How to Think About Exercise by Damon Young

It can often seem as though existence is split in two: body and mind, flesh and spirit, moving and thinking. In the office or at study we are ‘mind workers,' with seemingly superfluous bodies. Conversely, in the gym we stretch, run and lift, but our minds are idle. In How to Think About Exercise, author and philosopher Damon Young challenges this idea of separation, revealing how fitness can develop our bodies and minds as one. Exploring exercises and sports with the help of ancient and modern philosophy, he uncovers the pleasures, virtues and big ideas of fitness. By learning how to exercise intelligently, we are contributing to our overall enjoyment of life and enhancing our full humanity. Find out how bestselling author Haruki Murakami quit smoking and took up running, and why the simple act radically changed his whole outlook on life; why Schopenhauer thought that swimming was a sublime act; how Charles Darwin came up with some of his best ideas while exercising; and much more.


The School of Life is dedicated to exploring life's big questions: How can we fulfill our potential? Can work be inspiring? Why does community matter? Can relationships last a lifetime? We don't have all the answers, but we will direct you toward a variety of useful ideas—from philosophy to literature, from psychology to the visual arts—that are guaranteed to stimulate, provoke, nourish, and console.

Why I Picked It Up

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I don't normally read School of Life books, because I'm a snob about anything I perceive to be self-help in a way that's likely contradictory; a book has to masquerade as being enough of hard science, or the direct source, or "microhistory" rather than using pithy examples in order for me to connect. I'm always on one when it comes to self-improvement, but I need some plausible deniability when wandering over to that bookstore section. (The constant desire for progress is based in confident perfectionism, not insecurity, although you could argue those end up being the same thing.)

But y'all know I love Bonnie Tsui's Why We Swim, which is a big reason why I've been swimming laps this year. One of my best friends from college has come to Canada with me the last few years, and was an incredible, record-setting All-American. When she finally read it, she called me to book club and I ended up sorting through my highlights. (She's also the catalyst for me recently reading Circe; often, a person or conversation will remind me to pick up a certain book or go down a certain rabbit hole.)

I went down a mental checklist of the books Tsui references during our conversation: Awe and The Nature Fix are bibles of a sort to me. Then I stumbled across one I hadn't consumed yet: How to Think About Exercise.

I've already read a lot of the primary sources (Hume, Nietzsche, Darwin, Descartes) and also plenty of narratives that deal directly without those ideas. I've identified one theme this year of me reading a whole lot about embodiment and endurance and the mind/body connection.

While I've always been athletic and prioritized physical activity, this year I figured out the way to get through [redacted book process] was literally to do two-a-day workouts and/or join a fitness class that made me mentally blackout every time: whatever the ideal mix of exertion and mindlessness might be. Turns out the regimen answer is to do F45 (a circuit-based group training class) because it's so formulaic that you can just show up and not think.

In addition to the mental benefits, I want to build muscle, continually prove myself as tough, become a better dancer, and I don't hate the extra benefit of maybe improving my physical appearance. I want to get ripped. This is where I out myself as someone with insatiably high standards for myself; now that I've finished a life goal, I also somehow want to be the most in-shape version of myself, and that expectation does fuel me—with shifting goalposts. Maybe I'm a little bored. There's the hedonistic treadmill, and then there's the actual treadmill.

On weekdays, I rotate between F45, dance classes, walks or (bad) runs, and then I try to swim at least weekly. I read On Muscle and The Extinction of Experience and even Siddhartha while practically dry-heaving on the StairMaster. (I keep mentioning that, but now it's a vivid tie.) So we continue in the zone.

Voice & Tone

I completely understand why Bonnie Tsui identified Damon Young's How to Think About Exercise as being notable to her. It has a similar...stretched...quality to the writing.

If you read a lot of "philosophers of philosophers" i.e. secondhand microhistory or analyses, you'll recognize this kind of style: breaking down individual moments to the extent that they almost cease to have in-real-life meaning because nobody is dissecting their individual actions to that extent.

