I enjoy every second of being physically capable without being obsessive about fitness.
One of the few advices that I give to people I care about: never give up moving your body. I am a bit older than 40 years old, and that's the time when you see people either be fabulous or going downhill with the wheels off. Apart from disabilities and pathologies, there is not a single reason for anyone not to exercise at least a few hours a week. It makes you feel better, be better, look better. I see friends getting married and having kids and work 5 jobs like someone says in the US especially etc. and they stop exercising, and they suddenly look older, talk older, and often going downhill real fast. That's not a good example for kids, it is a good prompt for your partner to look elsewhere.
Be bold, be in shape, be beautiful.
At 50 years old mortality rates kind of go up dramatically.
So starting in your 40s onward you probably need to be in decent shape to minimize the risk.
Yes, I know it's wrong and unhealthy and I'll pay for this, and yes, it worries me. But all kinds of exercise bore me to tears and there's always something more interesting for me to be doing.
You need to make it an absolute red-line in your life. You wouldn't go a day without cleaning your teeth, and you wouldn't do another hobby instead of cleaning your teeth - make exercising like that.
I exercise every day, and I think that's actually a lot easier than exercising five times a week, allowing you to pick which days you exercise or not. You can't kid with yourself that you'll exercise tomorrow if your routine is to exercise every day. Sometimes I get back from work at 11pm and I'll still drag myself out for an hour's run.
... you know the difficulty of telling someone "don't get distracted" or "don't procrastinate"? It won't work. It's the same with me and exercise, I agree with you on an intellectual level, and I'm well aware of the dangers of my unhealthy lifestyle. But I just can't find the motivation to do it.
Like I replied elsewhere, I would definitely do trekking or biking if I lived in a place more suitable for those activities. I enjoy trekking and walking when I'm on vacation (my vacations tend to involve lots and lots of walking).
Do you ever get distracted from cleaning your teeth or procrastinate or put off cleaning your teeth? I guess you don't and it's a normal effortless part of your day that you hardly think about - why is that? Can you use whatever natural habit you do to get yourself to do that to exercise?
I can even think about the stuff I'm about to do while I brush my teeth. Let's compare it with doing martial arts: most teachers require you to be "in the moment", not think of something else.
I suppose this is why I think I would like trekking if I lived in a suitable location. You can walk, enjoy the scenery, and think of something else.
Have you ever tried going more than a day without cleaning your teeth? Have you ever had so little energy, motivation, or otherwise give-a-care to just not-do-it when going to bed at night?
Why do you insist on this being the baseline when you've clearly never struggled to do this?
I didn't - that's why I asked - and then qualified my advice with it applies if that's the case.
> Have you ever had so little energy, motivation, or otherwise give-a-care to just not-do-it when going to bed at night?
Obviously this advice isn't going to be appropriate for someone with serious mental-health issues. It's advice for someone who wants to do some exercise and is struggling to get going, not someone facing more complex problems as well.
I don't suffer from depression or mental health issues, I just find exorcising boring and don't have the motivation for it. There's plenty of things I'd rather be doing, it's not that I'm a coach potato watching TV all day long :)
My teeth are rotting out of my head due to poor dental hygiene from years ago. The road back up sometimes begins in a deep hole vertical-ascent, and that can feel daunting, even hopeless at times.
You wouldn't talk on the Internet unless you had experience. Everyone loves to brow-beat.
By the way did you know you've been hell-banned for five years? That's why almost nobody's been relying to your comments for the past half-decade.
The main points I think might interest you are the idea of “grease the groove” training and “program minimum” plans.
They don’t advocate for doing multi-hour gym sessions. You can get a kettlebell and a chin up bar and exercise from home. You can do a couple of sets of swings and pull-ups (or push ups or dips) before or after work if you work in an office. If you work from home, you can do a set every hour. It will take 1 minute or less and can be incorporated into your daily tasks. Since it’s not overly strenuous, you won’t break a sweat and won’t need to take a shower to interrupt your day.
Anyway, if you don’t want to do it, then enjoy your hobbies!
Oh so this.
I try to do activeish things: walk places, stand up desk, water/snow ski, walks with wife to catch up on the day.
But I just have no staying power when it comes to repetitive motion to build up a sweat. I’ve tried swimming (I love to swim), treadmill/elliptical (I like to walk!), spinning (because I like to ride a bike), but it just does not last. I always grow to resent the time lost to doing other things, even if the “other things” are lazy pursuits.
I'm taking weekly tennis lessons with my girlfriend and casual basketball matches with friends and neighbors. It's good cardio while you also catch up with friends and essentially play something.
I'm sure it's not perfect, but I think the saying applies here: "imperfect action beats perfect inaction".
Not only is it the Tetris of VR, it also gives you a pretty good workout if you play on Expert or higher.
Edit: One major contributing factor was that I never figured out how to get Sony’s VR glasses to calibrate correctly.
This was the last time I did any kind of exercise.
