Anyone here ever had to change their “fitness identity”?

[anton0003]

So I just want to preface this by saying I know I might be making something out of nothing, but I’m feeling kind of adrift right now and I’m looking for some clarity? Advice? Solidarity? I’m not entirely sure.

Have any of y’all based part of your identity on your fitness routine (i.e. “I’m a lifter” “I’m a dancer”), and then changed that routine and had a slight crisis?

I used to do crossfit and now I’m not really interested in lifting at all. I train in circus arts and it’s currently the one thing that I want to do consistently. Training feels so right but it clashes in a way with who I was? Am?

Anyone else have this issue? And a preemptive apology for the formatting, I’m on mobile.

Edit: Y’all are just the best

 

[justwokeup]

@anton0003 I've been a runner for 24 years. I've taken several months off at a time, but it's been my primary sport forever. I have all the shirts, the medals, the running club friends, the gear ...but I totally burned out by the end of 2015. 4 half marathons in a single year was a lot for me physically and mentally.

Since last spring I've been focusing on lifting. (And working long hours and doing nothing sometimes.) I started as an experiment, and the weight just dropped off within two months. Plus I'm just addicted to it! I have not been able to run more than 20 minutes in the past 18 months. I still consider myself a runner... but if anyone tested me I'd fail miserably.

 

[person234]

@anton0003 was a pretty hardcore pole fitness enthusiast/instructor and yogini for about 6 years then suddenly decided quit all that and now i am a weight lifting gym rat through and through. people are usually surprised to hear it lol

 

[therese1234]

@anton0003 I definitely had a crisis of fitness identity. I consider myself a martial artist and karateka, but this fall I had a couple of months when I seriously considered if karate and martial arts are the right fit for me. I just fell into doing it many years ago, and never questioned it. It always felt right. And thinking about potentially leaving my dojo or leaving karate and martial arts, was so tough - like what would I be if I do that?... I stayed.

On another note, I never thought I'll be into gym, always being more into sport activities. But I don't think it's become part of identity to the same extent as martial artist and karateka.

 

[queenree1]

@anton0003 Yup. I played a lot of ultimate frisbee, but have been feeling a lot of disconnect with the community lately. I still enjoy the sport when playing casually, but don't really feel the urge to get back into competitive. I'd love to get back into it, but meh. Nowadays, I'm not really training for anything in particular, just try to keep moving when I can.

 

[dawn16]

@anton0003 YES!! I use to be "the runner"...blew out my knee. Then I was "the crazy biker"....over used the Achillies....Now I'm the Gym Rat....pumping iron like it's my job.

 

[danaross67]

@anton0003 I kind of had a similar thought process two or three years ago when circus started becoming more important to me than dance. For years I would have identified myself as a “dancer” (Zouk, salsa, bachata, other Latin Social dances), but then I started getting more and more into circus and now I see myself as a Contortionist who Also Dances. But I’m totally fine with it, i never really had a problem with having multiple “identities” (which come with very different social circles) through my activities, but I did hunk it was interesting when I noticed a shift in how I was prioritizing them myself

 

[dawn16]

@anton0003 100% can relate to this. I was a runner for most of my life, and I ran fast. I won lots of local races in my category, and I felt it was really my thing and I became known for it within my group of friends and work. I loved running.

Then I developed a pretty huge labral tear in my hip, and was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that is marked by chronic fatigue. No running for me! Every time I even tried to run, my hip would clunk around and I couldn't walk for a few days. I've considered getting surgery, but would rather not if I can avoid it and have been focusing on building up my core strength through physio to compensate. My orthopaedic surgeon agrees with this approach rather than resorting to surgery. But it also means I can probably never run again.

As a result, I only do low impact activities, like walking, yoga and barre. Do I feel like a big part of my identity as blackcatcatcat the runner has changed? Absolutely. Was it hard getting used to? Definitely.

But at the same time, it isn't the only thing that defines you as a person. I'm sure if someone close to you was to describe you, they won't just say you do crossfit and leave it at that. There are so many other things that define you as a person, like being caring, considerate, etc. With that knowledge, it is freeing; you can do whatever you want and not limit yourself to just one or two activities because you feel it is a part of your identity. People's tastes change, and that doesn't mean their entire identity has to too.

