A personal trainer is the best investment I've made
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There is an alternative, less resistant path which I believe is more sustainable and better for the soul... find something you love that involves exercise, not much discipline is needed once you do, because you probably wont be able to stop yourself from doing it when it's something you look forward to - which in a way is "wearing your running shoes to bed", it's passion.
Something which is not exercise for the sake of exercise, i.e not "going to the gym", it must be more mentally rewarding and stimulating somehow. That doesn't mean team sports either, there is more to life, in fact I'd recommend avoiding team sports because then you are more likely to have more control over when and where you can do your activity. Examples: rock climbing, mountain biking, sailing, surfing, skating, skiing. You can do these types of activities with friends, and make friends too, and they can take you all over the world, or at least all over your country - so they are pretty good for the soul ;)
Discipline is a useful ability, but you can only apply it effectively so many places in your life, and you wont be able to keep it up forever. Save it for when you really need it to fix something - but health is not a fix, it's a lifestyle.
For me (also an unsporting nerd who came to exercise in midlife), having less control is actually a benefit: because I've got a booked timeslot with my PT, I have to go or it's embarrasing as well as a sunk cost. If I give myself control over when I go it's too easy for it to be mañana. Pre commitment is a real thing.
You could always dump your PT for a few weeks and spend the money on booking some taster activities to try to find something... the initial booking still forces an initial commitment to get you to try ;) even if you don't find something on the first round it's a good experience to try out different things and meet new people... I still do this occasionally even though I have a couple activities i'm pretty addicted to, one i've been doing for over 2 decades.
The conventional training wisdom (I learned about it from the Anderson Bros in RCTM, but others advocate it too) is to avoid carrying too much weight on your glutes/quads etc. I.e. skip leg day. So that's probably in conflict with also trying to maximize MTB performance.
I would agree that doing a lot of cycling/mtb would probably have a slight negative affect on your climbing ability, i'm not sure about the reverse though - what most people don't realise is that climbing is a very technical sport, and you are totally using your legs most of the time, in fact one of the most obvious identifying behaviours in novices is people hauling themselves up walls using their arms and getting tired really quickly - it's not constant cut loose campusing, those are only the most extreme moves, the crux of a hard climb or a boulder problem.
Also, on a road bike you'll also go at much faster speeds, which I have found to translate to better confidence bombing down trails on my mtb.
What's more hilarious is the reverse cross training of mtb->gravel. The Unbound course is notoriously unmanaged "gravel" (pile of sharp rocks) for certain sections. Most roadies are squeamish to hit rough terrain at speed, and the ability/ confidence to pass _a lot_ of riders helped me move up quickly in the front half of the race. Even the ability to cross wet/rocky water crossings without dismounting added up quickly in both energy spent and time.
The only drawback is that although the muscles in the lower part of the body seem like made of steel, the upper part is definitely weaker, so a while ago I started to do pushups as a kind of game: can I ever do 100 pushups in one go? The first step was to make 50 pushups daily and to gradually increase it. I can now do ca. 20 pushups and I'm very proud of it (I could barely do 7 at the beginning).
The one thing I learned about push-ups recently is how we have a tendency to get tripped up by the measurement fallacy... i mean how else do you measure it other than how many right? The thing is that if you optimise for quantity you will actually end up with bad form and be cheating by using momentum. If you goal is to actually improve your body somehow then you start focusing on form and control, which can be a little bit demoralizing at first because you will no doubt be back squarely in the <10 range, but you will have abs of steel if you keep it up :P
I was a couch potato until 30 or so.
Then I stopped using public transport and biked everywhere. I lived on a hill, so every time I got back I had to get back up again.
After a few years, I added swimming, because it cools you in the summer. Full body excercise and you don't even notice the sweat.
Later, I added lifting. Got me a home gym and went 2-3 times a week. Not having to leave the house for a dedicated workout really helped.
I know a number of older/retired people who are in good health into their 70s and 80s. None of them "do exercise" in the sense of going to the gym, but all of them do sports/activity of some form and keep moving. They all walk places rather than taking the car (they have the time) and they do things like biking long distances with friends or playing tennis or badminton. If you're like one I know (84) you walk two miles each way to play badminton with your friends.
Sure there are health benefits, but they all do these things because of the intrinsic enjoyment and satisfaction.
Once my health is good enough to start running again I'll get back to running 20-30km a week, not for the health benefits, but because I get enjoyment from running in the countyside with a podcast on. I run because I love running. I walk a lot because I love to walk and more.
