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Comment by kogus | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of my own wacky idea for a line of fitness products: ordinary everyday items that are normal in every way except that they are intentionally designed to be physically challenging to use.

For example, doors that require a lot of force to open, keyboards with 1lb resistance springs, remote controls that weigh several kilograms, etc. Since many people have trouble going to the gym, it would be a way to introduce weight training in a way that was both unobtrusive and unavoidable.

Just one of those things that has been bouncing around in my head for years now. I think riding this bike would definitely qualify as weight training :)

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This is similar to my business plan where I start a combo moving company / personal training service and charge people to move other people's furniture. Double profit!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkNxvUrWQ_Q :)

I watched this episode just last night. Incredible

He's got a new show out: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10802170/

Hah, so I guess I'm not the only one with that idea then.

Its not quite the same but one of the Moving Companies around boston has a rowing club.

https://www.gentlegiantrowing.org/sponsor

"and approach to moving as a sport, requiring dedication and teamwork. Many Gentle Giant employees are current or former athletes from a wide variety of sports and competitive backgrounds. Current and former employees include both Olympic, collegiate and club rowers."

Gentle Giant is really more of a rowing club that has a moving company. They moved our company a few years back and I've never seen anyone carry as much weight as quickly and effortlessly as those guys.

We think alike! I would have started that company years ago if not for the threat of the inevitable lawsuit when a client drops a grand piano on someone’s head.

Holy .. I wanted to do just that.

Have you heard of Good Gym in the UK?

https://www.goodgym.org/

What a fun idea!

Such scheme is somewhat popular in agriculture where city dwellers come to work on a farm and are paying for the experience.

I come from an ag background, and when crossfit started getting big we joked about charging people to work around the ranch. Not surprised to hear it's a real thing. No doubt, though, that ag work can be physically demanding.

I have the same plan! We can team up!

It reminds me of "u-pick" farms. Less labor, higher prices. The only constraint is that they have to be somewhere easy to reach.

> higher prices

In my experience, I have found that the u-pick places around me are significantly cheaper than in-store or farmers’ markets. Even to the point that I don’t see how they could be profitable.

I've definitely seen deliveroo cyclists doing it for the fitness.

Jack Garbarino beat you to it. Read The Movement; there's a copy on my shelf.

Except that moving boxes and furniture doesnt promote fitness. Most of your time will be sitting in a truck. Then it will be repetitive motions with moderate weights. It would be more akin to life as a fedex driver than a modern workout.

Nathan Fielder already tried it. Like all of his business ideas, it was wildly successful.

Well he did go to a great school and get great grades.

Moving furniture isn't what one would call "healthy exercise".

You're thinking too small, friend.

Build a space station with gravity via rotation. Then spin it up to 150% of normal gravity. Now everything is 50% heavier, yourself included!

Strong Goku vibe.

You don't even need to be in space if you want to make things heavier. As always the great David Jones (Daedalus) had this idea first in his New Scientist column (16th Feb 1968), and it's included in the compendium "The inventions of Daedalus"

The idea is much older for example 1948: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_(ride)

Various test chambers for astronauts where built to test how people respond to higher gravity / a rotating reference frame. Actually trying to do this runs into some unexpected issues in practice. Here is a Tom Scott video about a more recent example: https://youtu.be/bJ_seXo-Enc

The Daedalus column is specifically applying the idea to weight loss & fitness though :)

That was one of the basic questions being looked into for long duration missions.

One idea was to use higher gravity areas to reduce the need to devote time to exercise on Mars or in space etc.

Is this available to read online? Alternatively, could you summarize the idea?

I had a quick look last night on my phone and couldn't find a copy online (though I know I've had some success in the past). I'll try again later on the laptop and failing that drop you an email with the relevant page when I get a moment to scan it.

You are thinking much too small, friend. Spin the earth faster and we can finally get rid of leap seconds.

That would defeat the initial purpose as faster Earth rotation would also make us lighter.

I wish that VC wasted money on you instead of the same boring mobility startups.

It's much easier to get married, so you'll have the weekly task of going to the store by foot and bring back bagfuls of groceries, and possibly two packs of bottled water... then return there because you forgot two bags of cat's litter:)

More seriously, ages ago I wondered about a way to generate power by making sort of a (very compact) exoskeleton-like contraption for each limb articulation, so walking or using arms would activate some generators. Mechanical construction would be quite a challenge, however if built in a very compact wearable way it could become a thing: sensors for body parameters could self power, the phone in a pocket equipped with a inductive charger would charge while running, etc.

> so you'll have the weekly task of going to the store by foot and bring back bagfuls of groceries, and possibly two packs of bottled water... then return there because you forgot two bags of cat's litter:)

it's the "by foot" part where this may not work as you intended.

I once met a guy on a bike ride who trained with a kids trailer loaded down with bricks. He claimed that it was more time-efficient way to train, and on race days, his bike felt like it was made of helium. My only concerns are wear&tear on knees, and the risk of a crash, getting smashed by a 200lb trailer doesn't sound fun.

