What Exercise Taught Me About Character
By: Rachel Kookogey
When it comes to exercise, I’ve been a bit of a show-off for most of my life. From age three to nineteen I was a ballet dancer, and for the remainder of college, I generally kept up a gym routine because I cared about staying in shape and it fueled my competitive spirit.
I liked going to the gym early before classes because it boosted my mood in the morning, got it out of the way before full school days, and, to be honest, it made me feel a little better than others. But those kinds of reasons didn’t keep me going when life got hard.
During a more taxing semester or exam season, exercise would go by the wayside. It typically would become a cycle where I would feel bad about myself for sleeping in, and generally probably feel worse mentally because I wasn’t exercising, but I would make some excuses of busyness, the season would pass, and I’d bounce back over breaks and start strong on a workout routine again the next semester.
While I got away with this mindset in college, I’ve since learned how true strength — both in our bodies and our character — is forged in consistency.
Last winter, my goals of working out in the mornings got derailed by some personal life events that kept me up worrying at night and then really, really, really not wanting to get out of bed in the mornings. I wish I could tell you that the exercise mentality of “just get out of bed and do it and you’ll feel better” worked, but when getting out of bed is one of the hardest parts of the day, you do it as late as possible (when it depends on a paycheck). In a season when I especially needed outlets like exercise for mental health, I instead felt worse about myself as I snoozed my alarm again, and again, and again. As other parts of my life were changing beyond my control, I was also losing my identity as that “kicking-butt-and-accomplishing-things-early” girl.
It wasn’t until I changed my mentality about exercise that I started getting to the gym regularly again. Around April, after countless times venting to people about how I just couldn’t gin up the willpower in the morning to go to the gym, a friend suggested I just stop trying to get it done in the morning. Rather than something to “check the box,” exercise could be something to look forward to: A mental break and “detox” after a work day, and a fun activity on the weekends.
The Nike motto of “just do it” only works under certain circumstances. If you instead build a routine of physical activity that accounts for your worst tendencies, you’ll likely find it easier to keep it up on days when your willpower is weak. I still don’t always look forward to working out, but on those days, it’s much easier to “just do it” after work, at which point I feel like I’ve already tackled some things for the day, I’m a block from the gym, and have my gym clothes packed with me. I’m also most aware of my need for movement after sitting at my desk all day. For you, building the right circumstances could also mean having a gym buddy or a for-credit class to keep you accountable, or switching the type of exercise you’re attempting.
It’s during hard seasons that we most need routines to keep us stable. Whether you have a fun distraction in the form of PRs, or you got your anger out on the bench press, or you just dragged your butt through the bare minimum and prayed on the bike, you moved your body. And that makes a difference long-term. Fighting through the hard days is what makes the future easy days.
In the past six months as I’ve rebuilt muscle (and hit some new PRs!), I’ve thought a lot about how the tearing and rebuilding of muscles in exercise is a good analogy for dealing with other challenges in life. Just as we take satisfaction in the pain of being sore after a good workout, Paul tells us in Romans 5 to rejoice in our sufferings. He doesn’t say “Just bear it.” He says rejoice. For suffering “produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame.”
Whether you exercise regularly and this can encourage you to apply that mindset to your spiritual life, or you are a great prayer warrior but rarely exercise, the point is that we need both. As image-bearers of God, our physical bodies are just as much a part of our identity as our thoughts and emotions. Many of God’s miracles — from caring for the Israelites in the wilderness to Jesus healing the sick — demonstrate how He cares for our physical bodies. Because on this side of heaven, our physical well-being affects those other components of our identity.
I tend to be a “fixer,” operating on an assumption I can solve every problem in my life if I just think through it or talk through it enough — sometimes neglecting other things such as physical health in the meantime. But so many times this year I’ve found God in the moments of surrender. And often that “surrender” is as simple as setting aside other cares and dedicating one hour to a workout.