That has its uses! An example of what I mean is that a lot of fiction writers will also get the advice that some actions are unconscious for a reason i.e. you don't need to say someone reached for something on the shelf by going on their tip toes, extending their elbow, opening the cabinet, identifying a material, etc. etc. You get the point by chopping off the extraneous bits and just saying "they reached for the mug," unless there's a purpose to the timing, focus, or detail of your prose.

Some of this stretchedness has a ton of value, and some feels extraneous to the point of being vaguely aggressive. For the most part, I can excuse a certain gracefulness in syntax and construction because I appreciate the poeticism needed to mull over all this in the first place. So it didn't necessarily bug me, but is a distinctive and constant characteristic. He also mentions "wholeness" a lot, which feels like crutch language of his; I agree with the argument that exercise makes us more wholly integrated, but his particular phrasing can feel woo-woo in a way I expect more from "divine feminine" wellness brands on social media (respectfully.)

About the Book

The book is an overview of some broad points about exercise as articulated by various thinkers, and then has a few chapters that detail specific exercises. Having read all that I have so far, some was repetitive (like Nietzsche's thoughts on walking) but would feel new to a fresh reader. Of course, each book has multiple points that strike me that no book has articulated in quite the same way before.

This time, the most striking aspect of the book was the emphasis on how we rename the pain of exercise to be the pleasure of vitality, because I've been thinking a lot about how we construct our own emotions through the language we use.

An example I use all the time is that fear and excitement are the same physical sensations within our nervous system, and a lot of the "emotions" we feel are self-fulfilling prophecy. Overall, I'd assume some people could describe me as an emotional person because I'm not afraid of feeling deep feelings, but I'm also startlingly analytical. (See: How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett.)

This exercise basis is interesting, because it goes along with the philosophy of Endure by Alex Hutchinson: you can rename almost any experience as a builder for you, especially if you integrate it into your source of identity.

There were other thoughtful points embedded in the book too. There was a chapter about water and swimming, so I understand why Bonnie Tsui thought to pull from it as a reference. And then he had a chapter about yoga, which I actually strongly dislike.

Where the book tips into self-help vs. microhistory is that it occasionally has a tip set aside in its pages (which I'm sure is lovely to those who are reading this book for actionable shifts.) I found the reminders of self-helpness to be awkward and a little obvious, but that's my own bias. They're rather basic i.e. try walking without headphones, or tune into your body next time you're stretching.

More Musings on Cross-Training (of a Kind)

My interest in physical activity absolutely makes sense on an evolutionary level (but people never like when I talk about that) and then an aesthetic level (but even that is roughly evolutionary i.e. you assume muscles signal some form of fitness. Fitness being "fit to," according to the translation. We love an etymology.

John Kaag may have done this to me, but: I love philosophy right now but am a little skeptical of philosophers themselves because you can always keep yourself comforted by an idea rather than reality. In actual experience, there's a gap between what you wanted to do and what you're capable of.

Exercise, of course, is one way to close that gap in one domain of life, and if you can apply that mindset (oh God, I sound like a podcaster) to other aspects, you'll ultimately be a lot better for it. Silly, but I get a lot of comfort from the truth of "training until failure" in sets, because in other domains of life, I'm a perfectionist and tend to assume that failure is an endpoint rather than part of the process of expansion. But it's actually good to hit your limit, take a step back, revisit, etc. until you get it right rather than being embarrassed at hitting the upper wall. (Corny, but true.)

Which, I suppose, goes with the idea of the book. If you can confront failure, be consistent, recognize physical ability, rename pain, endure, etc. in areas other than your norm, that can improve your flexibility and cognition. Plus, I was raised with values of "well-roundedness." It's good for you to recognize how you can improve your capacity in anything using the same principles, whereas often we're tempted to categorize different pursuits and assume they use different skills.

