I seem to continue coming back to the topic of the problems with exercising intensely without meaning to.

Yes, in general, it is thought that the more intensely you exercise, the better health benefits you’ll get. (Although this association is less clear for women.) However, if women (and men for that matter) want to sustain exercise across their life span it is important that high intensity exercise is enjoyable or at least tolerable.

Sure some women do enjoy exercising intensely (Gina Kolata, fitness writer for the New York Times, is a great example of this.) But, in my experience, I’ve found most midlife women do NOT enjoy exercising intensely (including myself to a great extent). I’ve also discovered that a small minority of women exercise intensely and have done it for years even though they really dislike it. What motivates them to keep it up? Many are really concerned about their disease risk factors because of family history. That’s a good motivator for some. But I’ve found not necessarily for most.

Most women are too busy, have too many commitments, and are frankly too tired to make time for intense exercise. If this is what most women consider as being the only, or the most “valid”, type of exercise then they are pretty much doomed to not do it. Why? They dread the idea of doing it and consider it a “chore to accomplish”.

If exercising intensely is something you dread and don’t have energy to do, what’s the point of striving for THAT type of exercise? Doing so pretty much shoots women in the foot motivationally. There is some interesting research that explains why.

A fascinating body of “emotion-exercise intensity” research by Ekkekakis, et al., shows that high intensity exercise tends to decrease pleasure/positive affect among midlife women and others. If intense exercise puts you in a worse mood then you’ll be much less likely to keep it up beyond your initial burst of motivation.

Today I read some more research by another group of investigators (Hutchinson, Tenebaum, 2007) showing that when people exercise at higher intensities, they become very focused on their physiological experiences (examples: high heart rate, exertion, breathing hard, etc.). Clearly, if you didn’t like the experience of intense exercise, and doing it makes you focus on it, a negative experience is likely to result!

After reading this, if you don’t like intense exercise, I hope you find this information helpful and relieving. If you don’t know already, exercise does NOT have to be intense to offer you great physical and mental health benefits, especially if you don’t do much physical activity.

I can’t say this enough. Don’t make high intensity exercise your goal unless you like it or have serious health concerns to avoid. Instead, let yourself do lower level exercise, hopefully, that is convenient and enjoyable. Walking is one of the best ways to exercise. You can do it anywhere, and except for good walking shoes, it won’t cost you anything.

Walking on most days is what I do for the majority of my exercise. In the last year, to add some variety, I added a high intensity workout in the gym (one day a week). The way I get through it is by reading my Oprah and More magazines, and listening to music when I get tired of reading. (Note: the music is high energy “dance music”.) These things distract me from the physiological experiences that I don’t like too much. In addition, this is the only time that I have to read my magazines, so I am more motivated to do this workout. I also vary the amount of time I do, depending upon my energy level and how much time I have. (If I only have 15 minutes – so be it.) I share this with you as an example of how one can approach more vigorous exercise if one doesn’t like it.

What about your experiences with intense exercise?