I want to be fit so I can run and walk, rather than the other way round, and I think that's the best long-term way to stay fit an healthy.
Doing those every day sounds both expensive and an organizational nightmare.
I love skiing and i do it every few years but I cant rely upon it for exercise.
I tried badminton / frisbee in the park but that still needs geographically close, willing partners who are willing to exert themselves with matching schedules and good weather.
In the end i solved the motivation/availability problem by being 25 seconds away from a reliable heavy HIIT cardio + anerobic workout - having a rowing machine at home. It's overall less fun than skiing perhaps but the barrier to entry being negligible makes all the difference.
Sailing - boat club
Climbing - gym
Surfing - the other folks at the spot
Skiing - lift/lodge people (also if you really care about skiing all the time you probably move to SLC or somewhere that can accommodate that)
Once you have that community, the "willing partners" part kind of solves itself.
Anyway, "just move to SLC and ski" is clearly A solution to the problem of "i cant motivate myself to exercise" but it's a fairly drastic one.
If folks are reading this and thinking about how to reduce friction to start exercising - putting all the equipment in your house is one approach. (I made it work in the pandemic, although downstairs neighbors can limit what you can do....) But the pull of finding something that puts you into flow state or has a social accountability component like Crossfit can be worth the "issues."
Nicely put.
I guess it's a trade off, you end up with an activity which is intrinsically fun to do, rather than a gruelling workout you have to motivate yourself for; On the other hand there can be added friction to getting into these activities, sometimes that's equipment (especially if you are unsure you like it yet), or being used to travelling further to get your fix (but the more you do it the easier it becomes).
There's also long term wear and tear. I've been a very historically active person and did a lot of these things. Outdoor rock climbing, open water swimming, bicycling, thru hiking, summitting <18,000 ft mountains in one day. But I'm really not sure which of those things I can still do. I've got ten screws in my spine now. Carrying around a pack and getting stuck on a mountain is not good. Bicycling really hurts. I developed some kind of elbow bursitis that won't go away no matter what and 20 minutes on a rock wall and my arm is absolutely throbbing now, for days. There doesn't seem to be anything I can do to stop it.
Lifting, on the other hand, gives you near infinite options to isolate single joints in arbitrary planes of motion, in a controlled and micro-loadable manner, which makes it possible to work pretty much anything safely and work around just about any injury. I'd like to still do open-water swimming, which I don't think would hurt me, but I no longer live near any swimmable bodies of water. But I still have a garage and can put weights in it.
It's true not each possible activity is going to be convenient or practical to everyone, but there will be enough that intersect your life circumstances that you can find something... but I feel on average, most people here are going to benefit from trying something a bit more adventurous and getting out into nature, if only for the life experience. Weights is very convenient but doesn't give you any of that.
> There's also long term wear and tear. I've been a very historically active person and did a lot of these things. Outdoor rock climbing, open water swimming, bicycling, thru hiking, summitting <18,000 ft mountains in one day. But I'm really not sure which of those things I can still do.
This is a real concern, once you become passionate about such a sport it's quite easy to over do it (and I have), but I'd argue climbing is one of many viable long term sports provided you take care of yourself. There are lots of "silver crimpers" in the climbing world which shows it can be done. Injury prevention in these more niche activities is also an emerging area, for climbing specifically i'd check out Dave McLeod excellent books... but this is only relevant when you are really pushing the activity, a lot of fun and good exercise can be had without risking injury from just rambling up some easy routes... That's what I aspire to in old age, to continue moving and having fun in new places. I think this probably transfers to most other actives too, so long as you find them intrinsically fun, you should be able to continue to do them without pushing yourself to the limit 100% of the time.
By the way sorry i completely skipped over these problems in my sibling comment, i realise that probably came off as insensitive and dismissive. I'm really sorry you're in that position, I was too focused on the more general advice.
These kinds of chronic injuries are sometimes unavoidable, and sometimes they are avoidable but very difficult to spot or know about before it's too late.. I suppose it's a risk, and some people are simply luckier than others. However some chronic injuries can be remedied if the source of the issue is in how you approach your sport, rather than a more permanent issue.
