Why do you Exercise? Seriously…why?

Can Uber’s ability to satisfy a large customer need across the world teach you an important lesson about exercise?

Uber has one marketing strategy. Every new user gets their first trip for free. Uber doesn’t advertise because they know once you use Uber you don’t use anything else.

An Uber user can easily describe the seamless way the app can order a car, show what time it arrives and pay without your wallet. They easily describe the benefits with great passion and enthusiasm. They understand why they use Uber.

In the same way that Uber or any business must satisfy a set of customer needs, exercise must also satisfy the needs of the executive. The executive must understand why they exercise and be able to describe the individual benefits they receive with great passion and enthusiasm.

So the question again — Why do you exercise? Seriously…why?

If you are struggling exercising at the moment I will suggest that you don’t have an answer to this question. You don’t understand the benefits that consistent physical activity gives you.

You haven’t experienced how exercise can make you resistant to fatigue. You haven’t committed to exercise for long enough to experience the resilience it gives you against the stress of your workplace. All you know is that you are too tired or have too much to do.

Discovering why you exercise is the first thing any executive must do before they lace up their runners for the first time. Simon Sinek’s great book “Start with Why” explains that it’s not the ‘what’ that motivates you to jump out of bed in the mornings, it’s the ‘why’.

Asking an executive to describe how their bodies feel can be difficult. Executives are not connected to their bodies, they exist in their head. Over the years, increasingly consistent negative feedback from below the neck in the form of pain or fatigue is ignored.

They are too occupied with the task at hand. Like the empty fuel light on the dashboard, the executive sees it once and then ignores it and keeps their eyes on the road. The executive believes they don’t have time to stop. They believe they can make it. They may get away with it, but one day they won’t.

If you want to make a lifelong commitment to exercise you must be able to answer the question. You must know why you exercise.

When you do, when you have a strong ‘why’ the obstacles that stand in front of ‘what’ and ‘how’ fade away.