Goodbye, Workout. Hello, Practice.
Dr. Greg Wells
In the last six months, I have been exploring ways that exercise can facilitate a change in mindset when it comes to improving physical and mental health and performance. To take advantage of this shift, I want you to think about exercise in a new way.
Instead of a “work out,” I want you to think of exercise as “movement practice.” For example, consider how it feels when you say I’m going to do a workout versus I’m going to practice. It’s subtle but important.
The goal is to reduce tension and activate energy while staying relaxed.
Movement practice is a joyful and ongoing exploration of the potential of your body and mind. It offers you a constant opportunity to revise, revisit and grow. Maybe you can reconsider how you walk? Or how you do lunges? Or tweak an element of how you move that will make it more efficient and pleasurable.
No matter what form of exercise you enjoy, thinking of it as movement practice will encourage you to pay close attention to your mindset. With this focus, you can make movement a gateway to joy and adopt a different mindset about challenge, which is, I truly believe, an absolute game-changer for your entire life.
Simply put, we can use exercise to learn how to stay relaxed when faced with pressure and stress. We can use activity to train our minds to operate at a higher level more often.
Just consider how these two statements sound:
“I have to go to the gym now.”
“I’m going for a walk at lunch without my phone to get some exercise in the park.”
Here’s an example of how you can use physical activity, exercise and training to change your mindset.
In 2017, I spent a week in Algarve, Portugal. While I was there, I did some training with a friend named Adrian Li who is one of the best trainers in the world. One of our sessions was to run up a little mountain near town.
At the top, there are these incredible ruins from the Roman Empire. You could stand there and look down on the intersection of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. It was just stunning. It’s a view I will always remember – as much as the lesson I learned that day.
Running up the mountain was tough – very tough. When we were at the top, Adrian talked to me about my body. He noticed that as we were running, I was reacting to the suffering by tensing up. He observed that the tension in my body was causing me to slip on the rocks, which was adding additional tension. He also pointed out that my breathing was more laboured than it needed to be.
Listening to his feedback, I took some deep breaths and released the tension. Then, we descended and took on the climb again. All of a sudden, my feet were floating underneath me, and I was able to decrease my effort by about 80% and get into a magical state of flow. It was incredible. Running over rocks was fun.
I’ve been working with elite athletes my entire career, and I often advocate the value of being calm in the face of stress. But on that day, I needed a reminder. And when it came, the tension released and my approach was transformed.
Through mindfulness and awareness, we can monitor our relationship to challenge. We can learn to approach our movement practice with a sense of ease, confidence and joy. Physical challenges don’t need to be a grind. And neither do the challenges we face at work and in our personal lives.
Try these protocols during the workday and see how they help you get more done more easily. Let me know how it worked for you via my website www.drgregwells.com, on Twitter @drgregwells or on LinkedIn.
