Number of workouts per week has strongly driven increase in exercise since 2004

Last time I looked at how much I've been exercising over the past five years. It looked as though exercise has been increasing, but I wanted to know why. The first question to address is how more frequent sessions and longer sessions have impacted total exercise. Have totals been padded because I've made exercise a more integrated part of my life or because I've had more time to spend at the gym? First let's look at frequency of workouts:


This shows a very steady growth of ~10 extra sessions/year. I'd expect this data to be pretty noisy since the decision to exercise or not on any given day is based on so many factors, and because the data refers to ~50-70 events per 365 days. Nevertheless, four years of increases of similar magnitude is enough to convince me that something is going on.

I interpret this as a steady integration of exercise into my daily life. While I did occasionally work out in the years before 2004, it was mainly pick-up sports at infrequent intervals. I had never jogged, never used a weight room (with the exception of 3 months in 2000), and never set goals to improve my endurance, strength, flexibility, or agility.

What this means for the future is that I would expect this trend of increasing exercise to continue and gradually level off. This stands in contrast to the other factor responsible for my increase in total exercise time, which I will investigate next: length of workout.