Shoulder, elbow and finger injuries and pain are extremely common in long term climbers, and can usually be substantially improved or eliminated by improving your technique and form. I would highly recommend reading Dave McLeods book on injury prevention. It's the very opposite of a quick fix book and can be quite dense in places, but it's also enlightening and completely destroys the fallacy that these types of sports are only for the young - in short, you are always hurting your body in some way when doing exercise, you were just less aware of it when younger and had a larger sink before it became apparent, when some people reach the limit of that sink they give up, others find ways to continue. More generally If you can manage the rate of stress with the rate of recovery, then you can establish an equilibrium and it's possible to safely continue as you get older, I'm still learning this (will probably always be learning this) and trying to figure out how to be more aware of different aspects of my body and the hidden stresses it's putting up with.
Even if it's not climbing you are interested in continuing, there is a lot to learn about the deficiencies in more niche sports in general from this book and Dave's research.
You'd be surprised how many introverted people do social dancing. And the bar is usually very low. So, not being a long time dancer, musically gifted, etc, is seldom a problem.
The only downside (for some) is that scheduling can be inflexible, and it's usually an evening activity so not great for early birds.
Unfortunately, I don’t like going out and I don’t have any outdoor activities or sports I like. So the only thing I’ve got is ensuring I do some workout at home and keep the rings on my smartwatch closed. This is also a bit easier to find motivation for when you find external/other situations/experiences scary on the health side.
> Examples: rock climbing, mountain biking, sailing, surfing, skating, skiing.
I’d have to travel considerably far to even try any of these. :(
Someone else mentioned dancing. Also pretty sure you can do skating in a city.
Better advice is to build more functional "exercise" into your day-to-day life. This is where real lifestyle change happens without you really knowing it.
Take the stairs, walk to the shops, cycle to work (where possible), household chores that involve getting on your hands and knees and breaking a sweat, do DIY/gardening (why people pay to go to the gym and deadlift, then e.g. happily pay someone to move a load of soil around the backyard always confuses/amazes me).
Organized exercise allows you to set a specific goal and do targeted exercise to accomplish that goal in the minimum amount of time with minimum risk of injury.
why people pay to go to the gym and deadlift, then e.g. happily pay someone to move a load of soil around the backyard always confuses/amazes me
It's math and risk. If I make $150 per hour and have unlimited capacity to work then it makes no sense for me to do manual labor that I can pay someone $15 per hour to do. And I'll get a much better workout with an hour in the gym than 3 hours moving a load of soil around. And as I stated earlier, my risk of injury doing controlled targeted movements is much lower than randomly twisting and turning and jerking loads of soil around.
Of course I could pay someone to do the gardening or rearrange it to minimize the work. Yet that's not always an option.
I tell people I only lift weights, not boxes or bags of soil.
I just recently got back from Germany and the primary thing I noticed about their public transportation infrastructure is that most of it is using right of ways that have been in place for… hundreds of years.
Driving in America is an unfortunate necessity in the vast majority of places (The minority being the oldest coastal cities) and that annoys me greatly, but it’s the reality of it.
I do choose to live downtown so I can walk or bike. But those are my options :/
I myself used to believe that to be the case, but fairly recently learned that many European cities used to have significantly more car infrastructure and reversed course, while at the same time, many American cities had walkable infrastructure that was later bulldozed for cars.
There’s nothing inevitable about the way we build/built cities in America, it’s a matter of choice and priorities.
This paradox describes the contrast between the damaging impact that occupational exercise has on health against the beneficial impact that leisure exercise has on health. This difference is very well documented [1][2][3] (you can easily find dozens more studies with a quick google search).
There's a diversity of opinion about what causes the paradox, but I think it's reasonable to be concerned that spending significant amounts of time on DIY/Gardening/Chores could replicate the hazards of occupational exercise. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a study which looks at these directly.
[1] https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/42/15/1499/621377... [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28798040/ [3] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanwpc/article/PIIS2666-6...
Are you nuts? Do you lift 100Kg or more in the garden very often?
This was the most surprising part for me : I used to be the stereotypical anti sport nerd when I was young, and when I started training, even a bit, it was a proper chore and something that required motivation.
But after running regularly for a couple of years, now going for a run is something that I do for relaxation, and honestly look forward to especially after a stressful day.
I could not say when it happened, the change is pretty gradual, but it's definitely there : not only does it get easier after a while but it becomes something you deeply enjoy
A few points for those who think about getting into running:
* make sure you are doing training units of at least 30 mins regularily. Going shorter than that is not really useful to get you actually trained.
* If you try to get better endurance most of your training should be aerobic (instead of anaerobic), this means it should be easy for you to do. Doing anaerobic training (so going to the max) is also useful, but it should not be the only thing you do
* regularily doing a little is always better than occasionally doing a lot. Set yourself some distance targets (e.g. 12 km a week). If it helps get yourself one of those sports tracker apps, or watches (Garmin, Polar, ...)
