Culture is one of the biggest reasons two equally “motivated” people can live completely different active lives.
Not because one has more discipline. But because culture quietly decides what feels normal: how people commute, how they socialize, what counts as “a real workout,” and whether movement is built into daily life or treated like an extra task you have to schedule.
That’s why this conversation matters. When we talk about long-term habits, the most useful question isn’t “How do I push harder?” It’s: What is my environment training me to do every day?
Culture isn’t just identity
A lot of “movement culture” has nothing to do with sports.
It’s the default options around you: sidewalks, public transportation, neighborhood safety, public parks, how workdays are structured, whether your city rewards walking… or makes it inconvenient.
That’s also why global physical activity levels aren’t just a personal issue. The World Health Organization frames inactivity as a population-level challenge, shaped by systems, access, and daily living conditions, not just individual choices. In other words: if your day is built for sitting, staying active becomes a negotiation.
What changes from country to country
Across countries, what “being active” looks like can shift a lot:
In some places, movement happens naturally through commuting and errands. In others, movement is mostly something you do on purpose, in a gym, at a set time, with specific gear.
That difference matters because it changes friction. When movement is already baked into the day, you’re not relying on a perfect schedule to stay consistent.
Large cross-country research in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (IJBNPA) has looked at physical activity patterns across multiple nations, showing how activity levels and domains vary meaningfully by context.
Social norms: the invisible “permission slip”
Culture also shapes behavior through something simple: what feels socially normal.
If your friends meet at a café and stay seated for hours, that becomes your default social rhythm. If your friends meet for a walk, a surf check, a class, or training, movement becomes part of how you connect.
Even when nobody says “you should exercise,” social norms can quietly steer choices. That’s a big reason people stick longer when movement is shared: it stops feeling like an isolated self-improvement project and starts feeling like part of life.
This ties directly into one of the most consistent findings from long-running human research: connection supports health over time. Harvard’s Study of Adult Development has repeatedly emphasized the role of relationships in long-term wellbeing.
It’s not that movement needs to be “deep.” It’s that life is easier to repeat when it’s shared.
Movement as cultural expression (not a checklist)
Here’s the part people miss: movement isn’t only fitness.
It’s also how a culture expresses joy, identity, freedom, competition, community, and even stress relief.
Some cultures normalize outdoor life. Some normalize intense training. Some normalize daily walking. Some normalize long work hours and a “sit first” lifestyle.
So when someone says, “I used to be active, I don’t know what happened,” the answer is often: your context changed (and your habits followed it).
What to take from this (without turning it into a personality test)
If you want a more realistic way to think about staying active long-term, start here:
- Don’t only track your motivation. Track your defaults.
- Don’t only blame discipline. Look at friction: what makes movement harder in your day right now?
- Don’t treat movement like a separate life category. Build it into the way you live, commute, and socialize.
That’s also where Mormaii fits as a lifestyle brand: not “one type” of athlete, not one culture, not one routine. Real life is different across places, and movement adapts. Global doesn’t have to mean generic. It can mean understanding how people actually live.
Read more: Community and exercise adherence: why working out together sticks
