I had the opportunity to meet with Don McGrath author of 50 Athletes Over 50 – Teach Us to Live a Strong, Healthy Life. Throughout his 50 interviews with these older athletes he found several themes that repeated themselves over and over again. Most notably was a “pure joy of moving their bodies,” and from this idea the concept of adult play was born.

Many non-exercisers think of exercise as difficult and time consuming. Even athletes or fitness enthusiasts can get stuck in rut that can lead to protracted time off.

In fact, sometimes athletes or those of use who are Type A become so consumed with our sport that we forget to have fun. I know that in training for my last Ironman I forgot to live my life and have fun. At a certain point training/exercise became a chore and I just muddled through it because I believed that I had to in order to get through race day. After the race was over I took off too much time. The truth is had I trained a little less and played a little more I probably would have enjoyed my training more and may have even had a better race result – not to mention a quicker return to training and fitness.

I believe that by integrating fun and play into your training you can become a more successful athlete. So what does adult play look like? Well it doesn’t look much different than child’s play. It includes things like throwing around a Frisbee, playing catch, duck, duck, goose or just getting out with your kids and enjoying that unstructured play that adults have forgotten but is innate in children.

Research shows that physically active play seems to have the most benefit for health and creativity. Study after study show that regular exercise leads to lower incidence of heart disease and cancer and other chronic diseases. When you consider the fact that half of Larimer county residents report little to no exercise you can see how maybe just encouraging folks to play might be able to reduce this trend.

In thinking more about play, I also realized that play could be incorporated into training. Think about a game of tag for instance. The chase might resemble a 20 second to two minute interval. These intervals are also mixed with dynamic movements such as ducking and weaving which can help you improve your strength and stability as well as your fitness.

The key is to make exercise fun. So fun in fact that you want to stay fit, flexible and strong so that you can play harder.

Next time you get stuck in an exercise rut, think about playing. I would venture to guess you will be more likely to meet your goals and stay fit and healthy.

We invite you to celebrate your love of play on international play day, August 4th. To learn more about this event search for Playshops Playgroup on meetup.com.