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Comment by Gatsky | Hacker News Reader

If there is one universal truth of human biology, it is that exercise is good. It is good if you do a bit or a lot, if you are young, old, male, female, trans, pregnant, trying to get pregnant, single, married, divorced, depressed, a smoker, have cancer, have heart disease, have dementia, an astronaut, a pure mathematician, a plumber, tall, short, liberal, conservative etc etc. There isn't anyone that doesn't benefit basically. It's almost like breathing.

The message is important, but I think we can just stop doing studies about how exercise is good. Researchers must love these kinds of studies because they are ALWAYS POSITIVE. And the media loves promoting them, I guess because they get a lot of clicks.

Getting people to do more exercise - that is the hard part. More randomised studies of interventions to do that on a society level are needed. There is going to be an extraordinary number of people transitioning from (admittedly unpleasant and impoverished) more active lifestyles to sedentary work in the next 50 years. Reducing the burden of disease in this group is essential.

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School made me hate any kind of sports. The teachers were awful, bullies loved it because it allowed some of their behavior to pass as "camaraderie", and I'm not even going to ask what are they thinking when deciding to put a bunch of 14/15 yo teens in a swimming pool for a whole trimester at the age when they're starting to grow hair and breasts and are mostly very uncomfortable with their bodies. Most people I talk to feel the same, school as a teen put them off sports for a looong time, if not for ever.

I tried going to fancy gyms, running around the block, at home body weight exercises... Nothing stuck and I quit in short order. The only thing I kept up was cycling everywhere because it's cheaper and faster than any other means available in my city.

It took me 20 years, a personal trainer, a private gym in my building, a lot of courage, and a lot of free time from getting laid off to finally start exercising regularly. It was absolutely worth it and I could feel the benefits after a couple of months only. I wasn't obese, didn't have heart problems, didn't smoke etc, and thought of myself as healthy as the average person my age.

It made a huge difference in my life, my body doesn't hurt as much anymore overall, I stand straighter and taller, I can lift more and more weight, I can do more reps, hold things for longer, and feel better about myself... It was a pain and a drag to go for the first few weeks and the. It becomes a habit if you stick to it.

So thank you to that dysfunctional employer and their shitty politics games, you made me a huge favor by laying me off!

I worry about my health and often I have a really good try and making a habit. But crap is it hard. It's not the money or the time. There's something else about willpower and boredom. I wish I could get on an exercise bike, stare at a brainwashing device, and "wake up" an hour later having remembered none of it.

I do nearly exactly that on my phone playing Predynastic Egypt, but on the elliptical instead of on a bike. Sometimes my legs start to hurt after 90 minutes, but I want to play just... one... more... turn.

Yeah finding something you enjoy is key.

I hate running. I hate cycling. I hate cardio-class-type motions.

But damn do I love me some Dance Dance Revolution. And let me tell you, once you get good at it and start doing the hardest songs on the hardest setting, it will kick the living shit out of you. The first time I passed Max 300 on heavy I thought I was dying. But it was so worth it.

This is the best comment I have seen on HN all year.

I’ve honestly thought about getting a VR setup just to play Beat Saber.

Beat Saber looks just so snappy and catchy.

Honestly GORN is a great workout as well, but you run into issues with the Oculus getting too hot on your sweaty face. I picked up a "VR Cover" and it helps a bit, but it still gets soaked through with sweat. It is at least easier to wash.

I find my gameplay performance is a lot worse when I'm moving on a cardio bike.

Try a turn-based strategy game where timing and precision are almost irrelevant.

Some suggestions, YMMV.

Podcasts or films or boxsets on the phone/tablet to kill that boredom if you're doing steady state cardio. Maybe immersive games like that Zombie Run game, if jogging is your thing.

Switch it up, do HIIT instead of low impact steady state cardio once in a while. Lift weights.

Find a buddy to go with you. If you're obligated (or enjoy the company) then you'll be more likely to do it - as will they, you'll be helping them out too. Professional options include: join a sports club. Tennis, kickboxing, whatever works for you. Or get a personal trainer, if you can afford it. 99% of their value is that they simply make you turn up.

