You power through high-stakes meetings at work, balance an overpacked schedule at home, and deliver maximum effort during high-intensity workouts at the gym. Your body is in a constant state of go. Sound familiar? If you’re looking to lose weight, operating in overdrive isn’t helping your weight-loss efforts.
One technique worth considering: somatic exercise.
Activities and exercises that often include somatic elements, like yoga and Pilates, are “designed to remind the body of its natural, integrated way of moving—with fluidity, ease, and coordination,” says Lisa Cary, a certified Somatic Integration Coach. Studies suggest that somatic exercise helps with chronic pain relief, relaxation, and stress reduction (1, 2, 3), which may factor into whether you’re successfully able to lose weight.
Could somatic exercise be the key to breaking the stress-weight gain cycle? Before you push even harder at your next workout, here’s what you need to know.
About the Experts
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Sarah Warren is a Certified Clinical Somatic Educator (CCSE), Registered Somatic Movement Educator (RSME), owner of the Somatic Movement Center, and author of The Pain Relief Secret.
Lisa Cary is a Certified Somatic Integration Coach and Movement Therapist.
What Is Somatic Exercise?
Somatic exercise involves slow, mindful movements that promote the mind-body connection and inner awareness. It can include a range of practices, such as breathing exercises, body scans, progressive muscle relaxation, yoga, Pilates, Tai Chi, and dance.
“Technically, any movement can be somatic if you focus on what you’re feeling in your body as you move,” explains Sarah Warren, a certified clinical somatic education practitioner. For example, yoga and Pilates can be described as somatic or not somatic, depending on how they are practiced.
Focusing on the internal experience of the movement (rather than external appearance) is what makes an exercise somatic. A traditional exercise class tends to focus on form and specific outcomes or goals. With somatic exercise, touching your toes, running faster, or lifting heavier is not the goal. The primary aim is to tune in to how your body, muscles, and organs feel as you move and explore those sensations.
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Can Somatic Exercise Help You Lose Weight?
The mindful movements of somatic exercise won’t alone cause the scale to budge. However, it may positively affect weight loss by reducing stress and improving movement quality.
That said, the scientific evidence linking somatic exercise to weight loss is indirect (less pain leads to better movement which may lead to more effective traditional workouts). “Weight loss needs a holistic approach in my opinion,” says Cary.
Still, here’s how somatic exercise might help:
It reduces stress
“Somatic movement reduces stress, which can cause people to gain and retain extra weight. Stress can also cause people to overeat and potentially overindulge in foods that cause weight gain, like sugar and alcohol,” explains Warren.
Chronic stress can cause an overproduction of the hormone cortisol, which has been linked to weight gain (4, 5). These prolonged periods of high cortisol levels put your body into a seemingly never-ending “fight or flight” response, which contributes to the storage of more visceral fat, according to the Cleveland Clinic. What makes visceral fat dangerous is that it surrounds your organs. High levels of it have been linked to an increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome.
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Somatic exercise may work to combat this stress-weight gain cycle by managing stress and lowering cortisol levels. One small study found that an eight-week program involving somatic techniques like diaphragmatic breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and guided visualization boosted weight loss and improved stress management (6).
It increases mobility
Since somatic exercise has been shown to help relieve chronic pain and muscle tension (1), it may also help you lose weight by increasing your mobility and ability to work out.
Two methods of mindful somatic exercise, the Feldenkrais Method and the Alexander Technique, have specifically been shown to improve balance, walking patterns, and posture (1). While not directly linked to losing weight, moving better with ease may make you more likely to stick with the rest of your fitness routine.
Simply put, somatic exercise makes “physical exercise much more comfortable and enjoyable,” says Warren.
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How to Do Somatic Exercise
Start small
Try 15 to 30 minutes of somatic movement a day, suggests Warren. “Though you might want to practice longer because the movements feel so good.”
Work with a certified practitioner
There are many great online resources for learning somatic exercises, but Cary recommends working with a certified practitioner, particularly in the beginning. “A good somatic teacher will guide students to sense, feel, and notice the changing, shifting sensations in the body.” This will help you develop a deeper connection with your body’s internal language.
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Do what’s accessible
Widely available somatic practices such as yoga, Tai Chi, and dance are great places to start. Just remember that not every class you walk into will be designed with a somatic focus. “It’s the consciousness with which we do the movement, not what the movement is that makes it somatic,” explains Cary.
You can bring somatics into any classroom by tuning inward, listening to your body, and moving in the ways it needs throughout a class. For instance, you can take the suggested modification when you know it’s what you need rather than letting your competitive side win.
Focus on pain points
If you struggle with chronic pain, Clinical Somatics is a somatic practice that aims specifically to reduce chronic muscle tension. “We use a technique called pandiculation that retrains the nervous system to reduce the baseline level of tension in muscles. By releasing chronic muscle tension, chronic musculoskeletal pain is typically relieved as well,” explains Warren.