I hope this made some sense!

 

[dawn16]

@anton0003 Yes, but in a different way. I'm a runner, but I'm also a trans woman.

I came to running late in life. I was 39, and still in the closet. I had lost weight and decided to get fit. I took up running and fell in love. It cleared my mind, and I was good at it. At the age of 41, I had managed to get my 5km time down to 19:34. I was proud of my body for the first time in my life.

Then, I transitioned. Testosterone and I parted ways. My running suffered seriously. Runs were harder, recovery was longer, and I was just slower. I've had to walk in races, and my pride in my running has taken a beating.

Of course, in terms of performance, I'm still roughly the same. Now instead of placing in the top 5 to 10% of finishers, I place in the top 5 to 10% of women. I still generally place high in my age category. Relatively, nothing has changed. But in terms of real world performance, everything has changed.

So now, I'm trying to rebuild my running identity, and adjust to my new normals, and let go of comparing myself to someone that doesn't exist anymore. It's a work in progress

Edit - Fucking transphobia. Why? I post about a real struggle, and a need to rebuild my running identity, and the response is "Trans, must downvote".

 

[dawn16]

@anton0003 Yeah! I was a runner for a long time-I was kinda extreme too. I mostly focused on doing the most I could at all times, kinda starving myself, etc

5 years later I play roller derby, I lift to cross train but try real hard to be reasonable and recognize PRs don't always benefit me on the track (but sometimes they do!). I border upon overweight because I do still struggle with some emotional eating issues, but generally I don't take ALL my problems out on my diet. I occasionally run to get some intervals in but I don't run as far a I can because I need it to convince myself I'm worthy (no shade to runners here-I personally had a very unhealthy relationship with the sport).

I think the change in me has been gradual over the years-there was a period where I was trying to do power yoga 3x a week, lift 3-4x a week, play derby for like 6+ hours a week, and run....aaannnddd surprising no one I wasn't good at any of them hahha. I'm a lot stronger now.

 

[prattpratt]

@anton0003 Yes. I've been doing HEMA for something like 10-12 years now (and still) and have always tought of myself as a fencer. I recently got into poledancing and aerial silks and was simply hooked - I do these a lot more often than fencing now and am a lot more motivated, even though I still like and do fencing.

 

[tieutien]

@anton0003 This is a really good question, and I don't know that I've ever thought about it. My fitness identity has changed many times. For twelve years, I swam competitively so I was a swimmer. Then I shifted into long distance running for several years and I really love(d) it. I was decent, too. My crowning achievement was winning my division in the last half marathon I ran. I thought of myself as a runner and so did others. But I eventually had my first RA flare and my doctor told me I would need to cut back. Over the past two and a half years, I've cut back so much. A seven-mile run used to be a shorter day for me, but 10 was pretty common. Now if I do a seven-mile run, my back and hips are in terrible pain for days. Yesterday I ran 20 min and was still getting twinging in my back. It's been hard on me mentally, though it's because I miss the high of running hard in fresh air rather than because I can't call myself a runner.

Around the time I started to cut back on running, I got into lifting, and now powerlifting is the basis of my routine, though I don't compete so I don't call myself a powerlifter. I do really enjoy this, as well. Measuring progress is so clear to me, and I've finally started to really get picky about my squat form, and am more focused on that than the number (mostly because I no longer count a squat slightly above parallel as a squat).

Anyhow, I think what's been helpful for me is just to think of myself as an athlete. Maybe it's been helped because I played a few different sports in high school and college so I was never really stuck in one identity.

When I get into something new, the language I use for myself is just that--I'm really getting into lifting right now, or I've been practicing a lot of yoga lately. Although I feel such heavy sadness about not being able to run as much as I'd like, the crisis of identity has largely been allayed by thinking of my body as versatile. I can train in lots of different ways. I don't know if that's helpful for you at all, but your question has actually been really helpful for me in terms of clarifying how I understand my relationship to my physical activities. Listen, we are always changing and adapting. Our identities do shift, and that's normal and okay and often good. Don't do anything just because it's "who you've always been." Do stuff because you like it.

