Exercise and Spirituality

How can exercise get your spiritual life back in order?

Hi Everyone,

I hope you’re doing well today. My paternity leave is finishing up soon, and I’ll be going back to my day job on Monday. Four children under four have kept us full hands on deck. Our life is beautiful chaos. If you wouldn’t mind saying a few prayers for my wife as she will be at home with four children by herself for 8 to 9 hours a day, we would both greatly appreciate it.

This article comes from a subscriber question. One of my subscribers asked about the correlation between taking care of ourselves physically and our spiritual well-being. It is my attempt to help anyone understand the relationship between our spiritual well-being and our physical well-being as far as I understand it. At the end of the article, I list some of my favorite exercises that you can work into your routine.

I have a quick ask: if you are a reader of my work, will you please share it and encourage others to subscribe? That is the most helpful thing you can do for me. Click the button below and you’ll be able to send it to anyone.

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Charles Atlas: famous strong man and devout Catholic.

The Rough Day

I had a rough day at work. A friend had recommended me for a job at a leasing company when I was desperate for work. It was a fine job, but it was the wrong job for that time in my life. I had just been declined for a job I really wanted. I spent the summer between that rejection and getting this new job driving for Uber, confused about the status of my life or what I was even going to be doing.

My job was to find tenants for vacant properties and to post late rent notices on current tenants. This particular company had insane late fees. I would often post late rent notices that had $1,000 in fees. On this particular day, I posted several notices to single moms. Now I understand businesses are businesses, and there have to be consequences for late rent, otherwise rents never get paid. When you’re the one delivering the news, trying to be indifferent to the situation is difficult, especially if you’re in a sensitive place.

That was only part of the issue, though. The underlying issue was that my spiritual life was out of condition. I had allowed the confusion of the time cultivate dismay in my soul. I began to place all of my energy into various things, grasping to establish something for my life without prayer or courage.

I’m sure you’re familiar with those times where everything seems to be collapsing in on itself.

It feels like you’re treading water. You start trying to do everything. Everything’s a possibility. Everything is an option. Anything to get out of where you currently are. But that is equally overwhelming because your mind is spinning. So why do anything? Maybe it’d be better to numb or to seek comfort, to drink, to indulge.

Pair a rough day at work with a poor spiritual life, and anxiety rears its ugly head.

On that day, I decided to go for a run. Now, I run like a dwarf. Like Gimli in The Two Towers. But on that day, I had so much anxious energy, I ran six miles like a stallion. Running has frequently been an outlet in my life when the world seems to be spinning faster than I can handle. It has a way of clearing the mind and settling the soul and getting the body to calm down. After the run was done, and I could breath again I felt like I could take clear action.

Anxiety is a confusing state to be in. It’s a spiritual condition, but it manifests itself physically, and we deal with it physically. We deal with it by overeating, under-sleeping, drinking. Some people turn to drugs or medication. We do something to or with our physicality to deal with it. It doesn’t just have to be anxiety; it could be stress or being overwhelmed, it could be turmoil, it could be pain of soul. There is something that happens in our soul through the sorrows and roughness of life that manifests itself physically.

We have to take care of it physically first in order to then deal with our soul.

I believe exercise, whether in a gym, in the wilderness, or doing manual labor, is a tool and a gift that helps us deal with the circumstances of life that batter us on all sides.

There are two aspects of exercise that I would like to cover in relation to our spiritual life:

1. Exercise as training for spiritually hard times.

2. Exercise as relief from spiritually hard times.

Training For Spiritually Hard Times

There is no escaping the hardships of life. No amount of maxxing¹ will help anyone escape hardship.

Suffering is necessary to enter the kingdom of heaven. Some people suffer extraordinary things. Most of us suffer the regular things of life. I have found that one of the best ways to prepare for the hardship of life, to build fortitude of soul, courage of the heart, and clearness of mind, is intense bouts of exercise. It doesn’t really matter what the exercise is, as long as it is strenuous².

Strenuous workouts should feel like suffering. You should be in a fight with yourself over whether you’re going to quit or not because life will make you want to quit.

I love workouts set up to make me suffer. That might sound like a crazy thing to say, but it’s true. For well over fifteen years, I have preferred to do workouts that make me wonder if I have what it takes to complete what I set out to do. For more than ten years, I have not listened to music while I exercise because I want to fight with myself inside my head. I want to be so uncomfortable that I can justify quitting. And I fight keep moving forward. So much of your life will have that question in your head: am I going to continue to move forward, or am I going to give up?

Giving up could manifest itself in a lot of ways:

• Checking out

• Running away

• Lying

• Overeating

• Fast food

• Gambling

• Pornography

• Drinking

• Scrolling

• Sleeping too much or not sleeping at all.

• or any of the other addictive behaviors that we take on to calm our soul

When you are doing strenuous exercise you are training the body and you are training your soul to not give up. The goal of these types of workouts is mental and spiritual fortitude. It’s cultivating endurance, which is needed for life.

Endurance is key. In Luke 21, Jesus says, “by your endurance, you will gain your lives.” The word endurance in Greek is Hupomone.

It means:

A courageous endurance that defies evil; Far from being passive, this quality involves an active resistance to hostile powers; It describes a wounded soldier who endures the pain and keeps fighting the enemy; it describes the ability of a plant to live under harsh conditions; it describes a man who loves honor more than anything else and stands firm in the face of those who would persuade him to act dishonestly.

