Exercise Was the First Thing That Went. Here’s How to Get It Back Without Overhauling Your Life.

You used to work out. Or you used to walk. Or you used to have some kind of physical movement that was yours — not a commute, not walking the building for monitoring purposes, but actual intentional movement that you did for yourself because it made you feel better.

And then the school year happened. And then the next one. And somewhere in the accumulation of early mornings and late evenings and the complete consumption of the hours between them, the movement got pushed to the back of the list. Then off the list entirely. And now it has been — you don’t want to calculate how long — since you did anything physical that was for your own wellbeing rather than for the building’s.

This is not a failure of discipline. Almost every principal I have ever spoken with about this describes the same trajectory. Physical movement is the first thing that goes when the schedule becomes impossible — not because it matters least, but because it is the one area where the cost of not doing it is not immediately visible to anyone else. Skipping a parent meeting has consequences. Skipping your workout doesn’t — not today, not in a way anyone can see. So it gets traded, again and again, for the things that do.

The problem is that the cost accumulates invisibly until it isn’t invisible anymore.

Why Movement Matters Specifically for Principals — Not Just for Health in General

The general case for exercise is well-established and I’m not going to repeat it here. What I want to make instead is the specific case for why physical movement matters in a particular way for people in high-stress, high-demand, emotionally intensive roles — because it is different from the general case, and because it is the part that most wellness advice for school leaders completely misses.

Physical movement is one of the most direct and evidence-based tools for nervous system regulation available to humans. The chronic hypervigilance that principals live in — the sustained sympathetic activation, the body that never fully lands — responds to movement in ways that almost nothing else matches for effectiveness. Moderate aerobic exercise reduces cortisol. It increases BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), which supports neuroplasticity and emotional resilience. It produces endorphins that directly counteract the emotional flatness of chronic stress. And it provides the body with an experience of its own physical competence — something that the sedentary intensity of the principal role does not provide.

This is particularly significant for compassion fatigue and depletion specifically: both of these states involve a kind of disconnection from the body — a living in the head, the role, the demands, with the physical self becoming almost irrelevant except as the vehicle that carries the principal from meeting to meeting. Movement is one of the primary ways back into the body, back into physical presence, back into the experience of being a person rather than a function.

What Practical Movement Looks Like for a Principal’s Actual Life

I’m not going to recommend a training program or a gym membership. The gap between that advice and the reality of most principals’ schedules is too wide to bridge with good intentions.

What I want to offer instead is a framework for thinking about movement that fits the actual constraints of the role.

Ten minutes matters. This is not motivational — it is physiological. Research on the dose-response relationship between exercise and mental health outcomes shows that even brief bouts of moderate physical activity produce meaningful effects on mood, cortisol, and cognitive function. You do not need forty-five minutes. You need ten consistent minutes more than you are currently getting. That is a different and more achievable goal.

Movement and commute can overlap. If any portion of your commute is walkable, it is already available. A ten-minute walk before or after the drive changes both the transition quality and the physical baseline. The decompression transition and the physical movement serve each other — one walk can accomplish both.

In-building movement is real movement. The Desk and Hallway Reset inside Principal Well exists for the reality that most principals cannot leave the building between 7am and 4pm. Guided stretching, grounding, and movement that can be done at the desk or in the corridor — quietly, in under sixty seconds — provides the nervous system with real physiological benefit without requiring a schedule that the role cannot accommodate. This is not a consolation prize for people who can’t exercise. It is a specific tool for the specific constraints of a principal’s day. $19.97 a month.

Start with one commitment, not a plan. Not “I’m going to work out three times a week starting Monday.” One specific movement, one specific time, for one week. Not forever — one week. Tomorrow morning before the building opens. Fifteen minutes. That’s the first commitment. Everything else follows from building the practice, not from planning the program.

And if the absence of movement is part of a larger structural collapse in how you’re taking care of yourself — if you need a full professional and personal reset together — The Principal Playbook is the thirty-day structure that addresses the whole picture.

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If you read this and immediately thought of the last time you actually moved your body for yourself — not for transit, not for supervision — and it was longer ago than you’re comfortable admitting, this post is for you. Start with ten minutes. Just ten. That’s it.

— Dr. Tania Loyola | Principal Realities