What Would Make U Want to Do It Again?

There is a lot of advice telling young people to “find a physical activity you enjoy.” Fair enough. But maybe that has the question slightly wrong. You do not necessarily need to fall in love with running, skating, biking, basketball or anything involving a racquet and a small object determined to escape from you. Sometimes the activity isn't the main attraction at all.

Think about some of the best times you have had being active with other people. Maybe you were walking somewhere with friends and the conversation became the reason nobody noticed how far you had gone. Maybe you were skating and somebody attempted a confident stop, rotated approximately 270 degrees and arrived at the boards facing an entirely different future.

Maybe you biked somewhere, got mildly lost, found your way back and spent considerably more time laughing about the trip than discussing the cycling technique involved. Nobody went home thinking, What an outstanding physical-activity intervention.

That difference is important. Sometimes you do not return because you have discovered a deep personal passion for skating. You return because skating became the backdrop for a great afternoon. You laughed. You talked. You were with people you wanted to be with. Your body happened to spend the afternoon moving.

And your body is perfectly happy with this arrangement. Your muscles do not stop contracting because nobody announced an exercise goal. Your heart does not demand that the group discuss cardiorespiratory fitness before increasing its output. You can walk because you want to talk, bike because everybody is going somewhere, swim because your friends are there, or play basketball because standing around talking somehow turned into a game.

Now variety starts making sense

This gives us a different reason to try different activities. You are not searching for the mythical One True Sport that will finally reveal your identity. You are creating more opportunities for good experiences to happen.

There is some surprisingly convincing research behind that idea. A 2023 systematic review examined 28 studies involving variety in physical activity. Across the research, variety was connected with participation, engagement, motivation, enjoyment, interest and sticking with activity. Researchers were appropriately cautious about cause and effect, but variety appeared important enough that they recommended considering it when physical-activity programs are designed.

Then Canadian researchers followed 369 adolescents over time. They examined variety in activities, locations and the people involved. Variety in activities and locations contributed to adolescents experiencing greater perceived variety, which was then related to their physical activity 16 months later.

It does not prove that trying different things causes someone to become active, but it gives us a good reason to take breadth of experience seriously.

Each is another chance for something to happen that makes somebody say, “Let's do that again.”

Your friends may be part of the reason it works

This matters even more during adolescence because friends and peers become increasingly important parts of everyday life. Research consistently connects peer support with adolescent physical activity. One study found that peer support was related to activity partly through enjoyment and self-efficacy, the growing belief that you can actually do something successfully.

That pathway makes sense without a psychology textbook. A friend asks you to come. You go mainly because your friend is going. You laugh, move around, try something unfamiliar and discover that being terrible at it is considerably less horrifying when everyone else is busy being terrible too.

Eventually you become slightly less terrible.

Go again and you may improve further. What started as I'm going because my friends are there can gradually become I'm going because my friends are there and I actually like doing this.

Friends can also destroy the experience, of course. Being laughed with because everyone just fell over is very different from being laughed at because you are struggling.

Feeling included can make an unfamiliar activity easier to enter. Feeling judged can make twelve minutes feel like the complete geological history of Earth.

Getting better can add another draw

There is another reason experiences can change over time: competence. The beginner version of an activity is not always a reliable advertisement for what the activity eventually becomes.

Badminton provides an excellent demonstration. At first you serve into the net. Then you serve past the court. Then you somehow hit the shuttle sideways and spend a moment reconsidering what you understood about geometry. The other person is getting considerably more exercise retrieving your shots than actually returning them.

But eventually something works. Your serve goes over. You return a shot. Then there is a rally. Soon you are trying to place the shuttle somewhere difficult for the other person to reach, and one shot works so perfectly that you immediately check whether anybody important witnessed it.

Research following adolescents has found perceived physical competence to be important for later activity, while broader research connects competence and self-efficacy with motivation and enjoyment. Becoming better does not guarantee that you will like something, but competence can reveal parts of an activity that were inaccessible when all your attention was devoted to basic survival.

This is why trying something unfamiliar deserves a reasonable chance. But it does not mean repeatedly forcing yourself through something you genuinely hate because someone promises that suffering will eventually reveal your inner volleyball player.

Sometimes you learn enough to discover that an activity is fantastic. Sometimes you learn enough to confirm that it absolutely is not.

Bad experiences teach lessons too

This part matters because repeated physical-activity experiences can build negative attitudes just as easily as positive ones. Being picked last, publicly compared, excluded, embarrassed or repeatedly placed in situations where everyone appears more capable can teach a remarkably durable lesson.

That is not the lesson PE intended to teach, but intentions do not erase experiences. Research examining memories of school physical activity suggests that negative experiences can persist and can be associated with later attitudes toward being active.

Making someone participate today while making them less likely to choose activity tomorrow is a pretty questionable victory.

Change one ingredient and the entire experience may change.

Or it may remain awful.

Fortunately, physical activity is a rather large category.

More places mean more possible experiences

School, family, friends and community matter because each can open different doors.

Even the same activity changes when the setting changes. Basketball during PE is different from shooting alone after school. Both are different from three-on-three with friends at a park.

The ball has made no significant personal changes, but almost everything surrounding it has.

The useful discovery is not simply:

Which activity do I like?

That is a much bigger question because it gives you far more possibilities.

Eventually, you send the message

At first, other people usually create these opportunities. A teacher organizes something. A parent plans an outing. A friend asks you to come. You participate because the opportunity appeared.

But good experiences have a habit of being repeated. You go again. You become more capable. You learn which people, places and activities work for you, and eventually something small but important changes.

Now you are not simply participating in physical activity somebody else arranged. You are creating the experience yourself. You decide when, invite someone, make the plan, get there and successfully remember at least most of the required equipment.

Do that enough times and you begin developing a different kind of confidence. It is no longer only I can bike, I can skate or I can play.

And that may be the bigger destination

You do not need to become “a runner,” “a hockey player” or even someone who has a favourite sport.

You can bike with friends, ski with family, lift weights, walk somewhere, swim in summer and agree to an activity next month that you currently do not know exists.

The activity can keep changing while something underneath it becomes surprisingly stable.

Ask a better question

So perhaps the question was never:

After the next one, ask something better: