Early in my fitness career I held the belief that most people didn’t enjoy running, including a fair number who professed otherwise. I came to this conclusion because I’d observed that some runners I knew didn’t seem to run regularly unless they had registered for an obstacle course event, competitive trail run, triathlon, marathon, or other shorter-distance race.
I knew that everyone needed a source of motivation to consistently take any type of action. But at the time I didn’t consciously recognize that motivation could be the result of either intrinsic or extrinsic factors—likely because my introverted nature prefers the intrinsic option. Of course, over time I’ve come to realize that the source of motivation is less important than that it exists in the first place.
The Motivation to Exercise
A couple weeks ago I shared some stats about exercise and its effect on our long-term health from Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity, by Peter Attia, MD. I also echoed his exhortation to find a way to add exercise to your life (at least, if you want to increase the probability of it being long and healthy).
If you’ve struggled in the past with finding or maintaining the motivation to do so consistently, another idea from Outlive might help: the Centenarian Decathlon.
The idea behind the Centenarian Decathlon (CD) is fairly straightforward, but the consequences are significant. The CD is simply a list of ten activities (or more, if you can’t narrow it down) that you’d like to be able to do throughout your life and especially as you near the end of your tenth decade.
The items on the list could cover:
- Athletic skills such as…
- Playing a round of golf without using a cart
- Swimming x laps in a pool in y time
- Doing five chin-ups
- Everyday skills such as…
- Opening a jar
- Shoveling your driveway
- Standing on one foot while putting on your socks
- Hobby-related skills such as…
- Pulling weeds in the garden (and getting up from the ground without assistance)
- Practicing the drums for an hour per day
- Putting your 25-lb carry-on in the overhead bin while traveling
These tasks may not be challenging for you right now (or perhaps they are), but that’s where the significant consequences of the list come into play. According to Attia (and plenty of other sources), you can expect to lose 8–17% of your muscular strength in each of the last four or five decades of life. Compounded, that means you’re likely to be about half as strong at 100 as you are/were/will be at 50. And your endurance and flexibility will naturally follow similar paths. In the light of being half as strong, half as flexible, and half as conditioned as you are now, some of the activities in your CD might be quite difficult, if not impossible, to do.
If that sounds like it would suck, you’re right. But there’s a silver lining: As you gain clarity on the specific activities you want to be able to do when you’re 100, the physical attributes you’ll need to be able to do them, and the natural decline that you’re likely to experience as you age, you’ll also learn where you need to focus your efforts in order to improve those physical attributes to a level that’s high enough to weather the expected decline.
And there’s nothing quite like being focused on hitting a specific target to provide a flow of sustained motivation for taking consistent action. Even (or especially) if that action involves running.
Putting it into practice
Take some time this week to create a list of activities you want in your Centenarian Decathlon. Don’t just think about it, but write it out! There’s a huge difference in clarity between keeping things in your head and getting them out on paper. (Says the introvert who is becoming slightly better at getting things out of his head and onto paper. 🙋♂️)
Then over the next few weeks do as many of those activities as possible, evaluate your current capabilities, and determine what physical attributes need the most improvement.
Last but not least, decide on a plan to recognize those improvements, and put the plan into action.
Of course, if you’re not sure what details should go into said plan, all the coaches at TNT are here to help (in-person or virtually).