* with the right clothes weather does not matter at all (except maybe: too much heat/sun and not drinking enough)
* the most important thing are the fitting shoes (to avoid pain in the joints). Retailers will often offer a analysis of your running style and offer you the fitting shoes. Those should then be changed every 600 to 800 km.
* for certain people with bad joints or other related issues cycling or swimming might be better choices
> make sure you are doing training units of at least 30 mins regularily. Going shorter than that is not really useful to get you actually trained.
That's not true. Less time can be effective as well, given that the intensity is high enough.
> If you try to get better endurance most of your training should be aerobic (instead of anaerobic)
It's actually the opposite and interval training (mixed aerobic and anaerobic) seems to be more effective.
> the most important thing are the fitting shoes (to avoid pain in the joints). Retailers will often offer a analysis of your running style and offer you the fitting shoes. Those should then be changed every 600 to 800 km.
Running without shoes (or barefoot-shoes) is probably even better once you have adapted to it.
> for certain people with bad joints or other related issues cycling or swimming might be better choices
Even rope jumping is considered much better than jogging since the force is always distributed across both legs at the same time.
> Even rope jumping is considered much better than jogging since the force is always distributed across both legs at the same time.
If your joints are bad enough, you have to specifically avoid impact. Rope jumping is slightly less bad than running but still one impact after the other.
Cycling and swimming require cyclical motions that you can perform without having to sustain impacts.
Speaking from close personal experience here (my SO), rope jumping is actually what caused the joint problems. She can't do running or rope jumping anymore. Swimming and cycling are no problem though.
All this just to back up GPs claim that swimming and cycling are great alternatives to running if you have bad joints. As parent said, rope jumping is indeed slightly better than running, but still not a great alternative due to impacting motion.
One more thing: not a doctor.
>> If you try to get better endurance most of your training should be aerobic (instead of anaerobic)
>It's actually the opposite and interval training (mixed aerobic and anaerobic) seems to be more effective.
>Running without shoes (or barefoot-shoes) is probably even better once you have adapted to it.
I've been walking in barefoot shoes for 2 years now and I've gotten tremendous benefits, but running serious mileage in them is a completely different story. Unless you want to get better at barefoot running, it's not useful.
Again, if it was useful at all you would be seeing professional athletes doing it. The most they do is some barefoot strides on the grass by the track.
They have resources, time, (usually) age and genetics working for them. Trying to train like them is usually a recipe for injury and burnout.
So I think when we talk about “effective” we should probably contextualize it.
That's a bad comparison. Elite runners' first priority is to win and get out maximum performance. But for regular people, the goal is to overall improve their body and condition using a small time span. Since the goals are different, the methods are as well.
That aside, I believe athletes _do_ use interval training (HIIT). But if you have a source, I'd be interested.
> The Born to Run fad has been over for years now. Consensus is incorporating barefoot running into your training makes little difference to performance
Again, I think you are focussing on pure/max performance. But I don't think that's the goal for the majority of people who start out with their training. You get higher speed / better performance when running with shoes for sure. But I think for the people we talk in the context here, the goal is to improve body condition and lose weight.
>But for regular people, the goal is to overall improve their body and condition using a small time span
No, the poster above you directly specified running endurance. That's what we're talking about NOT just running for general health. And not limiting training to a couple of hours per week.
>interval training
Interval training in the context is a pace-specific running workout, not interchangeable with HIIT.
Besides that the main point would be that long slow aerobic training has benefits that HIIT doesn't, mostly regarding the volume of blood the heart can pump.
So its not just for performance. Long slow volume will give you a lower resting heart rate and adaptions that HIIT alone will not.
Fair enough. I interpreted that differently, but maybe you are right and we were just talking about different goals/contexts.
Yes, athletes do use interval training for specific purposes. But they don't do it for the majority of their training because it takes a lot to recover from. Since it takes more to recover, it limits how much training you can do. And athletes recover significantly faster than an untrained person. A fascinating read is by the guy who set the recent 10k speed skating record [0], he basically cycled for 7 hours a day.
An untrained person can't do 'HITT' properly, it takes too long for their heart rate to recover to normal. If they do something like 1 minute on, 30 seconds off, their heart rate during the 'resting' interval will still be pretty close to their working heart rate. They won't manage to keep it up for more than say 5 minutes (random number).
