Bring the fun back to your workouts

People get in ruts all the time with their workouts. It could be due to a lack of time, a lack of motivation, or just a lack of knowing what else to do. It’s much easier if you’re crunched (you like that pun?) for time to simply do a couple sit ups, push ups, tricep dips and call it a day. But was this fun for you? Or, more likely, did it feel like your brain was about to fall asleep mid push-up?

An expansive amount of research has been conducted over the past 15 years in an attempt to explore the idea of “play”, or anything we, as humans in the modern world, might view as rather “purposeless” and just for “fun.” This idea of play could be anything from a game of tag or flag football, to doing some cartwheels or playing charades. In fact, in the book, Play, this idea is explored in great detail by Dr. Stuart Brown, offering both an evolutionary explanation for play, by observing and researching the play of various animals in the wild, and offering an explanation of what happens in our brains and bodies during play that makes it something we should most certainly include in our day.

But here’s why you should care.

Dr. Brown shows that play is a way for animals, and humans, to make sense of their world, to almost “prepare” for the physical, mental and emotional challenges of daily life, in a non-threatening environment (you know, without the risk of, oh, life or death by predator?). Although this dates back to survival and evolution, this still remains important to you and your survival in today’s day and age. Brown’s research demonstrates that when we are “playing”, the part of our brain which deals with cognition (critical thinking, problem solving, dealing with emotions, memory, etc.) is extremely active. In fact, when we are having this allegedly “purposeless fun”, our brain actually releases neurotransmitters that enable great growth and survival of our brain cells!

So again, what does this mean to you? Well, you know how everyone is always harping on about the “mind-body connection”? If you really want to stimulate your brain and your body at the same time, make it fun.

Furthermore, I don’t think it would be wrong to say that it often becomes tough to stay motivated to work out if you’re workouts are extremely boring and repetitive. I also don’t think it would be wrong to say that it is much easier to stick with something that’s fun and engaging. If you hired a personal trainer and they forced you to do the same sort of exercises all the time, would you be very motivated to show up to those sessions? If including an element of “fun” and “play” to your workouts would keep you motivated, and thus get you better results quicker, who wouldn’t want to start “playing around” more often?

So how can you employ these elements of fun to your workouts, to firstly, keep your brain in the game, and secondly, to keep you more motivated to stick with your fitness routine? Try a couple of these tips to diversify and enliven your exercise.

1. Make it social. Grab a friend and do your workout together. This simple social stimulation alone will enhance your workout by adding in the playful elements of social support and competition. See who can perform the most reps of each exercise or who can hold a plank or run for the longest.
2. Improvise! A main component of fun is its “unpredictability,” its fluidity, lacking structure, rigidity or organization. While at first this may see hard to achieve a good workout without structure holding you accountable, try the following: while you can still hold yourselves accountable by picking a certain number of repetitions to do, or a certain amount of time to do something for, maybe throw out your workout “plan” and be spontaneous with the actual exercises you choose. This could become choosing out of a hat which exercise comes next, or if you’re working out with others, alternate who chooses, and you have to do what they say no matter how crazy or difficult it might be.
3. Add an new element of challenge. Maybe you really like the workouts you do, despite the fact that you’ve been doing them for a long time. Try making it more of an engaging challenge by pushing yourself to see how fast (speed) you can complete a certain amount of exercises, or how many reps (quantity) of a certain exercise can you complete before your muscles fatigue, or how far or high (distance) can you jump or throw, or how long you can hold (endurance) something for. Adding these elements in can engage you in your workouts by making them more fun, and switching up the way you perform them, to keep your muscles and your brain cells guessing.
4. Just play. Activities that inherently involve other people, competition, camaraderie and unpredictability, are certainly going to keep you and your brain having fun, while torching some serious calories. So get together for pick up basketball, kick around a soccer ball, rally across the net for some tennis – any game, so long as you’re moving.

That is my challenge to you. To challenge your body and your brain. To have more fun. So you can stay motivated, and stay engaged. After all, everyone can always use a little more fun.

By