Finding joy in exercise beyond the walls of a gym.

Gearing up for another season filled with unknowns, RANDI BERGMAN looks at different approaches to getting physical this spring.

THERE ARE A FEW MAGICAL MOMENTS from last year that dance through my mind when I least expect it. They are free of the requisite face masks, hand sanitizer and nasal swabs that dominated 2020 and filled instead with lapping waves, tall grasses blowing in the breeze and the sunsets that would descend on my pal and me as we biked the open road. After years of being a city cyclist and using my wheels to get from one social event to another, I became intimately familiar with the Great Lakes Waterfront Trail—which stretches from Sault Ste. Marie to the Ontario-Quebec border—during the pandemic’s first summer. We’d bike swaths of the trail a few times a week, increasing our endurance and going as far as the outer reaches of the Toronto suburbs while replenishing some of the serotonin we’d lost thanks to all of our cancelled Pilates and spin classes.

These outings became blissful respites from an otherwise bleak year, and clinging to the last vestiges of these mood-boosting rides as the season drew to a close, I became obsessed with capturing that same feeling in my tiny apartment. As an extrovert who needs to exert a lot of physical and mental energy in order to sleep properly and feel balanced, I was scared that if I stopped moving, I’d sink into a depression.

In a recent survey by Mental Health Research Canada, 22 percent of Canadians reported that they had been diagnosed with depression and another 20 percent said that they had been diagnosed with anxiety disorder since the start of the pandemic, so I was right to be concerned. Sure, these rates reflect much more than a lack of exercise, but according to Rachael Stone, assistant professor at the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., the impacts of not moving as much are holistic and wide-reaching. “You have not only the physical side, which leads to the deconditioning of your muscles, but also the emotional side, where you’re not getting those extra neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin,” she explains. Put simply, we’re missing the chemical messengers that help control our sleep, stress, pleasure and pain. Being trapped inside our homes for months on end with nothing to focus on but the cold, hard monotony of this precarious moment in time? It’s a recipe for disaster.

To help manage the ebb and flow of my mental health, I installed a Peloton bike in my apartment, which allows me to stream an endless selection of classes through the device’s touchscreen alongside thousands of other users. My summer rides morphed into winter sweat sessions that brought me back to the pre-pandemic days of spinning my frustrations out in one of my favourite studios.

Knowing that I was working out with so many other bike enthusiasts around the world—even if they were just names on a leaderboard—was hugely motivating for me. I scheduled Saturday-morning rides with a couple of friends, which ended in FaceTime catch-ups that made us feel like we were in the good old days. I had forgotten how competitive I get in a class setting, and the leaderboard helped me push myself to slowly squash new micro goals (ranking in the top half of the class, for instance). I had also forgotten how much an amazing instructor can impact my output, and the Madonna- and Britney Spears-heavy playlists rocked me through a winter with zero dance floors.

Of course, working out was just one piece of the mental-health puzzle, which also included gratitude, journaling, meditation and plenty of cooking (my personal approach to self-care), but through the darkest days of winter, I noticed that my mood was noticeably balanced—even more so than during the months prior. Thinking back to the days of approaching a workout class solely as a method of burning calories, I realize now how much being active impacts my life as a whole. As we brace for another season (or two) of the temporary normal, I’ll be holding on to my routine for dear life!