Famous Authors And Their Exercise Routine 

“In a study done at the University of British Columbia, researchers found that regular aerobic exercise, the kind that gets your heart and your sweat glands pumping, appears to boost the size of the hippocampus, the brain area involved in verbal memory and learning. Resistance training, balance and muscle toning exercises did not have the same results.”

“When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometres or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), and then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m.
I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.”

Haruki Murakami, Japanese novelist, short story writer, essayist, and translator.
Notable Works – Norwegian Wood (1987), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994-95), Kafka on the Shore (2002), 1Q84 (2010), Men Without Women (2014).

“Running! If there’s any activity happier, more exhilarating, or more nourishing to the imagination, I can’t think what it might be. In running the mind flies with the body; the mysterious efflorescence of language seems to pulse in the brain, in rhythm with our feet and the swinging of our arms. Ideally, the runner who’s a writer is running through the land- and cityscapes of her fiction, like a ghost in a real setting.
There must be some analogue between running and dreaming. The dreaming mind is usually bodiless, has peculiar powers of locomotion and, in my experience at least, often runs or glides or ”flies” along the ground or in the air.”

Joyce Carol Oats, American writer, novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet, literary critic, professor, and editor. 
Notable works – A Garden of Earthly Delights (1967), Them (1969), The Wheel of Love (1970), Wonderland (1971), High Lonesome: New & Selected Stories (2006).

“Promptly at 2:00, Dickens left his desk for a vigorous three-hour walk through the countryside or the streets of London, continuing to think of his story and, as he described it, “searching for some pictures I wanted to build upon.” Returning home, his brother-in-law remembered, “he looked the personification of energy, which seemed to ooze from every pore as from some hidden reservoir.”

Charles Dickens, English writer.
Notable works – Oliver Twist (1838), A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (1850), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Great Expectations (1861). 

“I took up yoga six years ago. Shortly before Penguin published my book, I prepped for the 17-city, 3-country book tour by doing a 2-week daily yoga challenge. It literally changed my life. The carpal tunnel I’d suffered for years eased up. My posture finally improved. If I hit a wall while drafting a scene in the novel, I would take a yoga class and leave the plot knot alone for an hour. By the end of class, an answer to that plot predicament would present itself and I could go on writing. Regular yoga practice provided me with the focus and perseverance I needed to finish the novel. It became such a vital part of my life that I wove it into a scene in the novel and thanked all my teachers in the Acknowledgements section. I’m more fit and flexible now than I was at 18! I recently celebrated World Yoga Day and raised funds for UNICEF’s.”

Marivi Soliven, Filipino author, Tagalog interpreter, and essayist. 
Notable works – The Mango Bride (2013).

“Presently two activities keep me busy – both involving my animals. I walk my darling little rat terrier through the woods for an hour every morning. It’s a good workout for both of us. I used to own horses and ride every day, but I’m down to riding a friend’s horse two times a week these days. Romeo is a gem and we understand each other very well. I don’t just plop along on a trail ride, we do dressage in the ring and man, that is a workout. But my hours in the saddle are the absolute highlight of my week – even though I go home and take a nap when I’m finished!” 

Joan Wolf, an American writer of romance novels.
Notable works Wolf has published over 47 novels in many different genres and time periods, from prehistoric to regency to contemporary. 

“I try to do nine touchdowns a day, that is, I stand on my head in the bathroom, on a slipper, and touch the floor nine times with my toe tips, while balanced. This is incidentally more than yoga, it’s an athletic feat, I mean imagine calling me ‘unbalanced’ after that.”

Jack Kerouac, an American novelist and poet. 
Notable works – On the Road (1957), the Dharma Bums (1958), Big Sur (1962), and Desolation Angels (1965). 

“I started doing aerobics and I wanted to be good enough to become an instructor, so I became an instructor. Doing exercise and being in touch with my body is something that I really value. It really makes me happy to do that; to be a person who is physical. It’s exactly the same kind of discipline that you need to write a book.”

Arundhati Roy, Indian author, essayist, and activist.
Notable works – The God of Small Things (1992).