As some of you may know, I can post a fair amount of selfies during the course of a typical month. Like many people with a smartphone I enjoy using the camera and sharing the photographs I take on my phone.
It's one of the defining features of our narcissistic age I suppose (or at least it is for those of us with smartphones). Also, as anyone who has spent any time in a gym well knows, the environment is particularly suited to the selfie culture, what with its combination of mirrors and men and women regularly measuring their physical progress during their individual workouts.
Smartphones (and selfies) can also be useful in terms of recording who we are more generally and what is important to us at any given time. They give us the ability to literally take a snapshot of ourselves and our thoughts and concerns whenever we choose to record them (and then to review these points in our lives in the years to come).
We are literally curators of our own digital lives.
In this vein, and in a bid to make good use of this very powerful consumer technology, I want to utilise the humble selfie to understand what motivates people to exercise and to join a gym in the first place.
And more importantly, I want to put human faces to the internal and individual motivations that encourage people to sweat it out on the gym floor. Particularly, I want to find out what motivates people to workout (and then to continue doing so), either on their own or with others, and what they, as individuals get from this activity to keep them so repeating it.
I understand what I get from the gym and from exercising; it energises and encourages me to live a fuller and more active life. It keep me alive and enjoying my time on this planet!
But what do you get from it?
To share your gym motivations, thoughts and rewards simply take a selfie of yourself, either in or out of the gym, and then email that selfie to me with a couple of lines of text about your exercise and gym thoughts.
With your permission I will then post these selfies and your statements on my website and social media (inevitably!) to so encourage others to consider the benefits of exercise and making use of their local gym.
Interested in taking part?
Then email me your selfies and exercise thoughts to contact@julienbertherat.com.
I look forward to hearing from you!
Julien