Cycle/walk/jog commute if possible. If you can fit exercise into your existing routine it's far easier to keep doing it.

Best of luck!

Go out and ride a real bicycle, either around town or commuting to/from work. I do a lot of cycling (thousands of miles/yr) but cannot stand to spend more than 5 minutes on a stationary bicycle/trainer.

Mountain biking is also great. You put in loads of work to get to the top and then you get the fun of going down vs a stationary bike which is all work and no fun. You can make them slightly more fun with games like zwift that make stationary bikes competitive and gamified.

I also enjoy mountain biking, but not as much in California. I grew up in the midwest, and while there were many more mosquitoes there and the weather sucked half of the year, the trails were a lot more fun IMO. It was much flatter, so you could build up a lot more speed and basically push up the small hills without losing much momentum. Mountain biking in NorCal is much more 30-90 minutes of climbing followed by 5-15 minutes of downhill where you're dodging hikers, other bikers, horses, and dog poop. The sun is also pretty brutal, with not much cover aside from a few trail networks, whereas in the midwest most MTB trails were 90% in a forest.

It can still be fun, but honestly it makes me want an e-bike to get past the boring grindey up-hill parts. The other aspect of this is that in the midwest, once you had attained a certain level of mountain biking proficiency / fitness, you could go fast on trails all of the time, because you'd be able to sprint up the hills, pump any bumps / logs, and pedal down hills as well. It was much more of a "roller coaster" experience. In NorCal, even if you're super fit, you might be able to get up hills more quickly, but no one is sprinting multi-mile climbs at ~15mph. Again, e-bike, but they're super expensive for a nice one and they're only allowed on a few trails out here AFAIK.

I found rock climbing to be a very effective for exercise, because there’s quite a thrill looking down from the top. It’s exciting and you almost forget you’re getting sweaty and gross and tired. Plus there’s that immediate sense of accomplishment when you get to the top, which is much more immediate and concrete than the sense of accomplishment you get after jogging 5 miles or whatever.

Also if I have a free day I love just walking all day exploring and listening to a good fiction audiobook. Audiobooks are weird if you’re not used to them, but trust me, eventually you’ll swear by them if you get over that initial hump. And randomly walking around and exploring is good exercise, you’ll forget exactly how tired you are while listening to the audiobook and it won’t be in until you stop to take a break several hours later that you suddenly realize “Holy crap I just walked 12 miles and I’m tired!”

To each his own, but I used to have your exact same attitude about exercise and these two things worked for me. I’ve lost 50 pounds in the last five years. Obviously there’s other factors like diet and mood and body type and whatnot, but these have been my main forms of exercise. Hope that helps!

Then forget exercise for now, just take a contemplative walk around the block. Perhaps do it right before breakfast and/or after dinner. It's easy and takes less than 10 minutes. Don't think of it as exercise and do it in any clothes and with any shoes. No excuses, anyone can walk around 1 block and everyone needs 10 private minutes to collect their thoughts.

Before you know it you'll find yourself walking around several blocks, then swinging your arms, then walking faster, then you may even start jogging. You'll feel motivated, you'll keep making progress, and most importantly, you'll actually look forward to your walks.

I followed the advice above and now run almost daily before sunrise. It has really boosted my self-esteem since I had always disliked running yet admired those people who run before sunrise. But if someone had told me to start by purchasing running clothes, finding the right running shoes, choosing a good running route, stretching for 10 minutes... forget it! However, I will make one recommendation. This mask is helpful on mornings when it is below 40F. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0796R1DPG . Please, start tomorrow morning and report back. :)

Thanks. I love how practical your advice is. Going to do this tomorrow. Maybe it'll even help align my sleep schedule. My wife is up at 6 and I always sleep in to 8.

Additional advice: Bring some headphones and listen to great music or continue your favorite podcasts. Time will fly if you add a soundtrack to your walk.

I got into running, thinking that I wanted to try for a half-marathon. I actually worked up to the distance surprisingly quickly. I was under 30 at the time and it took like 2 months, and before that I wasn't running at all or doing any other exercise regularly. I started having some knee pain (flat feet don't help) and stopped after it became painful to run even a mile or two. About a year later, I fell on a skateboard on the same knee and injured my bursae. I fear that my running days are over, but it was kind of fun in a weird way after you get past ~mile 4. I still go mountain biking occasionally and enjoy long walks (on vacation I'll walk 15+ miles in a day).

