How My Mom Taught Me Nearly Everything I Needed To Know To Stay Fit
Some of the most consistent memories I have of my mother from my childhood involve her coming back from a workout. I remember watching TV, and hearing the garage door open when she’d come back from a run. She would sit down at the kitchen table with a big glass of water to cool down before taking a shower and she would always comment on how her run went. She would say something along the lines of “I feel so much better” or “It was perfect weather for a run”. Even on days where her run didn’t go well she would say “I didn’t feel great but I still made it ‘x’ miles”.
Her workouts have always been part of the fabric of our family. She has always made time for them at least 3-4 times a week, if not more, and she has often described them as her own personal time to be alone and clear her head. Even though she loves to run, she’ll also try different classes, focuses on strength in different areas and will sometimes even join my workouts when I’m home.
My mom’s attitude towards movement and fitness was pervasive. Her childhood was spent outside and playing sports - culminating in a D1 scholarship for her to play basketball in college. Consequently, while I was growing up, she insisted that my sister and I always had to be involved in some sort of sport, but it was her attitude towards her own workouts that really made my own fitness habit stick even after the structure of organized school sports was long behind me.
Despite having a fulltime job and two children, she made her workouts a priority. When she would go for a run or to the gym she would request that no one called her unless it was an emergency. I used to try to call her during her workouts if me and my sister were fighting but she would always cut me off and tell me to wait until she got home as long as no one was hurt. She blocked this time for herself. It was sacred.
This is often the first piece people are missing when they are looking to start a fitness habit. They don’t know how to carve out time in their schedules for it, or worse, they feel guilty for doing so. My mom showed me that this is something important and that I’m allowed to take time for it and to view it as time well spent on my health and mental wellbeing. If fitness isn’t already a habit, it can be an easy thing to let go of in favor of childcare or other priorities. But it is a long game, and making time for it on a consistent basis is perhaps the biggest thing you can do for your body.
Because this was often her only alone time, it was also one of her main ways of processing stress and clearing her mind. As I mentioned above, she would always comment on how she felt after a run or a workout. It was always something she looked forward to, and something that always improved her mood. I even learned to plan around her workouts when I wanted to ask for something. I was always way more likely to get it if I asked her after her run as opposed to before.
Watching this created a clear relationship in my own mind between working out and happiness. A lot of people can only think about how uncomfortable working out feels. They don’t enjoy pushing their body because they can only feel how badly they want to throw up, how loud their breathing sounds, or how much their muscles burn. My mom enjoys movement, and relishes the feeling of being active and of getting her heart rate up. Watching her push through marathons and tough workouts as a kid gave me a different mindset. I enjoy my workouts because I focus on how my body feels as it’s pushing through these physical barriers. The soreness in my legs, controlling my heart rate, my breathing.
On top of that, my mom’s mood was almost always improved by a workout so I learned that if I’m feeling bad, movement is always a good place to start. I learned it was something I was allowed to be excited about. I didn’t have to dread it like I saw people dread P.E. class or other workouts. I could look forward to movement and what it could do for me.
Lastly, my mom has always focused on her body’s functionality rather than her body’s appearance. Of course she wants to look good, but none of my memories of her attitude towards working out include her working out to lose weight, complaining about her body, or dreading a workout. The only goal was always just to feel good. Even now, when we talk about working out we talk about things like how I can improve my running stride, how to reduce injury, or different killer exercises we’ve tried recently.
She enjoys learning a new exercise, or a particularly fast running day and never really ties it back to appearance. She enjoys movement, for movement’s sake - and that went a long way for my own relationship with fitness. I learned early on that the goals of movement are for stress, wellbeing, and function - not for a beauty standard. .
I wanted to write this for my mom’s birthday this week since her attitude towards movement might be one of the most important things she has given me. I’ve always been competitive and active, but once the structures of organized sports fell away, I’ve been able to maintain my fitness mostly through the techniques and mindsets I’ve described above. It was my mom that taught me movement is worth prioritizing. It was my mom that taught me to view it as stress relief, and it was my mom who taught me to value pushing my body to accomplish new things instead of my appearance. My enjoyment of movement and fitness is something I use to define myself and I don’t think I could’ve included this in such a healthy way in my life without her example. Happy birthday mama!