainers, coaches, and other experts. Self-care is necessary, and in seasonal activities, such athletes can look to the sport for motivation to train year round. Depending on where you live, you may be able to sign up for competitions, community outings, and races that give you a medium-term training goal. Yup: athletes.
2. You play a sport. Sports you play with other people, as in a club, with a regular partner, or in an amateur league, can also turn you into an athlete:
basketball
softball
volleyball
soccer
tennis
racquetball
squash
Ultimate Disc
broomball
golf (carry your own clubs)
You have to stay in shape in order to keep up! Just as with seasonal activities, even if you meet to play your sport less than twice a week or only part of the year, you can work on your game in your other weekly exercise sessions. Targeted strength training, balance work, cardio, or skill drills on "workout days" can be motivated by the upcoming "play day."
* * *
After you set aside all the obvious sports, there's a whole series of activities that may not exactly connote "athletics" in and of themselves… but which you might regard as a stepping stone to more athletic activities. One example is moderate walking.
Now, taking a moderate walk is recommended for just about everyone, because it's a basic human skill; almost everyone can do it at least some, and if you can't do it much then you stand to benefit a lot from getting better at it. It's especially good for people who are very movement-impaired or whose joints can't handle much impact. But let's be real here—it's hard to feel like an athlete when you're just walking around the block. What to do? Depending on your reasons for choosing such a gentle activity, there are at least two good ways of looking at these, which brings us to attitudes number 3 and 4.
3. You're developing the fundamentals. Beginning athletes need attitude too, even when they are working on developing the basic, basic skills, the pre-fundamentals, of a "real" sport. If you have some hope of improvement—and most of us do—then walking is not "just" walking, but is a fundamental skill that must be mastered before you are fit enough to go on to something else. You have to walk before you can run—or hike on hills, or race-walk, or carry your golf clubs. Set your sights on the activity that you have some realistic hope of someday engaging in. Walk there. Set performance goals along the way. And practice those markers of being an athlete that I alluded to in the last post.
4. You're in rehabilitation. Physical therapy and rehabilitation is something that athletes have to do when they are recovering from injury or illness. Has a football player ceased to be an athlete just because he's recovering from knee surgery and is only up to walking on the treadmill? The athlete's attitude says that this too-wussy-to-count-as-a-sport stuff is a kind of physical therapy prescribed to correct your particular injuries, weaknesses, and debilitations. Yes, even if the debilitations come from years of sedentary living. You may say you've always been this way, but that's not really true, is it? Imagine you're under doctor's orders (maybe it's not your imagination) to undergo gentle activity as a sort of "sports therapy" to improve your fitness. What will you take on when you are fit enough? Running, hiking, walking to the grocery store? Imagine yourself getting better and better, stronger and fitter and faster. What will you do then? Instead of setting performance goals—since you're in therapy—look just ahead for the next milestone in health and fitness. How's your blood pressure doing? What about your resting heart rate? How many steps can you climb before getting out of breath?
I mentioned walking above. Other "stepping stones to sport" or physical therapy regimens:
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water exercise classes taken with an eye towards land exercise classes,
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strength training classes taken with an eye toward gaining confidence to try the free weights,
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winter snowshoeing taken with an eye toward learning to cross-country ski,
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swimming lessons
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very gentle weight-bearing exercises and stretching exercises
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actual physical therapy
Now, what about activities that are intended to improve body function, but don't qualify as sports because they lack any element of competition or, well, pressure? Yoga, Pilates, and other stretching or balance disciplines are obvious examples. One doesn't compete in yoga, not against others and not even really against oneself. Instead, yoga is a method of improving your general balance, strength, flexibility, and breathing, possibly also for relaxation or meditation. Another such activity might be following along with aerobics tapes at home, or playing with the Wii Fit. Again, there's not really a competition here, you use the tapes as a method or a tool to get your heart rate up. How to develop the athlete's attitude?
Alone, these activities are less like athleticism than they are like, well, medicine. You "take" them because you want them to do something to your body. It may be that the medicine tastes pretty good! Maybe you really enjoy yoga classes because they're so relaxing and they get you out of the house. Maybe the Wii Fit is really fun and addictive. Fantastic! Maybe you don't need to think of yourself as an athlete at all because you have these activities that you really enjoy and that you stick with with not much trouble.
And of course, you can also think of them as stepping stones towards an activity you expect to be able to do in the future, or as physical therapy to correct problems you have that stand in the way of more active endeavors.
But. If you do want to think of yourself as an athlete, I suspect that all these activities are best used in combination with something else—however infrequently—that DOES turn on the "I'm an athlete" pathways in your brain. Then you can regard the different physical activities in combination as a sort of training program that turns you into an athlete, precisely because each activity supports your development of the skills in the other. This attitude can work really well if you can only swing part of your schedule towards an athletic endeavor, and you find you have to make up the difference with something like an exercise tape. All is not lost if you can only schedule one run per week, or even one run per month!
For example: You might find that your schedule supports one weekly run and one yoga class. The yoga improves your balance and your breathing, which helps you run better. The running increases your lung capacity, which helps you hold yoga poses. Or perhaps you can manage to schedule one swimming workout and one appointment with an aerobics tape. Swimming is a whole-body workout that incorporates some resistance and some cardio; adding aerobics helps keep bones strong in a way that swimming, a non-weight-bearing exercise, can't.
In other words, you're not just cobbling together a bunch of unrelated activities as time allows….
5. You're cross-training! If you are consistent in your efforts from week to week, and especially if you pay attention to the ways that the different activities support and complement each other, you will find it much easier to create an identity as an athlete.
Some final notes.
1. Let's step outside the realm of "induced exercise" for a minute and acknowledge that there are fun or useful everyday activities that work together with your induced exercise to develop your overall fitness. Maybe you love taking family hikes on weekends, maybe you like turning up the music and cleaning the house at a frenetic pace, maybe you've discovered an open field near your house where you and all your kids can chase the dog for twenty minutes every fair afternoon, maybe you walk to the grocery store twice a week. Once you have established a good, solid, predictable plan for induced exercise, you can draw these activities in and begin to think of them as part of the whole fitness package. The key is to see them as part of the whole, and to recognize that your induced exercise makes you stronger and fitter and faster for those activities, and also to see that because you engage in those fun or useful extras, you'll have a more well-rounded fitness plan. The weights you lifted on Saturday helped you carry the groceries more easily on Tuesday. The dog-chasing on Wednesday helped you sprint faster on the treadmill on Friday. That's how it all comes together.
2. Beware of activities that feel like a chore or seem pointless. If you can't see obvious benefits—weight loss does not count—to the activity or sport; if it feels like a drag even after you have dutifully worked at it for a few months; if you are not getting a sense of accomplishment from the improvements you have made (or if you cannot see any improvement); AND if you cannot see how this activity could prepare you for some other thing you'd like to take up, either in the change of seasons or when your skills develop… then maybe you need to do something else.
3. Even though I started this post with a hopeful note for them, and even though I think reforming your attitude will probably help, I admit to worrying about people who rely entirely on exercises done at home from a book or a videotape. It is hard for me to imagine developing a sense of athleticism through such activities in the same way that swimming and running has changed my view of myself. It is also hard for me to imagine that one doesn't get bored with such a routine. But maybe those of you who have stuck to home-based exercise programs can tell me more about what they've done for you. Can you feel real improvement, stay motivated, and feel like an athlete while using mostly book- or videotape-led exercises at home? Do you think you can apply the athlete's attitude to your activity and transform it into something life-changing? Tell me what you think.
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