Many people start exercising after their first years in the workforce, once some money has piled up. In other words, around thirty. In my case, too, I decided to take exercise seriously because of a health problem. Of course, I hadn't been entirely sedentary before. I dropped by the gym now and then and lifted weights, mostly the big three lifts. But that was exercise I did because everyone else did it, exercise that followed the trend, so to speak.
It started with parkour. One day, while playing Assassin's Creed, it suddenly occurred to me that I wanted to try parkour. Free movement. That's what looked cool to me, rather than the backflips and that sort of thing. So a few weeks later I went to a parkour gym, a place called Undercover Songpa. After the first trial class I thought I could do more of this, so I paid for a month... and before I knew it, I've been going for over a year.
It's rare for anyone to stick with a parkour academy for more than a year. People lose interest, or run into money problems (it's somewhat pricey), or get injured. Since I'm someone who doesn't use his body well, the coaches probably figured I'd quit after a few sessions. But whatever the case, I'm hanging in there. Keeping up parkour for over a year is quite meaningful, because it means I haven't had a major injury. Having the thick skin to hold back wisely is a skill too.
Starting from parkour, I began signing up for other activities as well: climbing, CrossFit, swimming. I would normally have avoided those because they felt daunting, but once I'd broken through with parkour, the barrier to entry got lower. I also happened to be unemployed, so I had plenty of time to devote to exercise. Setting aside fitness or health, I had become a different person. A person who doesn't feel the burden. Trying something for the first time? Sure, why not. So what if I'm bad at it? I'm used to being a perpetual beginner. In every world I'm the newbie, and in the groups I belong to I've mostly played the youngest member because of my age, so being treated as a pushover is nothing new.
If you were a natural athlete, none of this would matter. But for someone hopeless at exercise like me, some kind of trigger is needed. Whether it's a health problem or just thinking Assassin's Creed looks cool. What matters, though, is identity. (The importance of identity in changing habits is also mentioned in Atomic Habits.) I don't have the diligence to go to the gym steadily without complaint. I skip the gym with the excuse that I'm tired because of my narcolepsy.
That's why I have to change my identity into someone who moves their whole body. Born to run. Just as there's a famous book and paper titled "born to run," I have to change myself into someone born to move. Only by locking myself into that kind of story will I keep exercising. At least for a person like me. Just doing it doesn't work. I'm a cherry-picker who only wants meaningful pain.
For someone whose body has stiffened and who wants to start moving again, the following comes first. This piece, in fact, is a letter to myself in October 2024. To the me who is about to run, jump, climb, lift, and swim.
Loosening Your Muscles
Rather than starting with things that hurt, like weights or running, I think it's better to start with something that feels good. Sustainability is the key. For sustainability, I think three things are worth watching:
- A sense of growth: self-efficacy
- Injury prevention
- The act itself feeling good
To aim for 1 and 3, start by working hard at loosening your muscles. At a moderate intensity it feels good. You'll need tools: a Rumble Roller, a foam roller, a lacrosse ball, a Theracane, and a massage stick will do. If you want a powered massage tool, a Theragun or a Therabody Wave should be enough. Useless things like a Pholio aren't necessary.
You loosen your muscles while feeling a good kind of ache. That alone feels good. As the days pass and the pain lessens, you also get the sense that your body is improving. If there's a particular area that hurts, you can study anatomy at the same time to learn what's in that area. Before long, you naturally end up studying rehabilitation too.
Getting into the positions for loosening up is itself a kind of exercise. The moment you lie face down with your thighs on a Rumble Roller to release the quadriceps, you're doing an easy version of a plank. Taking positions to work through every part of the body is already a departure from the postures office workers usually hold. For a beginner, the process of loosening up is itself a simple Pilates workout.
This light exercise matters especially. Office workers often have posture that has collapsed because their local muscles have become inactive, and if they start exercising with high-intensity workouts, only the global muscles get stronger while the local muscles don't grow. It's said that when people with movement dysfunction do high-intensity exercise, the strength of their local muscles can actually decrease.1 Think of how gym rats are often surprisingly bad at Pilates.
Strengthening the Ankles
Whether it's running, parkour, or climbing, the ankles matter a great deal. Two skilled athletes around me have each badly injured an ankle, one in parkour and one in climbing. For them, of course, it was an accident, a single moment. But for a beginner, I think the ankle is the easiest thing to hurt through accumulated damage. Because, given how important it is, hardly anyone thinks about strengthening it.
So it would be good to start by strengthening the ankles. Following the ankle mobility routine from Squat University, and adding calf raises, jump rope, and depth jumps, seems like a good way to build them up. I sometimes do squats suddenly in the middle of daily life. On the subway, that is. Some old fogey once got angry at me, telling me not to sit on the floor. (I wasn't even sitting on the floor.)
Footnotes
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교정운동 솔루션 - 고관절과 어깨관절에서 발생하는 기능 부전 ↩