Most people have a preconceived idea that all exercise produces a positive affect on our mood. Images of exercisers pounding the road or gym floor, sweating and having a wonderful time are plastered all over the media. At the end of the day, even for the fittest of us, exercise isn’t always enjoyable. Exercise can be pretty dam tough!  Not only that, the time before we exercise, as we throw on our sport clothes and drag ourselves to the gym, can be the most challenging. Interestingly, most of us know the positive effects of exercise and we are, at the very least, likely to feel a sense of relief/achievement when the exercise session has finished. So why do we dig our heels in?

As with a lot of psychological phenomena, which at first glance appears to be irrational, it’s always useful to shine an evolutionary light on the issue. For most of human history, we have evolved to efficiently cope with hard physical activity such as jumping, running, throwing, carrying food etc. These activities can be seen as typical hunter-gatherer functional movements. Due to these high levels of physical activity, combined with the scarcity of food, we have also evolved to CONSERVE ENERGY when it is not required. Wasting calories as hunter-gatherers can be highly detrimental for survival. For millennia, we were both the hunters and hunted, requiring immediate energy to deal with both situations. Eat or be eaten. Today, we have the same genetic make-up as our ancestors, yet we live in a world with escalators, TV remote controls, elevators etc? Everything in the modern world seems to be geared around conserving energy, while simultaneously, for most of us, it has never been easier to eat high calorie food. We have evolved to work hard for food, yet we take the car to the supermarket and the escalator within the building. We gravitate to the escalator then elegantly glide past the adjacent steps or do multiple circles around a car park to find the closest space to the builds entrance. We just can’t seem to shake off those energy conserving behaviours!