Eight months ago, Faye joined a coaching program. What she said on day one is something many people can relate to:
“I hate exercise. I want to have a better attitude about it so that I’ll actually do it instead of dreading doing it. I want to learn some general principles about exercise so I can teach my kids how to be healthy with exercise. It’d be great if I could look awesome, but honestly, I just want to be healthy.”
A lot of people are in a similar boat. They have packed schedules with work, taking care of their family and loved ones, and all the other responsibilities that come with adulting — and they’re trying to figure out how to have a better relationship with exercise so it actually works for them.
Faye and her coach started somewhere unusual — not with a workout plan, but with a mindset shift.
Exercise didn’t have to jump from “the thing I loathe” to “the thing I love” overnight. Instead, they treated it like a hygiene practice. You don’t have to love brushing your teeth — you brush them anyway, because it’s part of caring for yourself. Five to ten minutes of movement can work the same way.
Fast-forward eight months. Faye has done a 5–10 minute workout almost every single day.
Here’s what she had to say about it, in her own words:
“When I started, I think it would be safe to say that I didn’t like exercise. In fact, it might be more accurate to say that I loathed and detested the mere thought of exercise. However, grown-up me (with kids) realized that my exercise mindset was probably (definitely) not conducive to my family’s health. Honestly, I didn’t think I would ever change my mind about exercise. I joined fully expecting to ‘do exercise’ whilst continuing to hate it.
Fortunately for me, my coach is awesome. And also, sneaky. He sort of tricked me into kind of actually enjoying exercise. Sure, most of the exercises felt super exercise-y, but some of them were, dare I say, fun? Even when it wasn’t fun, it was still doable and I felt good about doing it. It surprises the heck out of me to say it, but I now exercise almost every single day. And I don’t hate it. I might even sort of like it sometimes."
"Sneaky” Is a Good Strategy
Faye’s story reflects a challenge many families face. As parents, the way we talk about fitness — with and around kids — has a big impact on their long-term relationship with it. The goal is to teach healthy habits while keeping it something they don’t loathe doing.
Here’s what one approach to a parent-child workout session can actually look like:
Send the invite. Whenever you go to work out, invite your kid to join — but keep it casual. “Hey, I’m going to work out. Want to come?” No pressure. Sometimes they will, sometimes they won’t.
The warm-up as a dojo. Arm swings, leg swings, shuffling back and forth — classic dynamic warm-up moves. Count reps out loud in a foreign language, like you’re training at a dojo. It turns the warm-up into a shared team ritual.
Mirror Man. Face each other. One person moves — shuffles sideways, drops down, changes direction — and the other tries to stay directly in front of them, mirroring everything. It gets kids laughing and makes them forget it’s “exercise.”
Strength moves paired with play. Do the foundational strength work, but pair every move with something dynamic:
- Balance beam walks (on a 2×4) between sets of push-ups
- Box jumps between sets of rows
- “Stuntman” between sets of lunges — one person throws a fake kick, the other flies backward onto mats or pillows in slow motion. Then switch. Lots of laughing, lots of getting up and down off the floor.
Cliffhangers. Take turns hanging from a pull-up bar, imagining you’re straight out of an 80s action film, cheering each other on in your best action-hero voice.
Photo Finish. A sneaky way to get in sprints: each person starts from a different spot, and the goal is to cross the finish line at the exact same moment — perfectly timed, both running full out.
Two Things Can Be True
These two experiences — a coaching client’s eight-month transformation and a parent-child garage workout — point to the same lesson from two directions:
- Exercise is hygiene. You never have to love it for it to be worth doing. Like brushing your teeth, it’s a small, repeatable act of taking care of yourself and the people who count on you.
- It also doesn’t have to be miserable. With a few small changes and a mindset shift, it’s possible to find parts of exercise genuinely enjoyable — at least some of the time. That’s what happened for Faye, and it can happen for kids too when movement is framed as play rather than a chore.
If exercise feels like something that fits everyone else’s life but yours, the starting point isn’t a better workout plan — it’s a different way of thinking about what exercise needs to be in the first place.
