Motivation to do exercise.

It doesn’t come from your physio.

A lot of people struggle with motivation to do something new, something that might help with their health.

Normally the motivation occurs when the consequence of not doing exercise is worse than simply doing exercise. For example, when Type II diabetes has been diagnosed, when bones have become osteoporotic, or when “all of a sudden” you’re unable to get up off the floor.

It is human nature to wait until something goes wrong, or to wait until something needs to be done before it actually gets acted upon. Think back to school homework. Think about deadlines. Always right to the wire.

We appear to be programmed to be lazy and to think that “it will never happen to me”. Not only that, but we like doing the things that we are good at and generally, that involves keeping the status quo with the body gradually fading into weakness and disuse. The thing that stops us from keeping active, from staying healthy, from getting weak and ill, from being able to do things in our old age is generally ourselves.

I know that I can talk until I’m blue in the face, advocating moving more and keeping joints and muscles healthy. There will always be people who nod and smile and ignore me. Then, in a few years time, they too will be old, and frail, and yet could have attenuated the weakness and the frailty by getting up and doing something about it.

Yet there is no stimulus to do so until it is “too late”.

Maybe there is a fall, the broken hip, the high blood pressure and the pills the doctor gives you, the inability to get out of a chair or off the toilet.

It doesn’t matter what I say or how much I say it, I can educate, but the understanding, the belief and the control has to come from WITHIN the person I am talking to.

At the end of the day, it is your body that is going to be the thing that enables or disables you, and it is YOUR choice if you want it to do so. Make your choice the best one for your independence, your freedom and your ability to enjoy your life.

Pick up something heavy. Sit on the floor. Practice getting off a low stool.

If you think you are good at it, find a way to make it more difficult.

If you are not improving, you’re stagnating and that is not a good place to be.

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