Effort

In this extension page on increasing your effort, we will look at the following:

The best form of physical effort for you

Revolutionising your 'Why'

The difference between effort and struggle

My experience increasing my effort

What's The Best Form of Physical Effort?

Find forms of exercise that *you will actually do*. Hate the gym? How about:

Cycling

Hill walking and hiking (join a meetup and push yourself with a country walk)

Dancing

Swimming

Netball, rounders etc

Running up and down stairs

Running up and down on the spot

Home workout apps. I googled this and found:
https://www.marieclaire.com/health-fitness/news/g3845/best-workout-and-exercise-apps/

Revolutionise Your 'Why'

The key here is to revolutionise your Why when it comes to exercise.

Remember when we looked at the physical ideal to strive for, and concluded that it is about developing resilience?

https://www.theshiftinside.com/rum-ideal/

Get rid of the toxic nonsense of exercising your body away into invisibility.

Your big Why I would suggest becomes that you exercise to be as resilient or strong as possible.

And the key to that is effort.

Your body will get stronger if you have to make a physical effort.

This short article explains how micro tears in muscle during exercise are actually a good thing - and also why you should never do weights or resistance work on the same muscles two days in a row.

It will reward you with a nice hit of endorphins for your trouble!

The Difference Between Effort and Struggle

Effort is pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone (or expanding it). It is neutral.

Struggle is effort that feels like it is useless. It is obsessed with fast results.

Cavebrain has everything set up to reward you for your effort. That nice hit of endorphins. The stress relief.

Fitness culture, fixated with fast results, has messed things up with the madness of New Year’s resolutions and 30 day drop 4 dress sizes programmes. These are a corruption of what Cavebrain wants for you. When you fall for what fitness culture tells you, you swap the beautiful resilience building system already pre-installed in your brain and body for the cult of be less.

Can you imagine any two principles that are more opposed to each other: be less vs be resilient?

When you ditch be less and embrace be strong, you stop trying to be perfect. Like me ditching those exercises classes designed for people 20 years younger than me.

You accept where you are and build from there. You refuse to struggle. Never set foot in the gym before? OK, so you buy a set of 2kg handweights and do 5 reps at home.

The key is effort. Are you pushing yourself physically when you exercise? Not pushing yourself over the edge, but just a bit. Expand your comfort zone a little. Sweat for 10 minutes.

5 minutes.

Build up and focus on earning the endorphin hit.

Little and often.

Experiment with finding exercise you actually enjoy. Put some music on while you do it.

What To Do For Today's Date

Decide and then do the next step for you personally in order to increase your physical effort.

If you have not exercised for years and feel terrified, your next step might be: Choose 15 minutes tomorrow to go for a walk and set a reminder on your phone.

If you already exercise, it might be to research something more effortful. It might be to ensure you do 3 x Katie faces today while in the gym.

Remember to continue with the She looks great and Instagram exercises too.

My Experience...and a Lesson

This is an audio of me talking about how I increased my physical effort without pushing myself in any kind of miserable, punishing way.

There is also an important lesson contained in this part, which I will discuss in tomorrow's date.

If the audio player does not work, please go to

http://www. theshiftinside.com/rumgym1/