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Ive tried and failed before.

I started working out in college, but I cant say I ever liked it.

I participated, but I also regularly claimed to not be feeling well.

woman sweating in the gym

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College was also where I first developed a less-than-healthy mindset about working out.

We all treated exercise this way.

Working out was almost exclusively done to look a certain way.

Woman walking on a treadmill at the gym.

The learning curve for surfing was too steep for me, and running was just… boring.

This was more or less my relationship with fitness for the next decade.

I was motivated by guilt, not enjoyment.

Full body female athlete in sportswear using rowing machine during fitness workout in gym.

Play is basically an attitude towards everything or anything that happens.

Lyonsresearcheshow the characteristics of games can help motivate physical activity and change behavior.

Those highly variable workout videos I was doing?

Happy woman dancing and listening to music near a green empty wall outdoor in the city.

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That unpredictability was probably helping me view exercise more like play.

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I think unpredictability is huge.

Another factor in viewing activities as games, Lyons says, is adding challenges, or rules.

A young black woman doing post-run stretches in the park on the road amidst green grass and trees.

High-intensity workouts, for me, had the perfect combination of variability and rules to feel like a game.

It doesnt even have to be particularly challenging.

Its just some kind of arbitrary constraint that makes things more interesting.

My ultimate challenge: handstands.

I was craving a small win, something that I could, theoretically, accomplish on my own.

I began, as we start many things in 2023, by watching YouTube videos.

And it just wasnt working.

I could barely hold myself in a right angle against the wall.

For someone who can (still) barely do a regular push-up?

Then I remembered that childhood tumbling class.

When we started, we werent using the wall, we were inverting ourselves from standing.

I used any five-minute breaks I could get during the work day to get outside and practice.

And then I started getting a little better, and a little better.

I learned that I should claw my hands into the ground.

And while I find myself getting frustrated sometimes, I can also see the improvement.

By viewing my workouts and handstand practice as recess, I was rewiring my motivation.

No longer was exercise something I had to do as a response to guilt.

We need to resurrect the idea of fun and apply it to physical activity and our behaviors.

Now, Im starting to imagine what other areas of my life could be play, too.

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