On exercising

I was recently attending a seminar on segmenting at work. The idea, as everyone knows, is to try to understand who your customers are and what they actually want and need from you. It certainly seemed like the segmenting folks had really done a thorough job by interviewing over 100 000 people around the world over the past years and compiling a fairly exhaustive database from which they had derived 13 different archetypes. Technology-focused early adopters, family-oriented pragmatists, and so on. Of course with slightly different terms, but anyway.

One aspect which was brought up was the relationship that people have with health and keeping fit. One person argued that instead of trying to sell the more conservative late-adopters the coolest possible technologies right now, one should perhaps try to solve problems that are important to them. For instance, health might be important to the slightly older people. I guess I can reflect on that since both of my parents seem to be very keen joggers and enjoy spending time outdoors in general.

I would venture a guess that at some point of your life, you start paying more attention to health in general, especially when you start noticing that you shouldn't take it for granted. But the relationship is one of very pragmatic nature; the intent is to keep fit and maybe enjoy the activities at the same time. My relationship to exercising is sort of different. Because I'm still a fairly young twentysomething, I don't really have a problem in controlling the size of my waist. My body is still young and hasn't yet starting showing any visible wear and tear. So why do I go out running or to the gym or to play tennis?

I think in my case sports and exercising in general act as metrics of sorts, as one could already see from my previous blog posting. They offer the means of proving that I am moving, advancing, and evolving. So it is the delta which I derive my value and pleasure from. It's not a necessity (in terms of staying alive) that motivates me, but instead the competitive aspects. And now that I think, it may also have something to do with vanity. So, the question is, is this model of transitioning from competitive/vanity-driven exercise to survival-driven exercise more widely applicable?