In short, it’s a conquering constancy, a steadfastness in the face of pressure to give in. It does not guarantee victory. But this patience, this steadfastness is admirable. It’s Godly.

Strenuous exercise is training the Hupomone in you.

Exercise as Relief from Spiritually Hard Times.

Situations like I shared in the story above happened to all of us. You could be having a hard time at work; your wife could have had a miscarriage. You could be having a hard time finding a place to live; you could have gotten reamed at work.

In those moments, we want to turn to God in prayer but something seems to be keeping us from doing it. The anxiety in our body, the restlessness of our hands, the turmoil of our minds. It keeps us from turning to the Prince of Peace. Clarity of thought has disappeared. How on Earth are we supposed to talk to God?

It wasn’t too long ago I was going through one of those spiritually hard times. Life was just difficult. I was frustrated, angry. Honestly, I was indulging the emotions instead of battling them. I would try to pray, but I couldn’t get my mind to settle, so I tossed my prayer book to the side and quit.

What I should have done was go for a run.

I think exercise is a gift of God for our relief so that we can pray. You may be able to talk to God when you’re under pressure or anxious but listening? When there is too much noise in the mind, how are we to listen?

Often in the Gospels, Jesus goes out on a mountain to pray. There’s probably a lot of reasons why that little detail is added. Climbing a mountain does make it seem like you’re closer to God, the great prophets in the Old Testament climbed mountains to pray, and it’s quiet up there.

I have one suggestion: Jesus did that to clear his head. His life was hard. His life was more difficult, more strained, and heavier than anything you and I have ever carried. He would spend all day preaching, walking, healing, being accused of being from Satan, of having a demon, people demanding a sign, accused, accused, accused. He was a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief, but he had to pray; he needed his Father. So he’d climb a mountain, clear his head, and then pray.

Jesus had a mission. He could not check out, numb, or disengage. There was too much at stake. He had to endure all things. You also have a mission and you cannot check out, numb, or disengage. There is too much at stake. You must endure.

There is no greater rest for the soul and for the mind than time with God in prayer. It is a rest that strengthens. Sometimes you have to get all the junk out of the way first. Sometimes you have to go run. Sometimes you have to go climb a mountain. Sometimes you need to go hit a punching bag. You will feel so much better after you do those things! And then forget to pray.

That’s the perfect time to pray. You’ve cleared the junk, and now you can find the help you need.

I discovered this prayer from St. Augustine a couple of years ago. It has become my post-exercise-during-hard-times prayer. When life is hard and I feel overwhelmed, I try to go do some exercise so that I can then pray this prayer.

God of our life, There are days when the burdens we carry chafe our shoulders and weigh us down; when the road seems dreary and endless, the skies grey and threatening; when our lives have no music in them, and our hearts are lonely, and our souls have lost their courage. Flood the path with light, turn our eyes to where the skies are full of promise; tune our hearts to brave music; give us the sense of comradeship with heroes and saints of every age; and so quicken our spirits that we may be able to encourage the souls of all who journey with us on the road of life, to your honor and glory. Amen.

And after I say that prayer, I’ve added a few words of my own, asking the Lord to grant me courage:

Courage to follow you, courage to believe you, courage to trust you, courage in my daily conversion, courage in my fatherhood, courage in my marriage, courage in my work, courage in my writing, courage in my proclamation, courage in calamity, courage in strain, courage in persecution, courage in battle, courage in prayer, courage in my life.

Why ask for courage and not endurance?

Because courage is the ability to endure without fear. The overwhelmed man can easily become discouraged. A discouraged man is a hollowed out man,

So instead of overeating or drinking, try exercise followed by prayer. Both are a gift from God.

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Strenuous Exercises

One of my favorite strenuous exercises is Rucking. It is great at building mental fortitude. You put a weighted backpack on and you walk for 45 minutes to an hour. About 10 minutes in, your shoulders hurt. At about 20 minutes in, you’ll do anything to get that backpack off your shoulders, especially when you first start. Once it’s done, you feel like you could jump on top of a house. The physical condition needed to ruck is minimal. You just need a willingness to walk and a willingness to bear some pain on your shoulders. It will do little damage to your joints, because the most weight you’re putting on your back is 40 lb.

Another great workout compound movements with 20+ reps. Compound movements use multiple joints: bench press, squat, dead lift, thruster. The weight doesn’t have to be heavy, but try doing multiple sets of 20 reps. What you will notice after two sets, no matter what weight you choose, right around 12 to 15 reps, you’re going to want to find a reason to put the weight down or to get it off your back. At that point, it’s not a muscle game, it’s a mental game. Try it and see where your head goes. You will run through more reasons and justifications to set the weight down than you could possibly imagine.

A combo I am loving lately is 10-20. 10 heavier reps followed immediately by 20 lighter reps. This is a perfect combo for kettlebells. 10 reps at a high weight, then 20 reps at a lighter weight. If you have to take a break before you reach 30 total reps, the entire set doesn’t count. You can do this with pushups, body weight squats and the ruck, and even sit ups. Have one of your kids sit on your chest for 10 reps. 3-5 total sets is perfect.

There are individual exercises that are great for building up mental fortitude. Wall sits, planks, handstand holds, biking (especially the assault bike), jumping rope.

1. Maxxing is internet slang for optimizing or maximizing a specific trait or activity to its fullest—often to an extreme, obsessive, or humorous degree.

2. The Strenuous Life is a core theme of my work. Taken from a Theodore Roosevelts speech, the lines reads: I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph. A life of ignoble ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual.