- Personal trainer Kelsey Wells said she saw exercise as a form of punishment.
- But now it has become an empowering source for trainers.
- To make the switch, Wells says, add mindfulness to your workout.
Kelsey Wells knows what it’s like to hate working out.
“I hated exercise of any kind. I felt it was the ultimate chore,” she told Insider.
But ten years later, Wells is a personal trainer, sweat app coach, and fitness influencer Instagram has just under 3 million followers. She’s also been working out regularly for nearly nine years, which she said she enjoys.
What has changed?
It was a combination of finding a form of exercise she enjoyed (strength training) and working on her idea of restructuring exercise from a punishing source to an empowering one.
Wells said she used to think of exercise as a way to slim down, rather than as a way to improve physical and mental health. This means she never enjoyed it and she couldn’t keep it up consistently. But since she began her efforts to change her mindset, Wells said she has become more positive about not just exercise but life in general.
By working out more purposefully, she said, the results of her workouts were better as well, making her gain strength and fitness faster and having more fun.
An insider previously reported that many of us were instilled in childhood with the idea that exercise should be a form of punishment, such as after enjoying a sumptuous meal. However, because exercise burns fewer calories than people think, this is not only unscientific, but also keeps people away from exercise and its benefits in the first place.
Now Wells is on a mission to help other women change the way they think. She said the switch could simply be an extra minute of hers to the workout.
“We weren’t born hating our bodies, and we weren’t born feeling like we weren’t good enough,” Wells said. “But if you accept and practice the situation you find yourself in in relation to yourself, you can choose to take action and change it.”
How to Add Intention, Mindfulness, and Gratitude to Your Workout in 1 Minute
Rethinking how you think about exercise isn’t something that just happens, Wells says, but it takes a conscious effort. In fact, some days she still has to work, she said.
Wells redefining fitness The program in the Sweat app is designed to help women achieve this with tangible steps.
“I’m known for my strength training, but I also incorporate key things that I’ve found have actually helped my own relationship with exercise heal,” she said.
All you need is one more minute.
“Adding 60 seconds to your workout will make any workout successful,” Wells said. “It’s not because I’m setting personal bests, it’s because I’m moving to protect myself and my health. And at the end of the day, that’s what counts.”
Each workout has three main components.
- You have 30 seconds to set your intention at the start of your workout. “I am doing this session to take care of myself and my health” or “I exercise out of gratitude and respect for my body”.
- Affirmations during one or two breaks: “I am strong” or “I am beyond the physical”.
- Give 30 seconds of gratitude at the end
According to Wells, the first 30 seconds help people set healthy intentions for their workouts, redefine their “why” and motivation for working out, while doing breathing exercises to help their bodies adjust. It is designed to
“This is a reminder to train with a positive attitude and look after your health, rather than punishing or intimidating yourself or training just for aesthetics,” Wells said. to do,’ he said.
“This will help you realize that it is worth investing time and energy in caring for yourself and your health. It helps set us up for success.”
Breathing exercises don’t have to be specific, they just help get you in the right mindset for your workout.
“We focus on inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth at a comfortable pace, but what really matters most is the intention setting at the start of each workout,” says Wells. rice field.
Affirmations occur at specific moments in each workout to help people reassess their bodies and remind themselves of their intentions.
“And finally, have a moment of gratitude for your body, put one hand on your heart, one on your belly, take a deep breath, and say thank you to your body for everything, for getting through it. ”It’s training to get through each day,” Wells said.
the study It has been suggested that people who practice gratitude in general tend to be happier and less depressed.
Focusing on your workout helps you create your own story
Wells says that incorporating mindfulness into a workout can help change someone’s mindset because it allows them to create their own positive narratives, leaving no room for negative thoughts. said Mr.
“This prevents us from negatively linking the movement to toxic rhetoric that we may have previously adhered to,” Wells said. “If you focus on your breath, you don’t have time to tell yourself that you’re not strong enough, that you’re not strong enough, that you’re weak.”
Some people were skeptical at first, but Wells says he’s received a lot of messages from people who have helped him “rewrite the script.”
However, it doesn’t necessarily change overnight.
“It’s okay if you can’t get to where you do this workout out of love for yourself because you celebrate your body,” Wells said. “But you can certainly choose to be active out of respect for your body. You can certainly choose to do so in order to take care of yourself and your health on a basic level. .”
Ultimately, however, the mindset change has to come from within the person, not from someone else.
“No one can change your life, only you can,” Wells said.
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