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When you're wondering whether a physical activity or exercise is safe for you, it can be tempting to think that there are “safe” exercises and “unsafe” exercises. In many situations, however, safety isn't determined by the activity alone. How you do the activity, how much you do, your current capacity, your health, and the environment in which you're doing it can all matter. Finding out what your body can tolerate can be both an art and a science. It takes some time to determine what provides enough challenge to help you build capacity without asking substantially more of your body than it is currently prepared to do. This is one reason gradually increasing physical activity is recommended, particularly when you're returning to activity or haven't been active for some time. I like to think about safety from three different perspectives: physiological or physical safety, psychological safety, and contextual safety. Physiological and Physical Safety Physical safety includes what is happening in your body while you're active. Your heart rate, breathing, muscles, joints, balance, coordination, and other physiological responses all provide information about how your body is responding to what you're asking it to do. Some of those responses are expected. Your heart will usually beat faster when you exercise. Your breathing may become faster and deeper. Your muscles may feel like they're working. Those changes aren't automatically signs that something is wrong. This is where learning to pay attention to your own experience can be incredibly useful. How hard does the activity feel? Can you recover? Is your response appropriate for what you're doing? Are you experiencing something unexpected, such as dizziness, lightheadedness, nausea, unusual shortness of breath, or another symptom that concerns you? Technology can sometimes provide additional information, such as heart rate, but numbers aren't the only source of information. Your felt sense of exertion and your awareness of how your body is responding can also help you make decisions about whether to continue, adjust what you're doing, or stop. Your individual circumstances matter here. Health conditions, medications, injuries, symptoms and other factors can change what is appropriate for you. This is also an area where screening and guidance from an appropriately qualified health or exercise professional can be valuable. Psychological Safety We don't always think about psychological safety when we talk about exercise, but feeling safe is about more than what's happening to your heart, lungs, muscles and joints. Consider the environment you're exercising in. Do you feel comfortable being there? Do you feel confident enough to participate? Are you able to ask questions, make choices, or say no? Does the person leading the activity listen to you and respect what you're experiencing? Previous experiences can influence this, too. Some people grew up in environments where physical activity was used as punishment: another lap around the field, more push-ups, more sit-ups because someone had done something wrong. Other people may have experienced exercise environments where they felt judged, pressured or expected to continue regardless of what they were feeling. Those experiences matter. Feeling apprehensive doesn't necessarily mean that an activity is physically dangerous, but it is information worth paying attention to. Creating physical-activity experiences in which you have choice, support and an appropriate level of challenge can be part of developing a different relationship with movement. Contextual Safety Then there is the environment itself. Going for a walk may be physiologically appropriate for you, but walking alone on a poorly lit path at night introduces a different safety consideration. Swimming may be an appropriate form of physical activity, but water conditions, swimming ability, supervision and access to safety equipment change the context in which you're doing it. This isn't just an individual concern. WHO explicitly identifies access to safe and supportive environments as an important part of enabling people to be physically active, including safe places for walking, cycling, recreation and other forms of movement. So, How Do You Know?Knowing what's safe for you requires some discernment. You can consider what your body is telling you, how you feel about the activity, and the environment in which you're doing it. In many cases, we pay attention almost exclusively to the first of those and forget that the other two can influence our experience as well. You might ask yourself: How is my body responding? Do I feel comfortable and able to make choices? Is the environment appropriate for what I'm about to do? You don't necessarily need to love an activity for it to be appropriate. I like your word content here. There can be challenge and effort while still having an underlying sense that I'm okay here. I can work with this. Research on people's affective responses to exercise gives us another reason not to dismiss that experience. How people feel during exercise has been studied in relation to future physical-activity behaviour, and enjoyment and affective responses are increasingly recognized as relevant to exercise participation. And if you're not sure how to interpret what you're experiencing, you don't have to figure it all out yourself. An appropriately qualified professional can help you consider your health, current capacity, previous experiences and environment, and then explore how physical activity could be adapted to work for you. References Teixeira PJ, Carraça EV, Markland D, Silva MN, Ryan RM. Exercise, physical activity, and self-determination theory: a systematic review. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity. 2012;9:78. Rhodes RE, Kates A. Can the affective response to exercise predict future motives and physical activity behavior? A systematic review of published evidence. Annals of Behavioral Medicine. 2015;49(5):715-731. World Health Organization. WHO Guidelines on Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2020.
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