Health is Wealth: Start Exercising Now
Are we getting too complacent?
In Singapore, all males go through National Service; a two-year hiatus from our studies to serve the nation. Maintaining our fitness and physical health was of peak importance, and physical training was an inseparable component of our service. However, after two years of duty, many of my peers started to get complacent— especially when it involved physical exercise. Some chose to pursue their passions, while others indulged themselves before they resumed their studies. Ultimately, fitness was edged into the periphery of their priorities. Thankfully, I had cultivated an interest in running and callisthenics, which motivated me to push my body further now that I was freed from the responsibilities of a serviceman.
In hindsight, I am extremely grateful but devastated. I am grateful to have incorporated fitness into my lifestyle because I now see the many long-term benefits it conferred. Devastated because I had not encouraged my friends to adopt this crucial and valuable habit. Therefore, I am writing this article today to encourage my readers (you guys!) never to lose sight of your fitness.
To get you guys to understand how quintessential exercise is to our lives, let's bring in a key perspective:
Long Term Impact
For everything I do, I would always ask myself,
How will my current habits affect me over the next decade
We should always weigh our current actions as to how they will impact us.
When I’m 50, I will thank myself.
Although exercise is crucial to our physical well-being in old age, it isn’t something that we should wait to start when we are older. We need to start working on it now, right as you are reading this and if you have not begun, start prioritising it!
Regular physical activity can help reduce muscle loss and maintain strength as you age and to re-emphasize the importance of starting young, it helps to build bone density which reduces the risk of osteoporosis when you are older. Additionally, the balance and coordination in every exercise we carry out will help to reduce the risk of falls which could be detrimental in old age.
My Workout Routine:
- 100 pull-ups daily
- 10km run weekly
This is the workout routine that I am currently doing. It might sound daunting to do 100 pulls ups a day — I felt that way too! — but by turning it into a habit, it is now a daily routine for me; effortless (except for the last few reps!) and automatic. Essentially, turning something into a habit makes it automatic in your life. So what if I claimed that you could make waking up early, dieting and productivity a habit too? Effortless and automatic.
Exercise acts as my keystone habit, first mentioned in Charles Duhigg’s book.
Keystone habits are “small changes or habits that people introduce into their routines that unintentionally carry over into other aspects of their lives.”
They are habits that create a domino effect leading to new actions, behaviours, and habits.
This sole habit of keeping fit has helped me achieve many other goals throughout my life while cultivating better habits simultaneously in other aspects of my life.
Other than getting stronger and burning calories, exercising perpetuates more positive habits as well!
The Early Bird Gets The Worm
Since I run in the early morning, it gives me a good reason to wake up early and this, in turn, forces me to sleep earlier. At the end of the run, I get a strong sense of fulfilment, which provides momentum for me to tackle the tasks I have for the day ahead.
Conducive Environment: The driven feeds the driven
Running every day or following the same workout routine can get boring sometimes. So, I decided to create a workout community filled with friends and strangers who are similarly disciplined and consistently exercise. This provided me with an environment of driven individuals, who consistently pushed me beyond my limits.
Network with new friends & catch up with my current ones
This strengthens and enriches my network. Through these workouts with my friends, I get the opportunity to stay up to date with their lives, which strengthens our friendship. Moreover, as my friends roped their peers along, I had the privilege to meet new people during my runs and calisthenic sessions. An example of this was when my cousin linked me up with his calisthenic group.
I enjoy the diverse groups of individuals I get to meet and relish the interactions we have. I feel so blessed having found my tribe, my people; the driven ones who always give ONE MORE. Shout out to Nick Bare!
Impact & Motivating Others
Through my constant pulse of the content of working out on Instagram, I have also contributed to positively impacting others, motivating them to work out as well! I introduced people to running longer distances and to include this as a habit in their lives. To me, this is where I derive the most fulfilment, to be able to contribute to improving the people around me.
Discipline
Lastly, it cultivates discipline. Regardless of how much time I spend on the other areas of my life, I would always dedicate time to ensuring that I get the reps and miles to hit my daily and weekly goals. And as Daryl Ng once said, now that you have achieved a level of mastery and discipline in fitness, you should focus on how to carry these values over to the other aspects of your life. This is exactly why it is a keystone habit. The discipline that I nurtured has created many other habits that I really treasure in my life. From creating content for Learn.Archive to maintaining my own investments and sharing my findings with my investing community, and to the next phase of my academic life.
The benefits I’ve been blessed with may not accrue to everyone but as a study published in the British Journal of Health Psychology has shown, exercise encourages positive behaviours and habits.
Now that you have read all the benefits that we can accrue from exercising, you must be wondering, how do I get started?
Isn’t It Difficult To Exercise Regularly?
Not at all! Start small. You probably heard of 10,000 steps a day and think that that is something one should achieve to stay active. On the contrary, research has shown that 4,400 steps a day are sufficient to keep you healthy and increase your lifespan, according to a study by I-Min Lee, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who researches the role of physical activity in promoting health and preventing disease.
And although some exercises such as a pull up require more effort, the time and pain put into practising it will be worth the perseverance and resilience that it instils in you.
This video shows an obese Korean boy going from zero to one proper pull-up.
You Will Never Have Time For It
Some will lament about how busy their work schedules are but they fail to realise that:
you will NEVER have the time for something if you do not PRIORITISE it.
Health is wealth. Regardless of how much work you get done and how much money you make from it, you will never be able to enjoy it as you retire if you do not start taking care of your physical body. Set the right priorities and exercising should be on top of the list along with your family.
Your Mind Will Always Say No
Beyond 10,000 steps a day, doing an intensive session weekly is never easy. I drag myself out of bed and get myself to clock those miles and get those pull-ups regardless of how I feel. Emotions are temporary. Motivation comes in ebbs and flows. But what carries us forward is discipline and the gains we receive from the training we put ourselves through will be worth the pain. In any case, without suffering, we will not grow. The same goes for anything we do in life.
So ignore that voice in your head, get that routine set up and get the ball rolling. I wish you all the best and, in time to come, a better life than before.