A 2022 study found that a somatic program consisting of pandiculation (a slow contraction, then the release of a muscle) reduced pain in the lower back and neck (7). For lower back tightness, Warren recommends a somatic exercise called the Arch & Flatten:
Start by standing with your eyes closed and arms by your side and take a few moments to bring awareness to how your lower back feels.
Then move to the floor and lie flat on your back with feet flat and knees bent.
Breathe deeply and imagine your pelvis slowly and gently rocking forward and back to create the arching and flattening sensation.
Avoid making weight loss the goal
“If a person approaches somatics as a methodology for losing weight by doing certain exercises, it won’t work,” warns Cary. Emphasize an “inside-out” approach that focuses on moving in a more sustainable way.
Other Ways to Lose Weight
Losing weight with slow, intentional movements might sound better than pushing your body to the limit with high-intensity intervals. However, somatic exercises aren’t the only thing you’ll want to do to lose weight. Once you’ve got your stress levels under control, diet and exercise should be square one for weight loss:
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Diet
A calorie deficit (eating fewer calories than you burn) is the most important factor in whether or not you lose weight (8). But what you eat can also make a difference.
Nutrient-rich, whole foods give your body energy and help you feel fuller longer. Getting enough protein in a calorie deficit can boost fat loss, help maintain muscle mass, and support your metabolism, which may make it easier to lose weight and keep it off long-term.
Exercise
Studies consistently link exercise to better weight loss outcomes. For example, one study found that focusing on both diet and exercise was more likely to result in weight loss than one or the other (9).
A balanced fitness routine includes intense exercises that elevate your heart rate, strength training to build muscle, and low-intensity workouts that focus on recovery and mobility, such as walking. So, while somatic exercise might help, it’s worth getting back to a varied routine when you can.
The Bottom Line
A healthy diet and consistent physical activity remain the cornerstones of a successful weight loss plan. But if you’re chronically stressed, or are dealing with aches and pains that make regular exercise challenging, somatic exercise may help support weight loss efforts by relieving stress and chronic pain and helping you find comfortable ways to move.
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References
About the author
Bari Goldberg is a fitness and wellness journalist has been featured in SELF, Refinery29, Prevention, Men’s Health, Glamour, and more.
You might know Chris Pontius as ‘Party Boy’ from the Jackass films and TV series that defined the early 2000s. Now 51, he’s back on our screens for Jackass: Best and Last, the fifth and final instalment in the franchise. Away from the stunts, though, Pontius has also become an unlikely source of practical fitness advice, regularly sharing workouts from his home gym.
In a recent Instagram Reel, he shared: ‘I have a very simple exercise tip for people who are having trouble getting motivated to exercise. Just lift the weight one time, do one rep, one push-up, whatever it is, and once you’ve started you kind of go, “Well, I might as well just keep going”.’
‘So try it, it’s worked for me every time and it’ll probably work for you,’ he says.
The advice is grounded in behavioural science. By taking one small step towards your workout, you’re more likely to overcome the initial mental resistance because the task feels more achievable. Once you’ve started, it’s far easier to build momentum and complete the rest of your session.
Our Fitness Director Explains Why This Method Works
‘There’s a bit of science behind this, too,’ says Andrew Tracey. ‘Behaviour-change researchers have looked at “all-or-nothing thinking” around exercise – basically, the idea that if you can’t do the full session, exactly as planned, you may as well sack it off completely. Giving yourself permission to do the smallest possible version of the workout is a way around that.
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‘Tell yourself you’re only doing the warm-up. Or one round. Or five minutes. You’re allowed to stop there. But often, once you’ve started, you realise the hard part wasn’t the workout itself. It was getting going. Research also shows that the way a workout feels can affect whether you come back for more. So a small win that feels doable is almost always better than the perfect session you never start. So while the “minimum dose” might feel like a cop-out, it could actually be a way in.’
If there’s one thing Kori Sampson knows, it’s how to optimise your body composition for performance. To tap into his knowledge as an elite athlete and coach, we asked him to create a 4-week plan to help you move faster, recover quicker and keep pushing when the fatigue sets in – all while improving your muscle-to-fat ratio.
Ready to build muscle, burn fat and come out the other side looking, feeling and performing better? Click here to get 14 days of free access to the plan via the Men’s Health app.
“Forget living longer, exercise can make life easier right now”—a 72-year-old fitness influencer and marathon runner shares two accessible ways to start moving
Retirement is often a time when people slow down, but in Christine Hobson’s case, she’s speeding up. When her daughter persuaded her to join a running club so she wouldn’t get bored, she had no idea she’d get the fitness bug and run 125 marathons in total, visiting all seven continents.
