Ep. 38: What Counts As Exercise When You Can’t Do a Full Workout

When life, injury, stress, or exhaustion changes what your body can handle, it’s easy to fall into all-or-nothing thinking: If I can’t do my normal workout, does this even count? 

I’ve been there. After an injury forced me to step away from the strength training routines I worked so hard to build, I had to rethink exercise in my daily life. For high performers, wellness can easily become another area where we measure ourselves against whatever ideal we see on social media.

We want the hard workout, high heart rate, sweat everywhere, and feeling like we did enough. But sustainable wellness requires something more flexible: the ability to adapt our healthy habits to the season of life we’re actually in.

In this episode of High Bandwidth, I’m exploring why “Did this workout count?” is the wrong question for high-capacity women to be asking. Instead, let’s reframe it as: “What did this movement count toward?” 

A five-minute walk and a 45-minute strength session aren’t accomplishing the health goals. One supports stress relief and mental clarity, while the other contributes to strength, longevity, and healthy aging. However, they are both valid and beneficial forms of exercise.

Changing my own exercise routine during an injury helped me let go of rigidity without abandoning consistency. That distinction matters for high performers because the goal is not to create a perfect routine…because life never happens perfectly! It’s more a valuable use of our mental capacity and energy to build healthy routines that can move with us through changing circumstances.

In this episode, I’ll cover:

• Why an injury forced me to rethink my relationship with exercise and consistency
• The difference between formal exercise and everyday physical activity
• How to stop using all-or-nothing thinking to evaluate your movement
• Why different types of movement can support completely different goals
• How flexible wellness habits can help you maintain consistency through real life

My unexpected injury became a much bigger lesson than just adapting to a temporary setback. Sustainable wellness requires us to understand what we need and adjust without sacrificing consistency. By being flexible, we build a healthier relationship with movement and a more sustainable approach to peak performance.

What would change if, instead of asking whether your movement “counted,” you asked what you want it to count toward today?

Recommended Podcast Episodes:

• The Real Reason You Can’t Stick with Exercise
• Why Willpower Is Overrated: Build Systems, Not Discipline
• Do You Really Need 150 Minutes of Exercise Each Week?