Now yes, 5 minutes of HITT is more effective than 10 minutes of LISS. But 1 hour of LISS is more effective than 5 minutes of HITT. And you can do 1 hour of LISS everyday without accumulating a lot of fatigue. Where as if an untrained person did HITT one day, there's a high chance that the next day they won't be able to preform at the same intensity. There's also significantly lower injury chance doing LISS.
The routine is called the 'Deck of Pain': Choose 4 exercises (push-ups, squats, etc). Shuffle a deck of cards and take one from the top. For each suit, you do one of the exercises chosen, the number of pips being the how many of that exercise you do. So, for say, a 2 of clubs, you do 2 push-ups. For a 9 of diamonds, you do 9 squats. Etc. You chose your own workouts. Face and Ace are whatever you'd like, I choose 1 as the Ace, and 10 as the Face cards. Go though as many cards as you can. Do you heard that? That's the sound of your soul leaving your body.
It's real hard at first. I'd only start with a quarter deck and be wasted. It took me ~9 months to be able to get through all 54 cards. After ~2.25 years of it, I can get through a deck in about 45 minutes.
I rotate the exercises. Right now it's squats, push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups. I've done variations on all those in the past. Like, squat variations can be lunges, jump-squats, etc. Since all suits add up to the same number, the association between the exercise and suit is just incidental. I was working on single-arm push-ups, but hurt my shoulder and had to go back down to just regular push-ups.
I'll rotate card decks too. There are some fun little games out there that you can steal card decks from. For instance, take the cards out of a Catan set and then assign exercises and values to them. Go get a 5 suited deck online. Or grab a new game you've not tried before at Target or wherever.
Recently, I've been using a Tarot deck. Minor arcana as I described above, major arcana as individual exercises. So 5 of cups is still something like 5 pull-ups. But the Empress is 10 burpees, the Tower is a 1 minute plank, that kind of stuff.
The key for me was the randomization element. Having the cards and exercises come out at random kept me from 'counting down the miles', so to speak. It keeps my mind fresh and guessing at the next thing and not just waiting for things to be done with.
What really brought a turning point was when I discovered a sport I always wanted to do, but did not know it exists in that form. Historical fencing (HEMA). - There I found good friends and sport. Sometimes when I have no energy, I still go to training to meet them. Also this sport is very competitive, be it in sparring with friends or tournaments. If you do not stay in shape and train, your performance will visibly look bad and people start asking you what's wrong and how they can help.
So that's my advice. If a personal trainer is nothing for you, take a look at competitive sports, even if you are too old for world ranking and such. Try to find the gym or group where the people, including the trainers, are interesting to you and you feel welcome. - This way motivation will become totally positively intristic. Actually you will be sad if you miss a training or event. =)
I was part of a group presenting as the Teutonic Order because there was a dearth of baddies in the community.
But the absolutely best thing about this sport is that there's an easy solution to every conflict or misunderstanding - combat!
I disagree. "Having paid for it" is a bad motivation and sparingly works. I know several folks who bought expensive cameras, bicycles, and guitars which only gather dust. The bicycle I rode almost daily for a year was one of the cheapest I had ever bought. Yes, there's a regret if when not utilizing something expensive, but the regret is more like, "I shouldn't have bought it" vs "I have already paid for it so better utilize it".
In fact, I would advice quite the opposite. Get something no-so-expensive. See if you can build a habit around it. Buy the premium thing only if you see yourself plateuing or seriously needing it.
My advice on building a sports habbit is: Get enough stuff to get yourself motivated. If you are running, getting good (!= expensive) shoes and some sports clothes is a good starter. If it helps to have one of those fitness watches go for it, but there are free phone apps that can do basic things as well. Gear is never an excuse in running. There are people who run marathons barefoot.
Having good shoes and clothes helps you not to stop because of some excuse tho. Clothes are important, because with good clothes you can run also when it is raining, windy and it has single digit Celsius temperatures. Shoes the same: with good shoes the pain point will come later.
> I disagree. "Having paid for it" is a bad motivation and sparingly works. I know several folks who bought expensive cameras, bicycles, and guitars which only gather dust.
Yup, I’ve seen the same behavior in myself and others for years. Paying a sum of money, however large it is, doesn’t motivate people to get some value out of it. And gyms thrive on this. What I’ve seen happen is people swearing off gyms after losing money once and probably going back to almost no exercise.
48 was my turning point. I started eating differently, started doing pull ups and invested some money on a personal tennis trainer.
One of the best decisions in my life.
Now I'm 50 and relatively fit again. Life is good and I'm having fun again. I just wish I would have gotten off my lower back a lot sooner.