And the 72-year-old former teacher has plans to run the North Pole marathon in 2027.
Hobson, who believes that exercise is the best anti-aging hack, tells Fit&Well: “I think what makes you old is not doing anything and just being sedentary, sitting around watching TV all the time. I really believe the less you move, the less you’re able to move, so when I retired at almost 61, I decided that my new job was to get fit.
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“Aging isn’t just about age—if you make life easier now, the future will look after itself,” she says.
Hobson, who strength trains too, has since become a fitness influencer, amassing over 132,000 followers on Instagram, where she shares workouts and her thoughts on exercise.
“I get loads of messages from people who are scared to exercise because they don’t want to fall over and get injured,” she says. “But getting stronger builds your confidence and means that you can do the things you want without needing help. It’s not about living forever. And it’s never too late to start. You’ve got to start from where you are.”
Here shares her two best tips for getting started with fitness, whatever your age.
Start your week with achievable workout ideas, health tips and wellbeing advice in your inbox.
1. Perform the sit-to-stand exercise
Hobson says an essential exercise to incorporate into your day is the sit-to-stand—a move that involves sitting and standing up from a chair without using your hands.
To build your strength, Hobson suggests doing the sit-to-stand 10 times each time you walk past a chair in your house. Once you’ve got the technique, she recommends trying it from a lower chair or couch to make it more challenging.
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“The sit-to-stand is critical,” says Hobson. “If you can do that, that’s the thing that’s going to keep you independent in your own home. Because if you live alone and you can’t get up, then how are you going to look after yourself independently? The next thing will be that you can’t get out of your bed, and then you’re in trouble.”
Hobson began with the sit-to-stand exercise, and has progressed to squat with a 35kg barbell and deadlift 75kg.
Many people think motivation will just appear, says Hobson, but she says: “There’s no such thing as motivation really. It’s discipline. It’s building a habit. You’ve got to book your workouts in like a meeting at work, which is what I did when I retired. I prioritized fitness like a job.
“I also have my workout clothes ready to make sure I exercise—even if I’m planning to do it later in the day. I get dressed so I can’t talk myself out of it.”
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2. Walk a mile a day
If you’re totally new to exercise, or returning after a long break, Hobson says walking is an excellent place to start.
“We are a species that is supposed to move, and even a short 20-minute walk will support your heart, your ability to control your blood sugar levels, and help you mentally and physically,” she says.
Her trick is to listen to audiobooks while she walks to encourage her to go further.
“This is how I started before I ran my first marathon,” she says. “I walked a mile a day and I really forced myself to do it come rain or shine. After about five or six weeks I found that I wanted to go more.
“And one of the things that helped was listening to audiobooks. If I got home and I had got to an exciting bit in the book I would have to go back out again to hear the next chapter so it would make me walk a bit further.”
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Hobson describes herself as a run-walker, saying she has completed all her marathons that way. “I started exercising for something to do when I retired. Now I do it because it makes life easier.”
CrossFit means a lot of things to a lot of people – because it’s made up of a lot of things.
Since the rise of the fitness giant, countless brands, events and training methods have sprung up around it – not claiming to be CrossFit, but looking suspiciously CrossFit-esque.
There are, however, a handful of things that are uniquely CrossFit: the ‘Girls’ benchmark workouts. The Hero WODs and, of course, its signature rep schemes.
Chief among them is ’21-15-9′.
The 21-15-9 rep scheme may just be the single most CrossFit thing in existence. But what exactly is it? Where did it come from? And why might it actually be better at building muscle in a hurry than its conditioning roots would have you believe?
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Let’s have a look.
What Is 21-15-9?
If you’ve never encountered it before, the format couldn’t be simpler. Choose two exercises (occasionally more) and perform 21 reps of each, then 15 reps of each, then nine reps of each, completing the entire workout as quickly as possible – with good form.
Probably the best-known example is ‘Fran’: 21 thrusters and pull-ups, followed by 15 of each, then nine. On paper it doesn’t look especially intimidating. In practice, it’s one of the most feared benchmark workouts in fitness.
Where Did it Come From?
Unlike many modern training methods, 21-15-9 didn’t come out of a study. It came from the gym floor.
CrossFit founder Greg Glassman has explained that the format emerged through years of coaching and experimentation in the 1990s. Rather than chasing a perfect sets-and-reps prescription, he was looking for a workout that allowed athletes to maintain a high power output from start to finish.
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The thinking is surprisingly elegant. You begin with 21 reps while fresh. By the time you reach the set of 15, your ability to produce force has already fallen. By the final nine, you’re significantly more fatigued – but the workload has dropped by almost the same amount.
