Fitness Isn’t a Lifestyle Anymore, Sometimes It’s a Cult
wired.com
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The main motivation comes from beating your own personal records or looking better, which happens incredibly fast in the beginning. After a while addiction and routine set in plus you develop a fear to lose your gains, which being a human bias is worse than not getting any. Sure, you want to beat others, but there are so many factors that play into this, so it is quite relaxed.
You can bring a buddy with you, but after a few months you become a regular and notice more and more people you have talked to once. Now it is more like going to a club where you can do your thing. Because of the pauses between sets and the obvious topic (everybody is thinking about how much they can lift) it is super easy to have a shallow talk to a stranger. Since you have talked to them once, in the future they will come up to you if they need a spot.
then there are those who don't do almost anything alone. bike ride? only with friends, otherwise no ride. going to run in the gym? only with friend/colleague. I am not this type so cannot really comprehend the necessity of companionship at (almost) all costs. but then I am more introvertish, so it kinda makes sense
This is precisely why I stopped going. Altogether I was spending probably 2 hours at the gym (this includes time spent commuting and showering). I wasn't seeing any substantial gains and was getting increasingly annoyed by how full the gym was and how I couldn't leisurely do my work-outs without somebody making me feel uncomfortable for occupying a certain machine.
I wouldn't mind going back to the gym, but I would definitely have to avoid peak hours for it to be worthwhile. Best thing would be for me to buy the machines outright but my apartment is small and I don't have the space.
Gym to me was a waste of time in the sense that it was preventing me from doing what I really needed to do (ramp up my technical skills during evenings). If I had a job that was fulfilling enough, paid good and had a reasonable pay/role progression I would definitely go to the gym. Going to the gym for 45 min and unwinding at home afterwards is fantastic.
But I don't have that sort of luxury right now at my place in life. I need to strengthen my portfolio considerably.
Why is "going to the gym" not a hobby? There is plenty of different stuff you can do and focus on and switch to after something else becomes boring or to easy.
I wouldn't say that other activities provide more value for a balanced life, I would argue, that going to the gym makes it easier to have a balanced life (focus on food, sleep, persistence, getting relaxed, reduced stress levels etc.).
Parent divided people into those that don't do anything alone and those who do. A similar dichotomy is between those who enjoy exercise intrinsically and those who don't (who therefore do it for another reason, such as to be fit).
Telling the first group that they are "wasting their time" makes as much sense (to them) as telling a violin player he is "wasting his time" playing the violin.
People are different. To each his own.
I would imagine it's the same if you play an instrument and would be far more likely to continue practicing if you're in some sort of band.
Hey, I remember being not-44 lol
Source - college athlete.
The climbing gym is definitely cult-like, and ive chugged a tall glass of kool-aid. The very nature of climbing is social (you need a partner to belay you) and people (at least at my gym) are all super friendly. Everybody climbs differently based on their own anatomy, and you can learn alot from watching and speaking with others. Normally I prefer training alone, but this is one instance where having a climbing cult definitely helps motivate, not to mention build trust in your belayer. I highly recommend joining this particular cult, or at least giving the kool-aid a taste.
For the minority who actually use their gym membership, lots don't like running, or have bad knees, so gyms offer a variety of cardio exercises. For example, rowing's a good cardio exercise, and a decent rowing machine is expensive enough that a gym membership can make sense. Running on a treadmill can be preferable to running outside, too. You may not have a good track anywhere close, or you may prefer being able to watch a screen while you run. Gyms offer things like group spin classes, so there's also a social dimension. Ditto the social aspect for meatheads who like to hang out together lifting big weights (no offense intended; I used to be one myself).
The other point is that when people say 'fit' they often mean 'skinny'. Unfortunately, the reality is that it's very difficult to lose weight and keep it off (unless you take up smoking, start doing drugs, or get a gastric bypass). Running, in a gym or outside, is unlikely to help. There's some evidence that regular exercise will help you maintain weight loss and it certainly has other health benefits, but this being HN, I think we can be blunt about the fact that if you aren't skinny the odds are against you ever being so in future.
> You don't have weights at home, but is bulking up necessary?
It doesn't matter if it's necessary or not; some people want to have big muscles or to be very strong, as an aesthetic choice, and they go to gyms for that reason. It's not really much less valid than wanting to be fit.
There are reasons to use weights other than "getting big", too. With muscle it's very much "use it or lose it". Older people particularly should be exercising with weights in order not to lose muscle.
1. Strength training can be a good way to get fit, as far as I know. It's probably worse than cardio in terms of developing things like your lungs and basic ability to run for an hour. But from the little I know, I'm pretty sure it's a good way to be healthy, which is many peoples' goals, and that's what most people mean when they talk about being fit.
2. Another thing lifting weights does is make you stronger. This is useful, as being strong is good for many things in life. Arguably, this is more useful in "day-to-day" life than being able to run a long time, as you're actually lifting and moving things pretty regularly. (e.g. moving furniture, if you have a child then lifting/playing with the baby, etc).
