I wasn’t an athletic kid.
Sure, I played sports. In an elementary school class with 17 boys – of which 16 were on the St. Joe hockey team – you didn’t spend a lot of recesses reading in the library. But I had close to zero hand-eye coordination. I was weak. I preferred to spend evenings playing computer games, rather than practicing hockey in the yard. My parents weren’t unsupportive; they dutifully drove me to hockey all winter, and baseball in the summer. We had a driveway that was nearly a quarter-mile long, and I rode my bike all over the place. But I was never a risk-taker. I never tried out for elementary school volleyball or basketball teams. I never pursued hockey past the point when making the team was an automatic.
In high school, I didn’t play varsity sports. I was done hockey after grade 9. I was more interested in computers anyway. Lucky for me, I went to CASS.
CASS has an unbelievable intramural program. On your first day of high school, you’re ‘drafted’ to one of four Houses: Kings House, Knights House, Aces House, and Panthers House (I was a Panther. So was Robin.) After a quick tour of your classes, you were drug into the gym for a pep rally for your House; you were told the traditions; you were sold the plan to win the semester’s Intramurals. The Panther plan was to win by sheer numbers: we’d just show up for everything, every day, and win by attendance points. That meant peer pressure to show up, no matter your competitive showing. Other Houses had different strategies.
Every morning in homeroom, a House rep would visit and post the day’s Intramural events on the chalkboard. They’d push you to sign up for next weeks’ Intramural events. They honestly CARED if you showed up or not. If you signed up and didn’t show for your event, your House lost points in penalties. So I showed up. This was positive peer pressure.
Gradually, I overcame the fear of not winning: of losing in front of friends, girls…. I didn’t train myself to lose, but I became adept at handing loss. This is maybe the most important part of Intramurals: frequent exposure to stuff you’re just bad at. And I was bad at almost everything. 🙂
I never thought of these games – dodgeball, floor hockey, even foosball – as “fitness” or “exercise”. They were just games with friends. And after high school, though I pursued several sports (racquetball in college, racing mountain bikes afterward, Powerlifting for 4 years after that, CrossFit for a decade, then back to cycling), none were ever done in a desire to be competitive. All were done for the sake of playing the game with friends.
It might be funny to hear that from someone who’s closing in on 30 years as a fitness coach. But I think it’s a useful lesson: that if fitness is done because you “should” or you “have to,” you’ll hate it. You’ll probably quit after a week, month, or a year – as long as you can force yourself with guilt or willpower. But if fitness is the side effect of play; if exercise is fun; if the reward is simply playing again tomorrow…it’s hard to quit.
I’ve competed in real Powerlifting events (and even in prison a few times.) I’ve competed in CrossFit events. I’ve done bike races and played hockey games as an adult. But the point was never to win; the point was always to keep playing.
Fitness is most effective when it’s part of an infinite game.
The goal of the game is to play again tomorrow.
You win the game not by accumulating the most points; not by showing up; but by WANTING to show up.
You don’t stand on the podium by beating everyone else. You stand on the podium when you can watch other players with wonder and awe, without jealousy. You win when they win. Play, for adults, is a sort of collaborative competition where we all want to succeed–and to be successful together.
My best hockey was played on an outdoor rink. We’d show up after dinner, scrape the ice, and play for 3 hours. Then we’d say “good game, good game” to each other, and I’d trudge through waist-deep snow to cross the fields of our farm.
I loved it so much that I got frostbite in both ears, eight fingers and both big toes in one year. The local doc told my parents I might have misshapen ears for life (they *are* slightly different now.) But as soon as the swelling went down, I went right back out and played another game. That’s what fitness should feel like.
In a month, we’ll run our 11th-annual Intramural Open. It’s a copy of the Intramural program that still goes on at CASS, 30 years later. But you can get this feeling every day at Catalyst: the pull to show up; to be impressed by others; to impress yourself. To say “good game” and mean it at the end of a workout. To improve your fitness almost by accident. To keep playing.
Want to chat about it? Book a No-Sweat Intro here: NO-SWEAT INTRO