CLARE STEPHENS: 'A vulnerable chat about exercise.'

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This article originally appeared on Clare Stephens' Substack, NQR. Sign up here.

I have a tortured relationship with exercise.

As a kid, I was really, really, obscenely bad at sport. I was small with no strength and unfortunately, had the dual afflictions of a) being insanely competitive, and b) lacking any natural ability in any athletic pursuit.

And I tried. Growing up, at different stages, I was enrolled in: netball, basketball, soccer, gymnastics, tennis, tee-ball, swimming, and touch football. And that's not including sports I attempted at school (hockey, cricket, javelin, shot put, dance, even bloody cheerleading), with friends (ice skating, ten pin bowling), on my own (running), and with my siblings (wrestling? Boxing? Dodge ball?).

No skill. I took to nothing.

Watch: Challenging GP assumptions about exercise. Post continues below. 

Still, as I moved into adulthood, I exercised. I played social netball. I walked a lot. There was a period where I did reformer Pilates semi-regularly. I tried Barre. One time I even trained and ran the whole City 2 Surf (14kms!) very slowly.

But in recent years, for many reasons, I've struggled with exercise. I guess I have less time. There are logistics involved in fitting it in. I'm addicted to my phone and honestly, that takes a lot out of me (lol but actually).

There's also a frustrated voice in my head that hates being bad at things. I'm annoyed that I'm not strong, that I'm not flexible, that I'm slow. That I don't have the power to sprint in netball, or the height to be an effective shooter or defender. I have no rhythm, which I blame on my mother for never enrolling me in dance classes as a child.

But considering my general uselessness when it comes to physical pursuits, my inability to be good at any kind of exercise that involves rhythm probably isn't her fault.

There's also the body image side of it. I have complicated feelings about my body because I am a woman who exists. Since I was a teenager, I've been possessed by an involuntary obsession with how my body doesn't look or feel the way it 'should'. And then, because I hate my body, I'm not motivated to treat it well.

When you stop exercising, it turns out, it becomes harder and harder to start again. There's the guilt because you know how important it is for your mental and physical health, for longevity, and so you're pissed off with yourself for not doing it.

Am I shaving years of my lifespan? Am I giving myself Alzheimer's? How dare I waste the privilege of living in a body that can move easily. One day, I'll think back to my painless thirty-something body and wish I could run in it. And yet I still sit here, procrastinating, coming up with excuses every day.

The other part, for me at least, is the toxic black and white/all or nothing thinking that plagues most areas of my life. I put off getting back into exercise because the plan is to go full throttle when I do. And, of course, that's overwhelming, and intimidating, so it keeps me stuck, not gaining any momentum.

It sounds absurd when I say it out loud, that my attitude is: If I can't exercise five days a week, what's the point? If I'm not going to be super-fit with a six-pack, why even try?

So for a long time, I haven't exercised. And I've felt really sh*t about it.

But in the last few weeks, I decided: enough is enough. You don't have to be good at it. Lower your standards. You're doing this because it actually makes you feel good. And it's nice to finish the day with a sense of accomplishment, that you did a somewhat challenging, physical thing.

I chose to return to the one exercise I have ever genuinely enjoyed: reformer Pilates. I cannot touch my toes. I always use the lightest weights. I have to stop a few times during the class, when my muscles are fatigued. But that's okay. Already, I can sense a difference in my posture.

I like being sore. I like knowing I'm pushing my muscles to the brink. It only took one class for me to feel proud of myself.

Then I saw something that really, really pissed me off.

It was a Substack post about the surging popularity of Pilates, and how the idea of a 'Pilates body' is misleading marketing. I actually agree with this — some Pilates studios do focus on how classes will 'sculpt' your body and give you longer, leaner muscles, which I'm sure isn't accurate.

The post was also critical of the exorbitant cost of certain Pilates classes, which, yes, agree. Although people are paying a lot of money to go sit in an ice bath so I'd say that's a broader problem in the wellness industry. But it was the next part that annoyed me.

It went into detail about how Pilates actually isn't the most effective or efficient exercise to do for cutting fat/building muscle. The best exercise for women's health, it argued, is to lift weights in the gym. Ultimately, the writer said, "It's fine if you do Pilates, but you also need to be lifting weights, and if you had to choose only one kind of exercise to do, it should be lifting weights, not Pilates."

Now, this is not a criticism of that writer. She has a background in the fitness industry, and a lot of her work is focused on helping women achieve very specific goals, and what she's saying is probably true. However.

This cultural attitude towards exercise, where we build up and then cut down trends, where CrossFit is good then bad then good again, where body weight exercises are great and then not enough, where running is beneficial to cardiac health but STOP RUNNING YOU'RE BURNING OFF ALL YOUR MUSCLE, is, for the average person, really, really f*cking unhelpful.

It's all that noise, all that confusion, that stops a lot of people from exercising at all.

So, I'm meant to go to the gym and lift weights. Well 1) I don't want to. So there's a barrier. 2) The last time I went to the gym, in my twenties, a man who was definitely on steroids studied my body and explained how he was going to sculpt it.

He wanted my waist to go in more. For me to have more defined quads. For me to have those 'nice' arms and shoulders. I loathed the experience and I never went back, and then I ran into him in the street one day, and he said, "Oh good — you've put on weight!"

I. Don't. Want. This. Sh*t.

I. Just. Want. To. Lie. On. A. Reformer. And. Listen. To. Pop. Music.

I don't want to lift weights while sweaty men stare at me and come and correct my form. And because I don't want to, I won't.

Which is the bigger, more important point.

The whole Western world is in the midst of a health crisis, and the problem is not that some people are doing Pilates when they should be lifting heavy weights. The problem is not that someone spent years doing CrossFit when they should've been doing OrangeTheory. The problem is that, on the whole, we're not moving. At all.

We have communities living in unwalkable suburbs, with no green spaces, and sedentary jobs. We have several generations addicted to devices. We've created a food industry that makes it really hard to eat well.

And then, women especially, endure insidious socialisation that stuffs up our relationship with our bodies. We think they're ugly and disgusting and we know that they're viewed as objects, judged when we're out in the world.

For a woman in that mental place (not all women, but a significant number), knowledge about health isn't the primary issue. We know movement is good, that fresh food is good. The issue is that we're so consumed by self-hatred that we're paralysed.

We want to be perfect. But 'perfect' is impossible, and so it becomes the enemy of actually doing anything.

The very best kind of exercise is the kind you'll actually do. Walking is great. Pilates is great. Lifting weights is great.

We need to stop demonising certain types of movement, when movement is the goal.

The next time I did Pilates, I felt less proud. A bit like it was a waste of time. What's the point in doing this class, when I'm meant to be at the gym? Lifting heavy things? That's the danger.

But I'm going to keep doing it, and hopefully those thoughts disappear. Because exercise, for me, doesn't work when it's a competition, when it becomes about what's the best and most effective form. It reminds me of how often I've felt like my physical body isn't enough.

After all, research shows that the societies whose populations live the longest don't even have bloody gyms. They don't follow meal plans or count their macros (I don't know what macros are) or lift dumbbells. They just… move. Throughout the day. In the way their lifestyle dictates. Their exercise is incidental.

And those societies whose populations live the longest are different. There's no 'best' approach. There's just you, trying, with the body that only you will ever know what it's like to live in.

Clare Stephens is the author of The Worst I've Ever Done, which you can pre-order here. Sign up to Clare Stephens' Substack, NQR.

Feature Image: Supplied.