Why You Should Stop Exercising and Start Moving

I’m sure you’re already thinking, 

“But Tyler, aren’t exercise and movement just different names for the same thing?”

You’re not wrong. They are pretty much the same. Exercise is a type of movement, and movement can be exercise. But the difference lies in that “pretty much.”

You see, all movement isn’t exercise, and exercise is a very specific type of movement done in a very specific way. 

Movement is fairly ease to define: it’s any time you move. Literally, any time you move, it’s movement. Sure, lots of fitness hipsters have tried to co-opt the term “movement” to mean some kind of free-flowing, dance-esque discipline that involves lots of handstands (that everyone does with their shirts off for some reason), but that’s more of a bartender trying to call themselves a mixologist type scenario than anything else.

Movement is too big a concept, too general a word to become pigeon-holed by elitists. 

When I talk about movement, I am talking about any and all movement. 

Occasionally I like to specify “non-exercise movement” because I think it’s worth specifying: we move our bodies outside of exercise, we just don’t count it most of the time, which is weird, because we engage in a lot more non-exercise movement throughout our daily lives than we do exercise. 

Sure, it’s not nearly as intense, but that’s OK: despite what the internet and fitness marketing has told you, not all movement, or even all exercise need be incredibly intense (intensely intense, even). 

Yeah, that’s right, I told you that not all exercise needs to be high intensity. Bootcamp instructors around the world are losing their shit rn. 

“BUT THAT IS THE VERY WAY BY WHICH WE DEFINE EXERCISE!!”

“HARD WORK AND GRINDING ARE THE WAY TO MAKE PROGRESS!”

(Yes, the all caps is necessary, because I’m assuming they all yell like drill sergeants)

“INTENSITY IS NECESSARY TO FORCE WEAKNESS TO LEAVE THE BODY!!”

OK maybe that last one was a little superfluous, but you get my point. 

Exercise = hard work for many people.  That’s not entirely wrong, but it’s not exactly right, either. It’s a limited way to look at things, and building an entirely industry around eliciting one feeling is pretty irresponsible, especially in quarantine times like these. 

People already drowning in stress feel intense pressure to pile on more stressors in the form of exercise because they think it’s what they have to do. In order to fulfill some vague standard of “health” (an already fraught word, IMHO).  

And even worse, that standard is based primarily on aesthetic standards that reflect little about an individual’s actual physical health, but do extensive damage in reinforcing racial, gender, and cultural norms that oppress many already marginalized classes of people.

So maybe now you’re feeling a little attacked, and I get it - but I’m not saying you’re bad for wanting 6-pack abs, that’s your prerogative.

But have you ever thought about why you want those abs? 

Or how you treat yourself because you don’t have them? 

Or how you view people who don’t have bodies that reflect the norms that suggest having low abdominal body fat is the best/most attractive way to be?

The last one is especially important: do we treat people with different bodies less than? Assume that they don’t try/are lazy/don’t deserve respect because we perceive them to be lesser because they don’t possess physical traits like abs?

I’ve gone way off track, I know. Let me pull it back here for a second:

First we reduce movement down to exercise, then we reduce exercise down to something that is done only to elicit a certain result - usually to make the body look a certain way or to stave off injury or death.

So we take this massive, amorphous idea of movement, and shrink it down to this one thing done for one purpose. And then the fitness industry tries to blow it back up and sell it to everyone under the pretense that we should all be doing it, and doing it this particular way. 

No wonder so many people don’t want to exercise, and avoid it at all costs.

And then we criticize people for not wanting to exercise, claiming they’re lazy, unmotivated, and slovenly. 

What if we’re missing the point entirely? What if exercise isn’t the answer? What if movement is what could actually get people, well, moving? 

Not taking exercise and repackaging it as the new trend of movement, which still adheres to all the elitism, judgments, and shaming that come with exercise, but instead actually removing the moralizing that comes along with health/fitness/wellness and allowing space for people to decide what movement looks like for them?

You don’t have to exercise means you don’t have to move your body in a rigid and pre-defined way to elicit a specific result based on external influences. 

But you should move: find ways that you can move your body that feel good, but challenge your sense of your own limitations. Do the research of exploring how it feels to move your body, and what feels good, what doesn’t, what feels scary (in a good way), and what feels empowering. Do those things. Do more of them.

It might look like exercise, and that’s OK, if that’s what feels right for you. If it doesn’t look like exercise, that’s OK too.

If you have questions, find someone who listens to you, and asks you questions. It’s your body. It doesn’t define who you are, but it discovering it can be a wonderful journey, if you get to be at the helm.