Trekking I'm 100% sure I would do. But I live in a concrete jungle :(
Point being, if you have a guilty pleasure - stuffing it into exercise can make exercise not so boring, and your pleasure not so guilty. Two birds with one stone.
In my experience it's boring when you start but gets more rewarding as you start to see progress. But that's kind of true of everything new you try. When you suck you hate it. When you get hlgood you love it.
I couldn’t believe that I was looking forward to my run just to progress the story. Sometimes the book was getting so good I would spend an extra hour meandering around before returning home.
Worth a shot. Also, bluetooth headphones are a must (I use Jabra Elites). Accidentally karate-chopping some wired headphones out of your ears makes them insufferable during exercise.
It’s a good habit because you can also parlay it into listening to things while cooking and doing chores around the house, things I used to avoid as wastes of time until I hacked myself with audio content.
Good luck.
[1] Sci-fi by Andy Weir and Blake Crouch would be examples of the sort of fun and light-hearted listening that make sense here.
I love that I am not tied in to Peleton. I chose not to buy clip-on shoes although that's an option and would just require buying the pedals and shoes.
My university had les mills classes and I enjoyed them and so I got their subscription for on demand classes. They have this class called The Trip where they have generated a virtual biking track that is in sync to music. I can't imagine a more immersive at home workout. Les Mills also has full body workouts as well as yoga. There are certain historical workouts that they took down because they don't have the rights to the songs anymore but they release new workouts regularly.
I am looking into Zwift but I can't justify paying the subscription price. If anyone knows any good free virtual biking roads software that interfaces with ant+ sensors please let me know. I don't care as much about the social biking part of zwift.
One day I want to see what VR and exercise can bring but I don't imagine sweating in a VR headset is pleasant. I have only heard good things about beat saber though.
I got a "wheel-off" trainer (Wahoo Kickr) attached to my crappy hybrid commuter bike that I already had, and set up a "pain cave" in the basement with an older TV.
It's been great- since the start of the pandemic, I've lost over 20% of my body weight (and am in the "normal" BMI range fwiw), and my resting heart rate is low enough that when I get my blood pressure and pulse checked, they have to double-check the readout. I'm in the best shape of my life since college.
I actually like the social aspect of Zoom- I think having other people around me triggers that latent competitiveness, and I ride harder than I would otherwise. There's a good variety of events and workouts, and there's a really supportive community.
Zwift has pace partners that you can chase (3 different ones depending on pace) that have sucked me into riding harder and longer than I ever have on zwift or a stationary bike. I find it's worth it for that experience.
Clips take some getting used to (3-4 rides where it feels a bit odd) but I've learned to love them and it feels odd whenever I ride without. I'd strongly encourage you to try them out if you're riding this much. For context, I used to ride everywhere in sandals and everything changed once I got my clips.
I exercise daily because otherwise it's too easy to start skipping. This way you know that you have to exercise and have to plan for it. (I have a home gym, which I built, lucky enough, pre-covid)
My mom walks for 30 minutes a day, while I run rather fast for the same time. I always tell her she should run a little, but she doesn't like to sweat.
Granted, 30 minutes of walking is 100x better than sitting around, and running is ~5x better. I'll give her that. Lessening returns and all.
My mental model is "easy" activity is sufficient to not die when you're 60, and more intense stuff will make you thrive into your 80s.
I.e. walking has no excuse barring disability. Running I recommend, but not as strongly.
Put another way, I will endlessly nag my parents on walking. Running or jogging I merely suggest, given various costs like you point out.
Skipping of course being an easy way to do daily exercise :D
My experience here is that it is more subtle. "Better off" depends on your goals.
For losing weight, one or two sessions of 75-90 minutes or longer per week seem to have much more effect for me than 30 minutes every day. (Borne out over years of trying different things; I'm in my 50s.) For increasing my VO2max, 25-30 minutes of aerobic exercise every single day for weeks on end worked well, but it was hard to maintain that discipline long term. (I was very surprised at the effect of every day, as opposed to, say, 4-5 days a week. It seemed like I was getting a lot more than an extra 50-75% benefit.)
I enjoy remote work but at least when I was going to the office I moved my body a bit more.
It was hard to find the motivation before but my four legged friend has made all the difference.
I needed something convenient to squeeze in a 15-30 minute workout I'd enjoy once the kids go down, so I got another rower and started rowing again a couple of months ago. I've been pretty consistent (I've worked out 52 days in a row now, with exceptions for special circumstances like deaths in the family). It's a great full-body workout, and I listen to podcasts/audiobooks or watch football if there's a game on. I can't recommend it enough.
Some people have recommended BJJ, which I've enjoyed in the past, but with kids and my wife and I working 60+ hours a week (she owns a business), convenience + enjoyment are the only way to make it something I'll stick to.
But we had pretty much constant operations, so exercise wasn't a problem. To clarify, I meant that I got away from rowing when I deployed, not from exercise (until I was injured, that is).
