No matter their discipline, doctors know, intellectually at least, that exercise can be powerful medicine. But after talking to seven doctors from a variety of specialties, something about fitness had to finally resonate with them personally before they discovered a more relatable and effective way to talk about it with their patients (and motivate themselves).

Sometimes that involved injury or illness. “When physicians get hurt, they learn how to treat their patients,” said Gregory Waryasz, MD, CSCS, Head Team Orthopedist at Northeastern University and director of Foot & Ankle Sports Medicine at Mass General Hospital, both in Boston. “When you’re in it and you have to figure it out, then you start thinking a little bit outside the box like, ‘How do I get better? What can help me?’”

In other cases, a patient changed a doctor’s sentiment about exercise. The common thread in the stories that follow: No matter how they learned the lesson, exercise is a powerful teacher.

The Hospitalist Who Learned the Importance of Specificity

For years, Sarita Khemani, MD, a hospitalist and clinical associate professor of medicine at Stanford University in Stanford, California, told patients to “stay active” by walking more, taking the stairs, and getting their steps in. “That advice is not wrong, but it is incomplete,” said Khemani, who is also the director of the Stanford Resilience & Longevity Initiative. “I did not fully appreciate the difference between general activity and structured training until I felt it in my own body.” 

She started lifting heavy weights in her late forties and logging her progress — which she saw much more quickly than she anticipated. “Within a few months, something I genuinely didn’t expect happened: I felt stronger than I had in my twenties and thirties, [and] that experience reframed how I thought about aging,” she said. 

That’s when she started making her advice to patients much more specific — exercise type, frequency, intensity, goals — and that specificity changed how her advice was heard and implemented. “I now believe that the clearer the exercise prescription, the more likely a patient is to understand it, start it, and stay with it,” she said. 

The Ob/Gyn Who Got a Wake-Up Call From a Patient

When Dana R. Gossett, MD, director of the Center for Sexual Medicine and Menopause at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, gained some weight during the perimenopausal transition, she initially accepted it as a fact of life. But when she was on Doctor Radio, a radio show produced by NYU Langone Health, talking with host Dr Caren Behar about this very topic, she had a literal wake-up call.

“A caller came on the radio and said, ‘You know what? That was my experience. I didn’t make any changes to my lifestyle and I gained weight, and it was really upsetting to me. I started watching my diet carefully and I started working out regularly and I got back down to my normal weight, and I just wanted to say, it is possible to do,’” she said. “It was actually like a kick personally to me because the way Dr Behar and I had been talking about it was like, ‘I am very sorry, it sucks, but this is inevitable, this is going to happen to you,’” she said. “And this person called in and she was like, ‘Sure, but I took control of it.’”

That inspired Gossett to get back into her exercise routine and to be more mindful about her diet. She runs on the treadmill several days a week and lifts weights for 30 minutes at least twice a week. She’s lost 20 pounds and felt a general uptick in happiness. “What’s ironic,” she said, “is I talk to every single patient about aerobic exercise and weight-bearing exercise and I wasn’t doing it myself.”

The Family Medicine Physician Who Learned the Importance of Self-Discovery

Eric Ascher, DO, was one of the last kids to finish a mile run in high school. In 2018, after his residency training, he decided he needed to practice what he preached to his patients about staying active and began his own fitness journey: SoulCycle and Orangetheory and some running.

As a family medicine physician at Northwell Health in New York City, his patient message always centered on heart health, blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol. That’s still there. But now his exercise message includes a more emotional component: not just mental health but also self-discovery and the power of finding out.

“I was surprising myself with things I never thought I could do,” he said, such as running a mile in just over 6 minutes (take that, high school), being able to do a growing number of push-ups in a row, and placing in a challenge at the gym. Everyone who exercises regularly knows those feelings, and Ascher says that can transcend improving health data.

“Mental clarity is something that exercise will give you that won’t immediately show up on a lab test,” he said. “It is rewarding to see how far you have come over time. This is so important for your mental health. In a world where social media can quickly diminish self-confidence, exercise is the hour a day that is yours. Once I found what worked for me, I was better able to relate and make recommendations to my patients.”

The Pediatric Sports Medicine Physician Who Had a Perspective-Changing Injury

“I have personally experienced what the loss of ability to exercise does to people’s physical and mental health,” said Tiana S. Woolridge, MD, MPH, a pediatric primary sports medicine physician at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. Woolridge has also seen how beneficial the perspective shift can be for people — herself included — post-injury. “I tore my Achilles the first day of my last season as a college athlete when I was 21 years old,” she said. “I went from being the most physically capable person I’d ever been in my life to not even being able to put weight on my foot for two months.” And she was miserable.

