How to Create a Movement Plan You Love

I’ve studied and taught movement for more than 25 years. When people learn that about me, they always ask something like, “What’s the best exercise?” or “What three exercises should I be doing daily?” or “What exercises can fix my _________ problem?”

The answer is never simple, because it depends on the answers to a lot of other questions, such as:

• What types of activities are you doing now, and for how long?
• What would you most like to be able to do in the future?
• What injuries have you had?
• Which of your parts are already getting cranky, even without injury?
• What stage of life are you in?
• How is your environment currently set up for movement?

The “best” exercise plan for any individual is different based on all these questions and more. That’s where my latest book, My Perfect Movement Plan: The Move Your DNA All Day Workbook, comes in. I wrote it to help you figure out exactly which types of movement you’re already getting, what you might be missing, and how to fit the movement you need into all parts of your daily life.

The following self-assessment activity is the first step in developing a movement plan you’ll love.

Find Your Movement Why

Movement is good for the body, keeps us healthy, and is key to fixing or decreasing symptoms of a wide variety of issues. But those are not the only reasons to move.

Movement is the medium that connects us with the experiences and people we love. Most people want to feel better on a daily basis and are interested in living a relatively rich life, but most people also struggle to move enough. One of the keys to moving consistently is figuring out the deeper reason behind your interest, for your general health and beyond.

Use the prompts and questions below to help identify exactly why you are seeking out movement. As you write the answers, keep asking yourself if you can go deeper. Understanding your values and motivations makes it much easier to adapt the practice of regular movement to your life.

Think about the following activities and how your body would be used for each.

List some of your favorite, most joyful, and most satisfying movement experiences, and think about how your body was used for each. Write them out. (I’ve shared a few of mine to get you started.)

1. What physical experiences would you like to have that you haven’t yet? What’s keeping you from these experiences?
2. Which physical experiences do you miss — that you would like to do again? Why?
3. How do you, personally, define a healthier body?
4. Why does body health matter to you, personally?
5. Are there things you want to do with your body (a three-day backpacking trip, tying your shoes without pain, going across the monkey bars) that you can’t now?
6. Is there a way you want to feel, mentally or physically, and you’ve decided moving more or differently is the answer?
7. Do you have any fears about your body’s ability in your next life stage? What are they?
8. Do you have any fears about physical aging specifically? What are they?
9. How do you define “quality of life” for yourself now?
10. How would you define “quality of life” for yourself 10 years from now? Twenty? Thirty?

Once you’ve spent time reflecting on the above questions and writing your answers, try to sum up your “Movement Why” in one or two sentences. This statement can now be used as your compass as you continue to determine your specific movement needs.

More self-assessment questionnaires and activity tracking worksheets can be found in Katy Bowman’s My Perfect Movement Plan: The Move Your DNA All Day Workbook (Uphill Books, July 2024). This excerpt is adapted from My Perfect Movement Plan: The Move Your DNA All Day Workbook by Katy Bowman. Reprinted by permission of Uphill Books. Copyright © 2024 by Katy Bowman.