Are we having fun yet?
Every month my gym sends me a questionnaire asking about my recent experience working out at one of their facilities. I diligently answer all the questions (I’m sure I’m the only one who even opens these emails) until the question comes that stops me in my tracks. “Does XX Fitness make working out fun?” I feel perplexed. What does that even mean? Then I click “No”.
At the gym you lift, pull, and push weights around with other sweaty people in a dimly lit room jockeying for the same few squat racks, and weight plates while trying not to photo-bomb someone’s TikTok session. When you feel you had enough for the day, you go home. At what point was it supposed to be fun?
When I google “Why should exercise be fun” I get answers such as “It increases motivation, improves mental and physical health, increases social connection, and makes exercise more sustainable”, meaning when we’re having fun we will keep doing it. Okay, so should my electric toothbrush ask me every day if brushing my teeth with it makes it fun? Because it doesn’t but I still do it. Every day. Twice.
I know that most people aren’t intrinsically motivated to exercise. For them, exercise is a chore, something they’d rather not be doing so the exercise industry has figured out that if we make working out fun, we can hook them in. The problem is though, that it rarely works because extrinsic motivation can only last so long. If you don’t have a deeper “why” behind the behaviors you’re trying to make a habit of, you will most certainly fail after the initial honeymoon is over (and your new leggings aren’t so awesome anymore). Don’t get me wrong, I have had plenty of fun doing sports like mountain biking, and playing ultimate frisbee or tennis but for me, exercise is much more than just a way to have fun, it’s a deliberate choice to live a certain lifestyle.
The pursuit of fun and happiness
There could be a cultural aspect to my “problem” of not seeing the fun-fact with everything. In Finland, where I grew up fun was almost banned when I was a kid (half kidding but it sure felt that way a lot of the time). You did what you were told and kept your mouth shut. Fun was something you earned by doing the things you should be doing. I hated math with every fiber of my soul, but I attended all the classes and did my best. After the last math class in high school, I went to a diner with my best friend and celebrated with the biggest ice cream dessert I’ve ever had. I felt I had earned it, and it was fun.
My reason for going to the gym is to stay strong so I can do other things in life that are fun like cycling or hiking in the mountains (or being able to open a jar of pickles without help). I also go to the gym because I want to do things I love 20 years from now when I’m old. Like brushing my teeth, lifting weights is not fun but I know it’s beneficial for my health so I keep doing it. I think being able to complete tasks that aren’t necessarily fun is an important trait to have. There are a lot of such tasks in our lifetime, and if you have to make every single one of them fun so that you can move on, it can get really exhausting. Or you just don’t get a lot of important things done.
America is a country of people constantly seeking the next fun thing to do to make them happy, and the proliferation of social media has sent this compulsion into overdrive. If you’re not always having fun and sharing it with everyone around you, there’s something wrong with you. But having fun can mean many things. It can be the feeling of calm, empowerment, and achievement after a good, grueling workout. Said Kasia Niewiadoma, a Polish female pro-cyclist after she finished the last stage of the women’s Tour de France “I hated every moment of that climb.” Yet she kept gritting her teeth while trying to forget the pain in her legs as she was pedaling up the hill, and her close rival was eating up on her lead. Finally, at the top of the legendary Alpe d’Huez, she was announced the winner of the women’s Tour de France by a mere four seconds, the closest winning margin in the history of both men’s and women’s Tour. Was she having fun during those five hours when she desperately tried to keep the yellow jersey on her back and win the race? Most probably not. Was the pain worth it? You bet your ass it was, and I also bet she’s having fun now.