For many patients who enjoy physical activity — or perhaps depend on it for work — suddenly losing that ability, even temporarily, can hurt in other ways. “I see a lot of mental health issues arise from that, just feeling down and depressed and hopeless and anxious and angry and short-tempered and all of those things,” she said. 

Now as a doctor at the same institution where she got her surgery, she calls on that experience, incorporating “mental rehab” suggestions for patients, such as mindfulness meditation, gratitude practices, or therapy, in addition to helping them figure out safe ways they can move while injured (eg cycling instead of running). Understanding how powerful movement can be for mental health has also led her to talk about this side of exercise with her patients who don’t yet have a regular fitness routine.

The Orthopedic Surgeon Whose Injury Led to New Patient Treatment Options

His own distal bicep tear led Waryasz to experiment with two new-to-him techniques that he now uses regularly in his practice. The first was blood flow restriction (BFR) therapy, which basically involves doing exercises with a tourniquet that allows arterial inflow while occluding venous outflow. This causes rapid oxygen depletion and recruits fast-twitch muscles that can help increase hypertrophy and strength gains with less effort and stress on injured limbs. It can also lessen pain. BFR has become more common in physical therapy.

“It’s a great way for people who have joint pain in general to lift lighter weights but [get] the same muscle benefit,” he said, adding that there’s good evidence for BFR in the ACL and Achilles literature, which he’s even sent to patients.

The other technique is localized vibration therapy, which involves small vibration devices (guns, balls, and discs) on your muscles to increase muscle activation and reduce pain. “We tend to use a lot of those two techniques when I prescribe rehab now,” he said, and he continues to use them as well.

The Exercise Physiologist Whose Patient’s Success Story Reminds Him of a Powerful Mantra

During the pandemic, Michael J. Joyner, MD, a physiologist and exercise researcher, helped a man in his mid-forties lose 180 pounds via consistent exercise and better nutrition, which then inspired people in the man’s family to lose weight as well. “The best thing was when he sent me a picture of himself at the top of a mountain that he and his wife had hiked,” Joyner said.

Joyner has researched human performance for many years, but this man’s accomplishment informs how Joyner talks about physical activity to patients and friends. He uses a maxim he heard from basketball coach John Wooden: “Do not permit what you cannot do to interfere with what you can do.”

Now 67, Joyner still thinks about this and shares it with others daily. “Exercise is more than a health recommendation for me,” he said. “I use no apps, wearables, or trackers. Exercise gives me a daily sense of accomplishment, increased confidence, and contributes to what the psychologists describe as a sense of self-efficacy or agency. You own it.”

The Orthopedic Surgeon Whose Pregnancy Gave Her New Perspective on Exercise

Abigail L. Campbell, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at NYU Langone Health, has always been a “sporty” person, competing at the collegiate level, then running in addition to many other physical activities. So when she had a high-risk pregnancy that came with exercise restrictions, the experience was eye-opening. “That was really hard for me because I was anxious about having a small baby and having blood pressure problems and trying to work full-time and then I couldn’t exercise,” she said. “After you give birth, you’re restricted on what you can do for 6 weeks and after that you’re exhausted because the baby’s not sleeping well, and I was breastfeeding and I didn’t have the energy to exercise.” 

There’s more. Campbell lost her father 4 years ago. He was an active person, and she saw him go through cancer and how much he relied on daily walks as his way to stay happy. “That kind of became our way to connect, where he would come visit and we would do big long walks together,” she said. “I realized how important it can be clinging to his ability to exercise to keep himself sane. But dealing with the grief of the loss, I realized how important exercise was for my own mental health.” 

Now that her baby is approaching 1 year, she’s getting back into her routine. “I am crawling back from scratch and realizing how hard it is when you haven’t done it and how high of a mountain it feels to climb when you’ve been out of the routine,” she said. “I’ve been so happy to start getting back to it, but it’s definitely harder.”

The upside? She now feels she can give better and more targeted advice to patients who are hesitant to start an exercise routine because it can feel daunting, time-consuming, or just plain hard. She understands how much her own wellness relies on her ability to be active.

“I get it now,” she said.

The experts in this article declared no relevant disclosures.