Unlike a lot of my peers during the pandemic and afterwards, once the world shut down and I no longer had access to my usual dance classes at school I pretty much gave up exercising for good. This was to my detriment, of course – the three years of flexibility I’d managed to build up faded fast and my eating habits tanked. Now that our routines have all adjusted, I face piles of homework and job-work every day and evening that seem to make exercise this impossible, daunting chore for me. No matter how good I feel after I get to the gym, it’s just not something feasible for me a lot of the time, leaving me in this limbo of wanting to move my body more, but not having the time. This is a common experience of many college students, who don’t get as much exercise as is recommended by health professionals.
With this, this last month I took it upon myself to find a way to incorporate more movement in my day apart from sprinting criss-crosses across my campus to get to class on time. While the gym on my campus is more or less accessible to me, it’s the whole ritual of needing to warm up, needing to make sure my gym clothes aren’t waiting to be washed, walking fifteen minutes there and then back that puts me off. The nearest answer to this problem was to just not do any of that, and opt to do workouts at home. YouTube has a wealth of these channels, after all, sharing free and fun workouts with the world. But the idea of jumping right into abs and leg workouts was still daunting for me, as I’m incredibly out of shape and even “beginner” exercise videos ended up being too much, too fast for me.
That’s when I went for what seemed like an easier option and started following Yoga With Adriene. I set up time in the evening to do a quick 15 minute stretch, and by the end of it I felt less tense, more calm and (miraculously) even my chronic knee pain had eased slightly. I know they always say exercise is supposed to be fun, but this still was revelatory to me. I could do a workout that I enjoyed, that worked for my body, and left me feeling amazing afterwards. I started to incorporate this into my nightly routine, doing a different video every night depending on what hurts by the end of the day, and gaining those benefits. As I ease into working out again, I feel like I’ve finally found something that works for me – it’s easier to get into exercise than I expected, and I hope that this reminds others that this is possible, no matter who you are.