Some people live for running stairs, other lust after lunges.  And while we all hear the vague advice to, “do what works for you—that response can be tad frustrating, especially if you have yet to find (or stick to) your ideal fitness routine.  

I’ve been on the hunt for a while now, trying to find a routine that’ll honor my body,  lift my spirit and keep me craving (so I’ll go back for more). In prep for this post, I tried three different personality fitness tests to see if I could a little clarification on how to DIY a crème de la crème personalized exercise program.

Myers Briggs 8 Colors of Fitness

This program jumps into the Suzanne Brue’s self-defined four components of fitness: sensing, intuitive, thinking & feeling, and outline. A quick 40+ question survey and you’ll instantly be placed into a color and a subcategory. In my case, White-Harmonious.

Brue believes that exercise goals became much more realistic when both activity and environment matched personality tendencies. Six years later, her research suggests that anyone get out of a workout rut when they choose the right activity and right location. You can take the 8 colors test here--and you can find suggested activities for each color on this website.

I appreciated how the 8 Colors results defined my ultimate gym goals: I’m a white personality and her description is fairly spot on: “whites prefer keeping a low profile at the gym. They are turned off by ‘see and be seen’ fitness centers.” Blush. I couldn’t agree more.  It’s no wonder I strategically timed my gym activities at 2pm (the slowest part of the day). This test helped me hone in on my desire workout in a safer/relaxed/more personal environment aka a home gym.

Very Well’s Fitness Personality Quiz

This quiz is short and sweet.  After defining your “type” it gives a specific list of five goals to help you reach your ideal exercise plan. I love the structure it offers. In Very Well’s quiz you can be categorized as a:  “Seeker,” “Free Spirit” or “By the Book”

While this quiz isn’t as in depth or scientific as Myers and Briggs—I like how it offers simple, straightforward advice. The results even point out how you make certain “out-of-comfort-zone” activities more enjoyable.

James Gavin’s Fitness Personality Chart

Professor Gavin is a professor of human sciences at Concordia University in Montreal and he’s made it a point to study the junction of exercise and personality, using an individual's’ stress responses as key indicators.

Gavin’s program starts with some self-reflection about these 7 Psychosocial traits: social vs nonsocial, spontaneous vs controlled, internally motivated vs externally motivated, aggressive vs non-aggressive, competitive vs noncompetitive, focused vs unfocused, risk-seeking vs risk-avoiding. Then it helps you find where your ideal exercises are in this handy chart. It outlines list of 7 activities that would feel comfortable within your day-to-day routine.

Whew, after reviewing each test it’s pretty easy to see that my ideal forms of exercise are something repetitive with consistent movement rather than short bursts. Something that helps me sweat but doesn’t leave me emotionally or physically depleted. It listed my prime routines as “yoga, hiking, tennis and zumba” this type of exercise might sound sissy, but for me, those are the very types of exercise I have naturally gravitated to.

One benefit of taking a personality fitness test is that it empowers you to feel “right” about whichever exercise you enjoy. Once I gave myself permission to enjoy the type of exercise I naturally am drawn to, it helped create a much healthier outlook towards fitness in general. For instance, I always dreaded working out with my high-energy mum,  she was constantly attempting to have me run marathons with her or run a quick 300 stairs between lunch breaks.  Luckily, nowadays our personality types can find common ground in our mutual love for spin class--although she does turn that resistant knob three times farther than I ever will.

Three cheers for opening doors for more self-love and exercise-acceptance!

XOXO,

Lemon