Instead of grinding through increasingly miserable sets of the same length, the workout ‘meets you where you are’, reducing the work required as your capacity declines. The result is a workout that encourages you to keep moving instead of standing around trying to recover.
The numbers themselves are also remarkably practical. Forty-five total reps per movement provides plenty of training volume without turning the session into an endurance slog, while every set divides neatly into thirds if you need to break it up.
(Although I’ve got to be honest, I’m a 20-15-10-5 man myself, just for the sake of round numbers.)
Why Does it Work So Well?
Although there isn’t research showing that 21-15-9 is somehow the magic formula, there are obvious reasons why it consistently produces brutally effective workouts.
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Descending reps help maintain intensity. As fatigue accumulates, reducing the target allows movement quality, bar speed and overall work rate to stay higher than they would if you simply repeated the same number of reps over and over.
It also tends to land in a physiological sweet spot. Most 21-15-9 workouts take between three and eight minutes, depending on the movements and the athlete. That’s long enough to create a serious cardiovascular challenge while still requiring meaningful force production throughout. You’re taxing your anaerobic systems hard while relying on your aerobic system to help you recover just enough to keep going.
Finally, there’s the psychological trick. The hardest-looking part comes first. Once you’ve survived the opening 21, every remaining round appears more manageable. ‘Only 15 left.’ Then, ‘Just nine.’ In reality, you’re becoming more fatigued with every rep, but the shrinking target keeps you attacking the workout instead of pacing too conservatively.
Why it Might be Surprisingly Good for Building Muscle
Perhaps the biggest misconception about 21-15-9 is that it’s ‘just cardio with weights’.
Choose the right load and something interesting happens. Very few athletes complete every round unbroken. Instead, the workout naturally evolves into a series of short, broken sets separated by only a few seconds of rest.
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Your 21 might become 11-5-5. Your 15 becomes 8-4-3. Your final nine might stay unbroken – or become 5-4.
In effect, you’ve accidentally turned the workout into a form of rest-pause training.
Those brief pauses allow just enough recovery to squeeze out more high-quality repetitions before fatigue catches up again. By the latter stages of each mini-set, you’re repeatedly working very close to failure, recruiting the high-threshold motor units with the greatest potential for muscle growth.
It’s a similar principle to rest-pause training, myo-reps and cluster sets: all methods used to accumulate hypertrophy-friendly volume while keeping the load relatively heavy and the rest periods brutally short.
You’re basically speed-running a large number of hard, growth-stimulating reps in a very small window of time. Could this help explain why elite CrossFit athletes often carry an impressive amount of muscle despite spending relatively little time performing traditional bodybuilding splits?
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It’s certainly plausible, although the ‘elite’ part often selects for athletes with the greatest muscle-building potential.
Much of their training isn’t simply conditioning. It’s high-density resistance training performed under accumulating fatigue, with only fleeting recovery between efforts. In other words, they’re often doing something bodybuilders have deliberately programmed for decades: packing a lot of hard work into a very short period of time.
That’s not to say 21-15-9 is superior to a well-designed hypertrophy programme. If your sole goal is building muscle, there are more efficient ways to do it.
But if you’re looking for a workout that develops fitness, tests your mettle and still provides a meaningful stimulus for strength and size, it’s easy to see why this deceptively simple rep scheme has remained one of CrossFit’s defining fingerprints for more than 20 years.
Best Bodyweight 21-15-9 Workout: ‘JT’
If you’re looking for an interesting twist on the 21-15-9 format, look no further than Hero WOD ‘JT’, which concentrates the muscle-building potential of the format into a brutal upper-body workout.
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Created in honour of Petty Officer 1st Class Jeff Taylor, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2006, the workout strips away barbells altogether and relies solely on three bodyweight movements:
21-15-9 reps of:
Don’t let the lack of equipment fool you. The volume – 45 reps of each movement, 135 reps in total – combined with the descending rep scheme makes this a brutal upper-body test, hammering the shoulders, chest and triceps while demanding serious muscular endurance.
Better still, it perfectly demonstrates one of the biggest strengths of 21-15-9. As fatigue mounts and the sets naturally fragment, the workout begins to resemble one giant rest-pause set, allowing you to accumulate a huge number of hard, near-failure reps in less than 10 minutes.
If your goal is building an impressive upper body while developing serious work capacity, there are few bodyweight workouts that deliver quite so much bang for your buck, making ‘JT’ one of my personal favourites.
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If there’s one thing Kori Sampson knows, it’s how to optimise your body composition for performance. To tap into his knowledge as an elite athlete and coach, we asked him to create a 4-week plan to help you move faster, recover quicker and keep pushing when the fatigue sets in – all while improving your muscle-to-fat ratio.
Ready to build muscle, burn fat and come out the other side looking, feeling and performing better? Click here to get 14 days of free access to the plan via the Men’s Health app.