For anyone worried about knee injuries from running, or shin splints I can highly recommend weightlifting, in particular squats, as an auxiliary exercise. I kept on running, getting pains in my knees and resting for two weeks and then just doing it again. After six months (way longer than probably necessary) of progressively lifting higher weights I went back to running and I’m doing my first 50K next week, having done a 35K up and down mountains previously. My first run after the long period weightlifting I just decided to run a half marathon distance to see if I could. The muscle pain the next day was less than I often get from lifting.

I do tennis a few hours a week and my knees have started hurting after a period of summer inactivity. I'm thinking of taking up gym squats again, my knees never felt better than when I was squatting. I could effortlessly climb up stairs like it was nothing with just a few weeks of weightlifting, I need to get back on that (and recommend it to anyone).

Something like 50% of runners get injured in a given year. It’s insane. Do something that’s easier on your body. If you want cardio, hike or bike. I like weight lifting, personally. If you want to try weight lifting, check out Starting Strength.

> Something like 50% of runners get injured in a given year.

That's because most people use bad technique and would probably benefit from strength training as well. Sitting all day and then expecting your body to run for 30-60 minutes and then sitting again will lead to high risk of injury. I see a lot of people run like they're walking with longer strides, or hunched over, or any number of bad habits. The feet should land under your center of mass, not in front of it, and the turnover should be pretty fast. Short and fast steps instead of long and slow. Don't run too fast, use your core for stability, and keep an upright posture, slightly leaned forward at the ankles.

Look up proper running form, do some drills, and add body weight strength training a couple of times each week if you're thinking of starting running.

And most importantly, don’t bereft your brain from useful feedback from your foot! Use thin (unpadded) rubber soles on your shoes. If your feet are getting painful, probably they are saying something useful about your knees as well.

that is because most runners use padded shoes, which enable you to run in a totally unnatural way.

>this kind of collision leads to a rapid, high impact transient about 1.5 to as much as 3 times your body weight (depending on your speed) within 50 milliseconds of striking the ground (see graph a below).

>This is equivalent to someone hitting you on the heel with a hammer using 1.5 to as much as 3 times your body weight. These impacts add up, since you strike the ground almost 1000 times per mile!

taken from:

http://barefootrunning.fas.harvard.edu/4BiomechanicsofFootSt...

It is impossible to run this way with undamped shoes or barefoot.

I recommend this book (not affiliated):

https://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greates...

is really fun to read, it is about a indigenous tribe in mexico which run in sandals cut from old tires, for 24 or 48 hours straight. In there is a reference to another study where they found a correlation between cost of the shoe and the rate of injuries: more expensive shoes with better damping had higher rates of injuries, they weren't expecting this.

Our legs evolved to store the energy in our tendons and release it to propel us forward. A QUARTER of the bones in our body is in our feet! Humans evolved to be the best endurance runners on the planet, being "naked" (without fur) is actually an advantage for running, enabling us to cool down our bodies by sweating. There are still tribes hunting their prey by running after it for prolonged periods till it collapses from overheating. There are races for horses, humans started to compete in. Initially the runners where ridiculed but someday a human won the race.

No way. That's not true. I've been running for 10 years now. Never have I been injured. Also my friends did not suffer injuries neither. If you like lifting, that's fine. But that does not mean running is worse that lifting or that you could even compare them. It just means that you are used to lifting and you are rationalising your choice.

The 50% may or may not be true, but your personal experience says very little about that overall statistic.

Right, so it does.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1439399/

37-56%. Literally the top result when I googled for “running injury rates”.

Well there is always zumba.

That's why you gotta like the exercise you do. For me biking is boring, but I love volleyball.

I had the same problem until I got into MMA. I'm not a stereotypical MMA "bro" but the social aspects and the varied but intense workouts are perfect for me to be engaged and not lose interest. Plus learning to fight is a skill even if I hope to never have to use it in a serious situation.

I wanted to get into MMA but I hate falling down. How do you handle that? Do you just do it?