But seriously, most gyms allow you to book single sessions with various individual trainers. Try a few and see if you're compatible with one. It's such an individual thing that no else can tell you exactly what to look for.
Is tennis still your main/only exercise? How old do you feel like you can play? I'm a bit younger than you but always fall on this fallacy of having to find a "long term sport"...
Side note: doing my first competition in August, something unimaginable for me at the start of this year.
Years later an independent trainer was recommended to me, much more expensive, but I gave it a shot. This trainer didn’t make me feel bad, didn’t make outlandish promises, just made me lift weights and do some HIIT. It mostly the same 20 exercises or so in different combinations, focusing on different parts of the body each time.
And it worked - I’ve doubled my bench press, my squat, and my deadlift, and I’ve got better core stability and balance. My sporadic shoulder and knee problems have largely gone away. Even losing ground during 2020/2021, I’m in much better shape than I started.
I could probably technically maintain my current fitness now - I certainly could recreate many of the exercise loops we do- but the commitment and consistency is the key part that I get, along with getting help with what to do when my back is a little sore, or I pulled a muscle over the weekend.
0: Luke Carlson – How to Design, Assess, and Optimise Your Virtual Personal Training Service https://highintensitybusiness.com/300-luke-carlson-how-to-de...
Good sleep is something that is worth investing into, bed, noise, temperature, light, and many other factors.
The second advice would be to learn to cook your own meals.
after years of sleeping in subpar beds, i finally got us a king-sized Purple Hybrid Premier 4 with Purple pillows. Cost ~$4,500 for the whole thing (thank goodness for 0% apr credit card offers! paid it off within a year), but this stack has CHANGED THE GAME COMPLETELY for sleeping.
we get good sleep much more frequently now than before. and it has definitely shown in increased energy throughout the day!
as for cooking our own meals, my wife subscribed us to every plate last year, and it's been amazing. it solved the single biggest problem I had with cooking: every one of their meals can be done in less than 45 minutes from zero to plated _with zero waste_! (we don't have kids, and sizes at grocery stores assume larger family sizes).
i still prefer eating out, but cooking is much less of a chore mow.
Oh and you'll get to go outside aswell, which is nice. Sometimes a hike to the rocks.
That's because if you are a statistically average person paying half their income on housing, another quarter on basic necessities, and saving another 10%, you can't really afford to spend almost your entire disposable income paying 3 hours of wages + taxes for another average employee, every week.
Sort-of like the stereotypical upper-middle-rich-white lamentations that "these days you can no longer find any good babysitter/cook/help/valet", as if living a life of privilege is a birth right.
The tone and content of this thread is quite a trip into the the entitlement culture of contemporary techies.
While you build the discipline when doing anything enough, I think the better conceptual model for building that discipline is B. J. Fogg’s model.
His model is B=MAP.
Behavior = Motivation X Ability X Prompt.
You can have little motivation but high ability and go to the gym. You can also do the opposite. So long as there is a prompt of some sort.
Using the idea that motivation is transient, that’s where much of James Clear work in focusing on the systems comes into play. To make the ability and prompt easy, visible, etc.
A personal trainer is much of that combined into one.
If this sounds familiar, it's also called Grease the Groove by Pavel Tsatsouline.
gym time == me time. i don't want to socialize or talk to anyone. i learned the big three from reading Starting Strength and a really nice coworker but learned very quickly that i can't stand talking to people while at the gym because i'm already stressed about my lack of free time. PTs would not work for me. i use books + reddit when i need help with programming.
my wife, on the other hand, really loves the social component of working out. she didn't work out with any regularity until she discovered spin classes. she's gone once, sometimes twice, per day, almost every day, for months now. she has favorite instructors for sure.
others i've known have found great success with a trainer.
just gotta experiment. incorporating fitness and a healthy lifestyle takes lots of trial and error, but feels amazing once you get there.
This is not irrational and it's not a fallacy. As you have proved to yourself. It's a mental heuristic that works. You spent money to get something valuable, it would be foolish to let that go to waste. What about that exactly is irrational?
Another commenter already said though: you can really only apply discipline in a few areas of your life effectively. The amount you can depends on your workload in other areas. Choose wisely…
That being said, your 0hysical Health is foundational.
Nothing else to think about. Once you are there you will do some/most of the training.
A proper title for HN, imo, would be "A personal fitness trainer is the best investment".
I wouldn't have clicked on that one and saved myself from reading an article that is irrelevant to me.