Lines & Bits I Loved & Highlighted

• virtue as a choice

“Virtue also involves desire; when we are morally excellent, this is more than reflex. We want to be good, said Aristotle, and we get pleasure out of achieving this...Virtue also involves choice: we cannot be blamed for our vices if we have no say in our own excellence.”

Also, re: that thought, one of my favorite classes in college was about Calvinism and Puritan settlers in America, so I could go down that "virtue as choice" rabbit hole alll day.

• Murakami, quoted, running to "acquire a void"

“I run in order to acquire a void. But as you might expect, an occasional thought will slip into this void. People’s minds can’t be a complete blank. Human beings’ emotions are not strong or consistent enough to sustain a vacuum. What I mean is, the kinds of thoughts and ideas that invade my emotions as I run remain subordinate to that void. Lacking content, they are just random thoughts that gather around that central void. The thoughts that occur to me while I’m running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky as always. ”

• thoughts on pride, achievement, etc. especially tying in Greek ideals

“Put simply, pride is sanctioned pleasure in something worthwhile, which we associate with ourselves.”

“The goal is not simply to win, but to impress upon the world the stamp of our own existence; to walk away with a heightened feeling of our own enterprise...so exercise is not merely a way to tone muscles or to increase the heart's efficiency—although it does both. It also offers a firmer idea of oneself.”

• chatting about exercise as a peak i.e. physical condition cannot be maintained forever

Bonnie Tsui talked about this in On Muscle—about how women's ability to gain muscle starts to drop after age thirty—which has unfortunately inspired the kind of prodigy time-running-out complex in me to build all the muscle I can by then, which is definitely not her intention. Sometimes I know too much.

• the pleasures of committing yourself to something hard / investment of choice and pain

“To commit, as a human being, to anything is to renounce some quantum of pleasure—a measure that is enlarged by every increase in dedication. Every game enacts a cost.”

“Put simply, what hurts is part of the whole project of my life—as the project changes, so does the pain.”

“The pain of exercise is helpful, because it reminds us of what liberty looks like: the agony or injury that we choose and, in so choosing, consecrate. The same question then remains for career, relationship or education: is this what I want, and and how willing am I to suffer for it? In other words, pain is a test of value: it sharpens our perception of what is worthwhile...”

• beauty & capacity & integration—where he gets his "wholeness" schtik from

“The philosopher John Dewey argued that our enjoyment of beauty is never purely intellectual or purely spiritual. Instead, it involves the whole human being, including our basic instincts. And one of these instincts is for unity.”

“Coming from the Greek for 'self' (autos) and 'purpose' (telos), a pursuit is autotelic when it is enjoyed for its own sake, not for the sake of something else.”

“'When a climber is making a difficult ascent,' writes Csikszentmihalyi in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 'He is 100 per cent a climber, or he would not survive. There is no way for anything or anybody to bring into question any other aspect of his self.'”

There's also plenty about cultivating the ability to endure discomfort through consistency that I liked—so yeah, there were plenty of highlights, even when the language or concepts were aspects I already knew.

Overall Thoughts

This one's a pleasant read that makes a good primer for anyone who wants to think more about this but hasn't yet done a deep dive; it might help you decide what you think or who you want to read. It's written pretty straightforwardly for the most part—and can often get a touch abstract in a way that feels a bit "extra"— but is a perfectly likable pickup.

For being a 200-ish page book, How to Think About Exercise feels slightly too long because of how it draws the elements out, but it's good. Certain moments feel overly descriptive for what they are, which makes sense in the example, but it's worth the read as an introduction, likely for readers who primarily haven't tackled the list I have already. He incorporates Socrates, Plato, Heidigger, Camus, Satre, etc.

Related: I absolutely loved the appendix and resources in the back of the book, so will definitely go down that list in my reading. I may brush up on some philosophies I haven't revisited in a while.

For fans of:

Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui; On Muscle by Bonnie Tsui; The Extinction of Experience by Christine Rosen; The Nature Fix by Florence Williams; Novelist as Vocation by Haruki Murakami; Endure by Alex Hutchinson; etc,.