It depends on what martial art you learn, but there are whole traditions that spend lots of time training on how to fall and land. But also just get stronger. Everything hurts less when you’re stronger.

Probably the first entire month was spent on how to properly fall, block, and take blows as to not hurt yourself. In my experience, it was part of the class and is as important to learn as anything else.

In addition to what everyone is saying, you might be exercising too hard. The fitness industry, paradoxically, pushes the idea that exercise should be hard, perhaps because it’s an easy thing for people to believe. Hard work feels like it’s getting you in shape.

But most cardio should be easy, like 60-70% your training maximum heart rate. Many elite distance runners follow an “80/20” rule, where 80% of their training is easy in this way. But 100% is fine also. If you’re not used to it, this feels odd, like you’re going too slow and doing nothing. But measure your time and distance and the improvements will be obvious. It’s like training for free. The only ingredient is time. After a good long low-intensity run I feel less fatigued than I did when I started. Meanwhile hordes of people suffer through these awful spinning classes. It’s like they think exercise should make you feel worse instead of better!

People who feel the need to put in effort and who aren’t distance athletes are likely much better served by adding HIIT and/or strength training than by pushing steady-state cardio too hard.

The 2 fastest runners I know both told me to run slow[1]. It's so counter-intuitive but works so well. So many benefits: 1) no injuries; 2) energizing exercise instead of draining; 3) can run 5-6 times a week which is habit forming; 4) run farther/longer which burns more calories; 5) I can multi-task (audiobook, podcast) instead of just trying to catch my breath. I repeat: no injuries!

[1] They don't know each other. One friend fast enough to be 1st in a 3,000 person half marathon.

I, too, hate exercise. For a subsection of them, they are just uncomfortable. Horribly uncomfortable. But mostly, it is so boring. So very boring. Soul-sucking boredom is very hard to overcome. I dread most of it.

However:

If my home life is stressful or bad, I enjoy walks. I don't suggest having a bad home life for this.

I enjoy walks if someone else wants me to go with them. A great way to do this is to see if a senior center or other such place has a program where you can walk with other folks that could use some company.

I don't mind walking as my primary mode of transportation. I'm quite comfortable with a half an hour walking commute both ways, though an hour seems to encourage bus use one way (at least). I walk to the grocery store a few times a week. If you can work some of this into your schedule, I highly suggest it. It is no longer exercise, but transportation.

I keep thinking that I could probably find time to ride a stationary bicycle as well. I have youtube and other such entertainment. The spouse reads while on the machine. Unfortunately, I do not have the physical space in my apartment for such a thing, since I have a small but cheap apartment with two people living in it. I also do not have access to the spouse's training facilities at work.

Unsure how relevant this is to your situation since I primarily lift weights but I find the best way to get myself to the gym is to have small rituals that you do on autopilot as part of a larger routine. For instance, I have headphones which I only wear at the gym - for me, the act of putting the headphones on seems to signify to my brain "hey, we're engaging the 'go to the gym' routine now" and everything else just sort of happens. It could be something else comparatively simple like putting on your workout shoes or filling up a water bottle that you take with you. Also, for me at least, one of the things that helps overcome the boredom is goals/metrics, which is pretty easy with weightlifting - it's "did I lift more than last time or not?". Personally, I find the stationary bike boring, so you might want to look for something else that you enjoy.

Audible, Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube, Netflix etc. there's a lot of things to keep you entertained while you're on the bike.

I can’t make myself workout on a treadmill or stationary bike, feels like purgatory. But I can work out in a bootcamp/CrossFit like group class for an hour. Something about the social aspect works for me, maybe you’re in the same boat.

I personally think the research done on HIIT/HIIE-style[0] exercise has been pretty revolutionary.

Sure the status quo remains: exercise=good, non-exercise=bad, but reality is more nuanced than that and something like HIIT helps people who feel they lack the time for "full" exercise to justify a minimal time commitment with proven and significant health benefits.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_traini...

Yes! I agree the HIIT research is great and very interesting and impactful - they designed and implemented an intervention with a control group and measured other correlative variables including muscle biopsies. And as you say the results are actually useful for getting some people that don't have the time or inclination to run marathons.

