If there was one real obstacle in loving fitness, it would be learning to love activities that used to be my punishment as a child.

You heard that right! Coming from a military family, my parents used typical Physical Training (PT) exercises to punish us. I have a terrible association when it comes to exercises like push-ups, mountain climbers, flutter kicks, etc. There is no clear method on truly erasing my childhood trauma, but I do work on it daily.

Your experience may not be exactly the same, but the note to keep in mind here is—if something/someone bothers you, it is worth looking at your history to see what triggers those emotions.

Talk About the Issue

Talk with those you know could be affected by your negative associations and help them understand where you are coming from. I decided that I really needed to let my coach know that I would have some desire to push back when he assigned certain workouts. I did not want to discourage him in his coaching abilities, but also, this allowed for us to have more conversations about exercises I struggled with.

I also started talking to my sister about how we were raised. This has been a great coping mechanism in coming to the reality that I am not making up my emotions. There is something truly healing when you find someone who has felt similar emotions. She talks to me about how she does choose to discipline her children and how PT is not the way because she wants her sons to have the ability to love exercise without any induced negative association.

Make it Fun

Find a way to make each exercise enjoyable. To try and fall in love with push-ups, I tried doing 100 push-ups a day. I posted about push-ups I did in random settings (like meetings and while in a dress) that soon I had friends who wanted to join me. After our workout we’d try to know out whatever push-ups we had left to complete.

Reward Yourself

I don’t mean with food, or actual material things. I mean let the gym be the reward. Change the “I HAVE to go to the gym” to “I GET to go to the gym”. Let it be the thing you look forward to the most. This can help you in a multitude of ways; it can help you with your time management, with you accountability and your mindset of the gym being a negative activity. It will take some practice, but YOU GOT THIS (if you want this).