Photo: flickr/Ed Yourdon

We make exercise scary. I feel that we have failed at fostering a love for physical movement.

To clarify, when I say “we” I mean physical education teachers, personal trainers, fitness instructors, camp counselors, coaches and anyone else involved with teaching movement skills. Maybe the fact that physical education has lost, and continues to lose, its educational value is because we as facilitators of movement have lost our way.

I write this as a relatively new personal trainer and boot camp instructor, but also as a lifelong athlete, former tennis coach and a scholar of physical cultural studies. For many years I had contemplated getting my personal training certification but had always put it off for various reasons.

Finally, earlier this year I bit the bullet, got my certifications and immediately started running my own boot camps. The first thing that I noticed when I invited people to my classes was general apprehension. Even women with whom I play organized sports expressed nervousness about exercising in a group setting.

A question I get asked frequently by new and inquiring students is “how many pushups do I have to do?”Is this what The Biggest Loser and reality weight loss shows have done to people? Has activity become consumed by a fear of numbers — personal records, weight loss/gain, race times, goals scored. This question is, in my opinion, representative of our collective failure to foster physical literacy.

Before I paint everyone with the same brush, I am well aware that there are many good physical education teachers, coaches and trainers out there; however, what I am referring to is an institutional approach that favours technique over creativity, rules over fun and evaluation over learning.

Physical and Health Education Canada defines physical literacy as the ability to “move with competence and confidence in a wide variety of physical activities in multiple environments that benefit the healthy development of the whole person.” It does not mean that everyone should be an athlete or that everyone has to be good at throwing a ball, rather the goal is to instill a confidence in people and demonstrate that their body is not their enemy.

General literacy is touted as a transformational tool because it comes with power. The ability to read denies exclusion, enables agency and creates opportunities; physical literacy is no different. Yet, where these two subjects diverge is in the teaching. While sentence structures and grammatical rules provide some sort of consistency for teaching, there is rarely that same type of consistency when teaching concepts such as agility, coordination or balance.

Adaptability is the end goal and that only comes when one is comfortable in his/her own structure. I certainly concede that some movement patterns are more efficient than others and that poor technique can create injuries, but our bodies are diverse in size, shape and strength; conversely, the technique and rules we teach are often uniform.

Standardization has become a hallmark of our society and culture because if things aren’t standardized then how are we supposed to compare people and their performances? And we love to compare don’t we. Standardization also makes life easier but following the path of least resistance has made us extremely sedentary.

While I do not necessarily agree with what many term an “obesity epidemic,” it is evident that our technologically advanced society is also a physically inactive society. So how do we combat growing inactivity? By comparing one person’s run time to the next? What purpose does this serve? This method may motivate a few but also it alienates and embarrasses the many. Athletes will always seek out opportunities for activity but our duty as facilitators is to engage everyone, particularly those who may never win a championship.

I have been speaking from a philosophical standpoint with the goal of inclusion but we can also approach the issue from a practical perspective. For those in the fitness industry it makes good economic sense to foster welcoming environments where people feel valued.  

The current scenario has a niche group of people who love exercising and will buy gym memberships, shoes and dri-fit clothing until the cows come home; however, market growth comes from all of those people who do not love to exercise and probably didn’t love Phys Ed class. Market growth comes from those in the back row of your classes, not the front row.

These are the people who have to learn how to love activity as an adult, which makes your job as a trainer harder if you have to build their physical confidence from the ground up. It is not impossible by any means but your marketing has to be that much better to get them to even consider your gym or services. All the more reason for those involved in the movement industry to try and foster this love at an early stage.

This is a call to all of the movement educators out there. Whether you want to approach this from an economic or social perspective no one loses when people are confident in their physical abilities (except maybe the pharmaceutical and weight loss companies).  

It is time we stop making exercise scary. It is time we consider ourselves facilitators of movement rather than instructors of technique. After all, that is why the gymnasium, the field, the ice rink and the dance studio are all open spaces without obstructions. They are designed to facilitate freedom and creativity of both movement and the mind. The classroom has become a zone of regurgitation rather than a space for thought and application. Similarly, through physical education and sport-specific-classes people learn only to regurgitate movement.

We live in a dynamic world with dynamic bodies; yet, what we teach and value is textbook technique. As movement facilitators we should borrow from the “dance like no one is watching” mantra and encourage people to move like no one is watching. Or as Pheobe from Friends explained once “we should run like we did when we were kids, where we ran so fast it felt like our legs were going to fly off because that’s the only way it was fun.”  

Our challenge is not in fighting obesity or guilting people to go to the gym; our challenge is in making movement fun and to create confident movers.  

Courtney Szto is an MSc, PhD Candidate.

Photo: flickr/Ed Yourdon