3. Strength training makes you bulkier, and therefore look better. Or at least some people think so, to some degree. As another commenter said, this is an aesthetic thing.
4. Lastly, and most importantly, people are different. Most people, IMO, don't consistently do a sport they don't like. One lesson I've learned in life is that, if you want to e.g. get fit, the best thing you can do is find something that gets you fit, and that you enjoy doing. So efficiency/cost of the sport here isn't the most important consideration, it really is enjoyment. And enojoyment is, again, a personal thing, just like some people like playing the flute, some like pianos, and some like guitars. (And some prefer to draw, which is free, or to do photography, which can costs tons in equipment).
And weight lifting is one of the most effective ways to develop strength.
Running and biking are great, I do those, too. But they don't deliver the strength I need for other activities. If you're a typical sedentary office worker you've got to do at least some resistance or weight training to keep your muscles from wasting away.
This time, after about 4 weeks something clicked. I would really regret skipping a workout. The regret has kept me going the last 5 months.
For computer workers who sit in a chair all day, I can't recommend enough the benefits of working out. We all spend a large amount of time learning new technologies and mental self-improvement. Working out gives you a different type of improvement and a nice break from the mental exercises.
With solo exercise or any self-improvement, the most important thing is making you accountable to yourself. It's a fine line between a healthy care and an obsessive care, but when you walk on the healthy side, it's a good things. In a completely non-professional manner, I've been the "buddy" for a lot of people looking to lose weight and get a bit healthier in general; I"m by no means in perfect shape, but I eat clean, run daily, and do light lifting. Since I travel around frequently, it's hard for me to be an eternal buddy for people, so I almost always emphasize getting them accountable to themselves. Not to make them judge and hate themselves, but more just to ask "do I really need the large popcorn at the theatre?", or "it has been a long day, but do I want to spend it on the couch watching reruns or take 20 minutes to jog a little?".
By putting a conscious effort and awareness on one's self and making them "talk to themselves" about their wants, since ultimately that's what it needs to become; not exercising because they should, or losing weight because they've been called fat, but to have people be able to be honest with themselves and figure out what it is they really want. Once you start to cut out the external noise a lot of people use to frame their identity, you stop getting ridiculous goals and ideas like "bulk up like The Rock" or "look like [super model]", and instead get more realistic and practical things like "I just wanna get up the stairs without being out of breath" or "it'd be nice to just lose a bit of this gut". The latter are what the individual wants, and that's actionable. They're accountable to themselves at that point, not to someone they see only occasionally. Actually wanting to care for yourself is probably the greatest motivator with health stuff you can have; some people just need a little push to get started.
uBlock Origin comes with extra filter lists that are disabled by default, among them is "Anti-Adblock Killer | Reek". Go to the extension settings then "3rd-party filters", when you're done click the yellow "Update now".
So you should have the fix with default settings. Sometimes clearing the cookies on the site may help -- maybe the site remembers you were visiting with a blocker which did not defuse the site's anti-blocker mechanism and serves you the notice because of that. I just checked and the fix still works on my side.
Speaking solely on behalf of myself as a single participant in the market, a content publisher who expects me to view ads (or pay money) to view even a single piece of their general interest journalism is not a publisher I am interested in consuming content from. I view that as a fairly irrational business model, and a strongarm tactic, and when I see a publisher do that I am done with them -- Wired, Forbes, etc. are all replaceable for me, I can go read another site, or play a game, or walk the dog.
You'd better believe I pay for lots of content and/or sit through ads when it's worth it to me. I just don't see why Wired's preference for a particular business model is more important than my preference for accessing the Internet through my machine on my connection with my time. I like an Internet where you get to choose the terms by which you access things.
Now I can simply hit back if a link on HN goes to a site that forbids adblockers. We're not talking life and death here. I'm just saying it would be a nice feature to have. From a hacker's point of view I think it's remiss to say we shouldn't build technology which helps people consume the Internet the way they want because certain types of publishers need to make a buck.
This, by the way, probably has something to do with gang and criminal sub-cultures of role-playing of success and presumably high social status they actually lack.
Two thirds of those fitness obsessed could not even run a 10km, but spending thousands for their image of being extremely fit.
Nothing new under the moon. The social media created this new age of mass cosplay and role-governed behavior. Instead of beatniks, hippies or Elvises of old days we got this role-playing mediocrity.
I wonder if parent means the people who give the appearance of being fitness-obsessed, rather than those who genuinely are fitness-obsessed.
There is a large section of the population here in the UK who dress as if they exercise regularly, but actually do very little exercise -- these people buy Nikes and yoga pants and wear them around, but never actually engage in any real exercise. They're the ones who look at you like you're insane when you ask them which gym the use, or if they're training for a 10K run.
The local university campuses have a large number of people like this attending classes dressed as if for a workout. I see a lot of them in coffee shops, and even some in pubs.