I would certainly distinguish this kind of research from the many redundant retrospective observational studies (often with self-reported exercise activity levels) of the kind linked in the original post.

> I think we can just stop doing studies about how exercise is good

I heartily disagree. People have limited time. We need to figure out what form of excercise gives the most benefit for unit of time spent. There is serious disagreement about this (the two camps being cardio vs strength training, basically).

Exercise should be enjoyable or people will not do it. The second you start talking about benefit for unit of time spent it becomes a tedious chore. I love rock climbing, I hate running, no statistic about running being more beneficial is going to make me run.

I have introduced tons of friends to the gym and my first piece of advice is always just show up and have fun, don’t worry about ideal routines or maximizing output. Just figure out how to make exercise part of your life.

> Exercise should be enjoyable or people will not do it.

This is what finally worked for me. I died of boredom jogging or lifting weights.

You have to find a sport that you enjoy. I have friends that were unfit and finally climbing did it for them. It was BJJ and MMA for me. I enjoyed tennis/squash, but it's sometimes hard to find an equal partner - same with other "group" sports.

I’ve been doing Ashtabga Yoga for years then recently I discovered how fun calisthenics can be if you “gamify” it with a friend, thinking of advanced progressions as videogame-like achievements. Really into it now.

I love rock climbing, I hate running, no statistic about running being more beneficial is going to make me run.

FWIW this was me two years ago. Then I came to grips with the fact that running is the best training for mountain climbing.

>the two camps being cardio vs strength training

The research being reported on here studied cardio: "cardiorespiratory fitness was inversely associated with all-cause mortality":

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

> There is serious disagreement about this (the two camps being cardio vs strength training, basically).

Huh, strange to hear this. I do strength training (basically a lot of compound lifts like squats and deadlifts and so on) and I consider them to be a cardio. If I do a speedy 12 rep set, I am properly spent and breathing heavy and see my heart rate at 160 and above

theres no disagreement . moderate strength training preserves muscle mass as you age, consistent preservation of skeletal muscle mass is required to stave off acute muscle degeneration beyond some point in you late 60 to 70s.

heart muscle doesnt waste as easily, but moderate cardio, including moderate sprinting can be very useful for keeping a strong heart.

endurance cardio has no longevity/healthspan benefits beyond those wrought by virtue of stressing the heart and muscles in the initial moderate dose.

freqiency and consistency of above average myscle useage are key to preserving muscle function. also range of motion helps all muscle get used and keeps loads balanced to prevent injury.

my grandma is 96. never did a day of cardio running in her life.

> If I do a speedy 12 rep set, I am properly spent

That the simplest way to know it's not cardio - you can't sustain it for a long period.

Tabata intervals is most definitely cardio, and you can't do a sufficiently hard one more than around 4 minutes.

>People have limited time. We need to figure out what form of excercise gives the most benefit for unit of time spent.

optimizing for the wrong variable.

there's always time which could be spent exercising. people are often too stressed or tired to do it, or don't have enough motivation.

flossing your teeth takes four minutes. but how many people do it?

> We need to figure out what form of excercise gives the most benefit for unit of time spent.

Retrospective observational studies like the one in the original post aren't going to to that though.

Although I agree with you in principle, the differences between types of exercise are likely to be small compared to the benefit of doing anything at all. Most of the population aren't that concerned with what type of exercise gives the biggest delta in VO2 max.

Thing about exercise is that it effectively, doesn't take any time at all because one of the results is that you need to sleep less. In my experience, it at least makes up for the time you spend exercising.

Source? Exercise certainly makes me sleep more.

Me too. One of the most challenging things about establishing an exercise schedule for me is that, without fail, it makes me feel exhausted for the rest of the day. Therefore, morning sessions just don't work. In the afternoon, there's far more variability in availability and motivation.

Maybe i am simply not overdoing it, about 30 mins per day 6 days a week, quite light. Did help me to lose 8 kilos in 9 months, still, which was about everything i needed to lose, so i am happy.