 

[cat333]

@anton0003 I have. For a while I was a "rock climber". The prices kept getting higher, though, the gym kept getting busier, and the commute to the gym 3-4x a week was really wearing on me. The gyms had such shitty quality of life policies, too, I'd often get there and there'd be teens blasting their music on shitty speakers at full volume. And people would take their kids and basically treat it as a playground. I finally decided I was paying too much to deal with this nonsense.

I never, ever thought of myself as a "runner", but I gradually became one, largely because it's a good sport for getting outside, and it's fairly low cost. I wasn't into the "runner" identity at all, and I'm still not, but, at some point, when I realized I was running 20 miles some weeks, I realized that I had become a "runner" somehow, completely unintentionally.

Still not sure how I feel about that, but so it goes. I think of runners as people who "omg i have to have my Starbucks™!" and pink iPods and suburban moms. Just completely not my identity at all. I just do it because it makes me happy and that's enough.

 

[christianqa]

@anton0003 Yes, I'm struggling with this so much right now. I've been into a number of different fitness activities, but running has been the consistent one, for the past ~25 years. Now I'm injured (plantar fasciitis) and haven't been able to run for the past 5 months. While I've had longer stints of not running out of laziness, thus is the first serious injury I've had from running. I always figured that when I couldn't/didn't want to run anymore, I'd just do a lot of hiking, but now I can't even do that. It's so frustrating. I feel like I'm never going to run again, and I'm struggling to not get super depressed over it and not give up fitness entirely right now.

 

[dawn16]

@anton0003 When I was 13 I did karate and It. Was. Everything. For 3 years. Then high school happened and I just didn't have the time and my motivation started dwindling and it took me a good while to be able to comfortably say "yeah, I used to do karate" without cringing at the past tense. Especially because I didn't replace it with anything else, I just stopped working out. By now I don't put my identity in just one thing, and actively correct people if they start "putting me in a box". I've realised that I don't want to be a "one sport girl" now, I want to try everything! Climbing, pole dancing, bodyweight fitness, parkour, hiking, running - all of it! Fuck if I won't be amazing at it all, I just want to participate! And I am so happy to know this at 27 so I have a lifetime to play around with it!

 

[infinityown]

@anton0003 Yes. It took a bitchy CrossFit trainer to make me leave that world. I ended up following Zen Dude Fitness and FitnessBlender on YT to keep me going.

I used to hate skipping rope, but I turned that loathing into a love: I have six weighted ropes that are freaking awesome and burn the shit out of calories.

 

[mattbryan10]

@anton0003 Yes! At the beginning, some 5 years ago, I was into powerlifting and Crossfit, even won a local powerlifting meet (in my weight cat, ofc). Now I'm seriously into climbing. I still workout 5 times a week at the gym, but changed my programming for the benefit of climbing - more endurance work, less max strength.

 

[laura888]

@anton0003 I went from riding 70-100 miles a week, working part-time in a bike shop and having 3 bikes to...basically nothing when I moved for grad school, to one of the most bike-friendly cities in the country, I just didn't have the time or the motivation to ride more than occasionally, although I used it as a mode of transport. That, combined with a knee injury, basically means that right now I look at my bikes and feel like they're mocking me. I'm trying to find a new fitness identity right now.

 

[robrog8999]

@anton0003 yes. grew up playing soccer pretty competitively and ran long distance on the side. once i started undergrad i continued the distance running in an unhealthy way, and i realized that i hated it all along. i started lifting and can't wait to wake up on workout days at 5:30 am, and i regret not starting it sooner. not to sound too sappy, but lifting has helped me shape my identity more clearly, and i am really thankful for that.

 

[cjbravo]

@anton0003 Yep. For five years I seriously trained in martial arts, sometimes upwards of 6 days a week- it was a huge part of my identity. After I quit due to health issues it took me a long time to redefine myself when it came to fitness. I felt a bit lost but moved on from it eventually.