In the middle years of elementary school, I started strength training because I wanted a solid six-pack and vein-rippled arms that stretched out the cotton sleeves of my t-shirt.

Mainly, I wanted to build the physique of my favorite childhood superhero, Batman, and impress girls. I trained hard, built some muscle, and quickly figured out that six-packs and bulging arms draw far more attention from other men than women.

So I turned my attention toward the mirror. I exercised to look good with my shirt off, to be pleased with my own reflection. My role models became bodybuilders and with each workout, I became increasingly vain. My identity and self-worth clung to my bodily proportions and body fat percentage.

It took me twelve years, from when I started lifting weights in my garage at the age of ten to part-way through university at twenty-two, to figure out that exercising for aesthetics is the wrong goal.

My self-absorbed ambition may have spurred a great lifelong habit, but it steered me down the wrong path.

Over the past two years, I’ve completely transformed how I view exercise. Some of my identity still lives in the mirror (I’m working on it) but like a mad scientist with a striking realization, my eyes are wide open to what fitness should be and, more importantly, what it shouldn’t.

My Problem with Exercising for Aesthetics

For over a decade I trained with the single-minded goal of improving my physique. Better proportions, bigger muscles, lower body fat.

Because I was training for the wrong goal — to look a certain way — my exercise routine lacked well-roundedness and my priorities outside of the gym were askew. I religiously lifted weights but kept away from cardio. I didn’t stretch or even bother with mobility. Why would I? They couldn’t improve my physique.

In the first few years of university, I partied two to four times per week, sacrificing food calories for alcohol calories in an attempt to stay lean. My elbows were shot, shrieking with pain when I unracked the barbell on bench press, and I had to go to physio for my lower back which was impinged as a result of slamming heavy weights and overuse. 

I looked like I was in great shape, but I couldn’t touch my toes, the thought of running put me out of breath, my joints were in pain, and I partied too much.

Exercising for vanity not only incentivized an unbalanced approach to fitness, but set me up for long-term disappointment by wrapping my self-image around a tree with no roots. I’m young now but with the entropy of age, I’m bound to lose my physique eventually — who will I be then?

I still want to look and feel good in my skin but I now know that looking a certain way cannot be my only or primary goal of exercise.

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My Exercise is Functional and Spiritual

So if exercising to achieve a certain physique was the wrong aim, what do I strive for now?

I exercise to add ability and function. For me, that means having mental, physical, and emotional energy all day long. Being able to keep up with my closest buddy at the Spartan Race every year. Going on a backcountry hiking trip, carrying 40 pounds on my back, and hiking thirty kilometers day after day. Picking up my girlfriend and spinning her around. Feeling strong and powerful yet supple and agile. What ability and function do you require to live the life you envision for yourself?

I exercise to elevate my day. My workouts break up my day and give me joy. I jam out to music or enjoy the silence and chatter of my mind. I often workout alone but sometimes lift kettlebells and run with my brother or track down an outdoor gym with my best friend. Exercise nourishes my body’s daily demand for movement and enables my mind to think creatively and write clearly.

My exercise is spiritual. Not woo woo spiritual. Your spirit is the thing that makes you, you. Daily physical exercise tests and fortifies my spirit. It asks me what I’m made of and awaits my response. Will I sit with the suffering or give up? Get beat down or rise above? Exercise offers me a daily opportunity to develop tenacity and strengthen my character. 

When I forget the function exercise serves in my life, as I often do, I reflect upon the type of person I want to become. Who do I want to be seen as? The self-obsessed insecure boy flexing in the mirror under perfect backlit lighting, or the man who exercises for a deeper meaning and a higher purpose?

I still check myself out more often than I'm proud of.

But since elevating my purpose for exercise beyond my own reflection, I’ve become less self-absorbed, healthier, and more well-rounded. I’m free of joint pain, can touch my toes, ran 25 km at a 5:02/km pace last summer, and quit drinking almost immediately after university. 

Redefining my purpose for exercise set me on The Path.

My metamorphosis is incomplete, but I’m slowly learning to value exercise for how it makes me feel and taking pride in what my body does for me, not what it looks like in the glowing reflection of a well-lit mirror.

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Your fitness ideal and what exercise means to you are yours to define. But if you’re in the sole pursuit of a particular body image, I beg you to stop and reflect.

What higher purpose could exercise serve in your life? How might the daily act of exercise be of greater significance than any result (aesthetics or otherwise) it can achieve?

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