"More randomised studies of interventions to do that on a society level are needed." This gets at the heart of things. We used to have societies in which exercise needs were often met through activities of daily living. Many places in the world still require walking, biking, hauling water, carrying children, transporting food on your back, etc. Many places in the world people still dance at community events, for fun, no matter what their age. But the US -- we've been working as hard as we can for 90 years to eliminate exercise from daily life. And now we are doing another classic US-ian thing and shifting this formerly natural and communal thing to an individual responsibility, preferably an individual responsibility that can be monetized. What so many instances have shown in the US is that when you take an activity that used to be built into daily life and 'gentrify' it -- make it something that costs money and time because it's denied to some groups by the very structures of the buildings and streets they live around -- we end up with huge public health costs and unforeseen consequences. But taking a conscious approach in the design of our cities, public housing, public transport systems, private transport systems, zoning laws, energy policy, food policy, medical care delivery, public school requirements, and private school requirements is considered to be some sort of socialist brainwashing that kills the seed of freedom in one's heart, or something. Only if you are forced to commute on the highway rather than being able to bike safely to work are you truly living the American dream. Only if you must drive thirty minutes to get to the nearest place with chicken that tastes like something other than styrofoam, rather than being able to walk to the neighborhood store for it, are you satisfying the extractive demands of our apparently-preferred economy.

Yeah, one thing that world travel has really shown me is how dumb US cities and infrastructure are. In the UK, Japan, Hong Kong, etc, you can take trains wherever you want to go and walk on both ends to make up the last 1/4 mile. All of those 1/4 miles add up to a decent workout, and it's great to not have to buy + maintain + drive + park a vehicle.

I'm still mad at everyone who had a hand in preventing BART from running down the peninsula. https://io9.gizmodo.com/5866928/a-map-of-san-franciscos-subw... has the original map if you haven't seen it. It would have ran from Jennings (north of Santa Rosa in the far north bay) all the way down to Los Gatos (in the Santa Cruz foothills), crossed the South Bay at 3 points (Oakland, Foster City, and East Palo Alto), and featured MANY more routes inside of San Francisco proper to places like Presidio, North Beach, Masonic, Van Ness, Castro, Oyster Point, Taravel, and Potrero Hill. I know that a couple of those routes are now served by MUNI trains, but this was a plan in 1956, would have been a single system, and still had way better coverage than we have today or planned in the next 20 years.

I find that if the exercise is in nature, it is much more pleasurable which creates a positive feedback loop. Take a look at google maps, there are probably wilderness trails 20 minutes from most places people live.

My mistaken belief that exercise is good no matter what lead me to destroy my health over the past several years. It is in fact quite possible for exercise to be dangerous to your health, if you suffer from certain conditions (like CFS).

”If there is one universal truth of human biology, it is that exercise is good”

I don’t see the need to mention biology. I think every reasonable definition of “exercise” automatically implies that exercise is good. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise says: ”Exercise is any bodily activity that enhances or maintains physical fitness and overall health and wellness”

Which part of that is not biology?

The self-fulfilling prophecy part. If you define exercise as enhancing fitness and health, overtraining isn’t exercise anymore, and exercise by definition becomes good for you.

> More randomised studies of interventions to do that on a society level are needed. There is going to be an extraordinary number of people transitioning from (admittedly unpleasant and impoverished) more active lifestyles to sedentary work in the next 50 years.

I think Pokemon GO may have successfully pushed the problems off a bit.

don't overlook genetics, there are family lines that just live longer regardless of many what people consider bad habits. exercise rightly cannot be dismissed but all the exercise in the world won't fix what is in your DNA.

still on the exercise front there needs to be more work in find easy routines that even the least inclined can participate in

Exercise improves your DNA.

My physical advice runs as follows, with commentary below.

> Eat (non-processed) food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (Pollan)[0]

> Invest in strength and cardio training. Couple hours per week[1].

> Listen to qualified medical professionals, critically[2].

[0] tl;dr - make your own meals, high frequency of salads, don't overeat, and don't fuss too much.

[1] I recommend serious kettlebell work to achieve this; takes very little equipment and very little space.

[2] They aren't always right, and you always have to self-advocate.

I recommend the work of John Berardy PhD. His research is focused primarily on exercise nutrition.

https://www.precisionnutrition.com/about/john-berardi

not affiliated

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