1. Exercise improves body-image perception.
Unsurprisingly (to me at least) men and women both suffer from body-image dissatisfaction. It seems in the media, women’s issues are highlighted (and capitalized on), yet men experience these negative feelings just as well; while women may be concerned with their waist lines, their underarms, or their thighs, men may feel uncomfortable with their musculature, posture, or even their stomachs. One of the quickest ways to lose interest in a naked activity is to be uncomfortable being naked.
Before exercise can promote an anatomic change, simply creating the habitual act of getting in better shape changes a person’s mentality regarding their body image. People who exercise (for vain reasons or health reasons) experience a positive increase in body-image awareness. It helps that exercise reduces symptoms of stress and makes you high on endorphin, serotonin, and dopamine (it’s like sex without the sex!).
2. Exercise improves flexibility, strength, and confidence.
There’s nothing more embarrassing than finding yourself in the moment and your body doesn’t respond the way you’d like. You want to do an “Irish Pancake Flip” but your partner wants to do an “Italian Shuffle” and you wind up in the middle of an “Armenian Dishwasher.” Communication helps, yes. But being able to trust your body to perform gives you a huge confidence boost.
When you can trust your body to bend, lift, and stretch the way you need it to, you eliminate stress. Eliminating stress is how you can feel comfortable enough to not only get naked (Step 1, very important), "turn on the engine" (Step 2), but to then do all the things necessary to elicit positive responses from your partner… without getting winded. (Then again, even if you’re in great shape you should get winded.)
3. Exercise improves heart health and blood circulation.
There’s nothing more embarrassing than finding yourself in the moment and your body doesn’t respond the way you’d like.
So let’s say you don’t exercise habitually and you’re just a confident panther in the bedroom. I mean you’re the human embodiment of “Sex-Drive.” Everything’s going your way; you’ve convinced your partner to stop doing the dishes, you’ve found yourself at Step 1, finishing Step 2, and now you’re ready to go. However, you’re out of shape, overweight, and despite it not affecting your confidence, it does affect your heart. High blood pressure and poor heart health take their tolls on your body and how it performs (everywhere). When your heart doesn’t pump your blood efficiently because everything’s blocked up from years of neglect, the first things to have issues are the things furthest away from your heart that requires adequate blood flow. Yes, it may sound like a thinly veiled jab at men, but women are affected too.
To summarize: Confidence and priority are some of the most important aspects to sexual health. However, having a healthy body, and participating in activities that promote a healthy body, promote positive emotional health, brain health, heart health, and as a side effect, sexual health.
If you’ve found yourself losing interest in activities you used to find great pleasure in, something is wrong. It could be stress, self-esteem, poor health, or a plethora of other factors that have changed your opinion of the importance of previous “team-building activities.” If you and your team have found yourself avoiding these “team-building activities,” remember that a high-performing team usually isn’t stressed about winning the game. It’s the under-performing teams that don’t even want to play anymore.