Prior to starting half marathon training it was right at 6 though. 3 x per week weight training and 3 x per week 5k training runs each of those ~1 hour.
Current schedule is M/W 1 hour weight training T/T/S/Su half marathon training with long runs on Saturday. Those are starting to get above an hour as the mileage increases. In another 3 weeks or so all my runs except Sunday will average above an hour more than likely so probably get into the 8-9 hours per week territory.
At 42 I'm now healthier than I've ever been. All that time in my 20's making excuses about how I didn't have time to lift/run whatever was BS. It's far easier than people think to get into very good shape. That hour or so per day is just one less hour dicking off on the internet or watching TV or something - you won't miss it.
You get a better pump than an energy drink for the entire day, you don't feel anxious or shitty when drinking more coffee or energy drinks during the day[this may be also because i cut very occasional smoking to 0, which realistically was probably the cause]; And most importantly you think more clearly even though you may be somewhat tired when doing mentally-intensive tasks.(I remember my best days of doing logic were the ones i did the most effort, though that was gym and not really endurance)
Consistency is the key;Hoping i will get something like a lifting desk and a treadmill but I kind of also write, doing that during running seems kind of weird, at least right now. I'm somewhat lucky, i started doing sports & meditation more seriously alongside with cold resistance training about 3-6 months before covid hit.And the sad thing is that i felt my immunity lowering (though not completely) when the restrictions were imposed.The overall most damaging factors of staying in-doors is that mental memory & cognitive capacity is affected if you don't keep training your 'reptilian brain' to navigate the world.(this is something i was very skeptical but learned anecdotally)
At least that's what I was blaming my laziness on until I learned about CO₂ levels on the ISS:
https://letstalkscience.ca/educational-resources/backgrounde...
https://archive.thinkprogress.org/its-taking-less-co2-than-e...
https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/why-living-space-ca...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262148293_Relations...
So it's a bit higher than my apartment, and they still manage to exercise daily and stay in shape.
My lug muscles are pretty insane compared to the rest of me, and I can eat what I want without gaining weight. The biggest advantage is that it keeps me more awake during mundane tasks, though if I have something mentally challenging to work on it can be a distraction.
Sucks with a third lockdown and swim groups are on hold again. And I actually broke my cross country shoe (!) in half the other day, so waiting for stores to open so I can replace it and get out again. So today I decided to use Wandrer.earth and try to bike all streets in my city. With the amount of snow that was a bad idea, hehe.
Last two years had a knee issue no one can figure out, which has hampered the amount of training a bit. Hurts medial side/hamstring, and is as if my knee cannot track properly anymore and have become knock-kneed on one knee. :(
Additionally, I rejoined my very social powerlifting gym from grad school. Having other people keeping me accountable and encouraging my progress is really effective at keeping me at the habit, so I've been maintaining a 4x a week schedule at that (1-2 hours gross each time, but lets be real it's a social gym)
Mountain biking is an awesome workout and, more than that, and awesome experience. It’s got all the fitness benefits of road cycling with none of the monotony. Downsides are that it’s expensive, good trails aren’t available everywhere, the injury risk is real (but lower than motocross), and you might find yourself much more interested in the bike than in anything else.
HIIT style conditioning sessions 2-3 times a week.
At least 1 hour long LISS style endurance session once a week, rarely more than this.
Loads of walking around our neighborhood, pushing a wagon or a stroller or walking our dogs, and weekend hikes (rucks, I carry my toddlers, one at a time, on local trails).
I apply a minimum effective dose mentality to the strength and conditioning. I follow Tactical Barbell training protocols. I'm in my 40s and I am in the best shape of my life. Not as fast as I was when I was younger, of course, but no slouch, either, yet much, much stronger and with more stamina and endurance.
My philosophy on exercise is to keep it simple and remove any type of objections. There's no gym memberships or fancy equipment needed for this type of routine. Doing the push ups and sit ups takes a few minutes. The walks do take time but I would consider them essential. I don't consider doing any of these things as being a waste of time, I look forward to them every day.
Sure, I could have used one of the million workout apps that are out there, but I feel more invested when I am completely in charge of collecting, managing, and using my data. I don't have to leave it up to someone else to gameify my exercise; I get to decide how.
I used to train 10+ hours a week almost exclusively on weightlifting when I was competing frequently, but over the last year I’ve spent less time lifting to have more time to work on my startup.
- ~4 lunch breaks a week, I'll head to the Gym and workout for 35-40 minutes.
- Saturday is Parkrun day (a 5k run / race).
- Around 3 evenings a week (when it's not my turn to put the kiddos to bed), I'll fire up Apple Fitness and do 20/30 mins yoga.
That takes me over the 6 hour mark and it never feels like I'm going far out my way to squeeze all this in.
Then I took my dog for a four mile walk, resulting in an additional 630 calories.
I got humbled by my dog.