The Airhub resistance trainer is a safer option. It can selectively apply magnetic resistance (drag) in order to make training rides harder. But when switched off the bike rides like normal, and there are no extra safety risks.

https://airhub.com.au/

Wear on the knees is more an issue of proper bike fit and pedaling technique. If you want to get fit as a cyclist then you have to put in some high wattage training rides. Whether the resistance comes from a heavy trailer or a steep hill or whatever makes no difference to the knee injury risk.

I know a similar story retold by yellow-jacket wearing cofee drinkers of a man who trains on a heavy mountain bike weighed down with offroad equipment and spares. The humm of his fat mountain bike tyres on the road approaching inspires ire and jelousy.

He wins the local triathlons quite regularly.

It would be a cosmic irony, since humans have been trying to make things "easier" since at least 4000 years.

I have another idea, make a lot of crank generators so that biochemical energy gets converted into electricity. I know you won't power your kettle nor your telsa but considering people 1) pay for exercise [0] 2) pay to power the devices to exercise .. I think it's due time.

[0] gym club managed to market gravity (and social context, but mostly gravity).

> keyboards with 1lb resistance springs

This may be a good recipe for tendinitis.

Everything here sounds like a recipe for injury. When you're lifting heavy things you should be focused on (correctly) lifting the heavy thing. If you turn the oven door into a deadlift you're going to forget one day and throw out your back.

After three days of the 4kg remote you’ll be over at your date’s house and promptly punch her in the face when picking up her remote.

Have you heard of crossfit?

SNL did a sketch about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZRzJJcq6Rs

For some reason the feeling of getting exhausted on an ultralight racing bike feels much easier on the mind than getting exhausted on a regular bike with a flat tire. Similar with swimming with slick gear versus swimming with long shorts and a shirt.

There's something to be said about overloading the effort required though. We used to train endurance by dragging a tire behind us in the water. When it came to race day, everything would feel 10x easier.

> This reminds me of my own wacky idea for a line of fitness products: ordinary everyday items that are normal in every way except that they are intentionally designed to be physically challenging to use.

Not exactly an everyday item, but people who want to train for "tactical" things with ballistic armored vests, either because they work for a PMC or are actually in the military, can buy steel plates to put in a plate carrier which exactly match the dimensions of an expensive ($2000+) ceramic plate set, for weight and balance purposes and train with those.

> keyboards with 1lb resistance springs

I'm sure there would be mech keyboard enthusiasts who would find the actuation force too light on those

Not exactly the same, but this reminded me of the following excellent design gallery: https://www.theuncomfortable.com/

Famous Russian wrestler a century ago walked with a cane 16 kg weight.

For simple mortals like me - while hiking I've been using the Nordic poles with 8 inches springed amortization which naturally works up your upper body.

> remote controls that weigh several kilograms

That would require either very expensive metals, or a giant remote control.

But something like this is already done - a lot of people use leg weights as an extra in the gym.

1kg of lead is like 90mL. I just measured my quite svelte TV remote at 22cm x 2cm x 5cm = 220mL. I'm sure you could easily fit 1.5 kilos of lead in there, and with a slightly thicker "A/V receiver" style remote we could easily make that 3-4kg

Unfortunately the venn diagram between "people who want a heavy remote for physical fitness reasons" and "people who will absolutely lose their minds when they find out it has lead in it no matter how safely you have encapsulated it" is pretty close to a circle.

That's OK, the lead remote is simply an anchor pricing option (heh), we can sell those people a luxury tungsten weighted remote instead!

As an added bonus we can pack in 70% more mass in the same space

Along the same lines, I’ve wondered why gyms don’t hook up all their weight machines up to a big generator. Gym members would be paying the gym to reduce the gym’s electric bill.

Kind of the extremely radical opposite to the reasoning behind accessibility, then? Ever have someone in a wheelchair get mad at you?

Good luck catching me on their intentionally-hard-to-push chair.

Think of the profits from thiw move fast and break things approach! Always be hustling.

Move slow and get ripped

What about just wearing a weighted vest?

Another interesting idea I've had many many years ago: Skies that have enough buoyancy to be able to float on the sea while a person is standing on them. Do that you ski across the sea. Although the movement would be closer to rollerblades, due to lack of hills.

What you're describing would be called "skate skiing" on snow, and it's absolutely a thing. Not pooh poohing the idea, but imagine the fun of a loss of balance on the open sea. It'd make a waterski crash look downright convenient.

Yee! That's where I got the idea for it. Because my family we didn't have the normal skiing gear but instead always did the skate skiing.

That's where my idea came from.

Also just walking on water seems quite cool!

The door idea is a safety issue, but there's a market for a gag-gift remote control holder that's a barbell, for sure. Whether it helps anyone is an open question, but it hits the sweet spot for twee Americana gas station stuff.

Or just have kids.

I am picking up a 16kg and a 12kg masses several times a day, and I am sure that this keeps me in shape. Basically, because I didn't have time to go to the gym in the last five years.

It seems like anyone who’s a lazy TV watching bum would get RSIs from their remote control. I know my Apple TV remote does this to me when I use the integrated touchpad.

> doors that require a lot of force to open

These already exist! Especially when a door opens outward and it's windy outside and the wind is pushing against it.

Google "rucking"

Basically you put some bricks or weights into your backpack and take a walk.

And yes, it is a thing.

This has got to be the dumbest idea that I have ever heard of.

Have you heard about fork-axe?

https://youtu.be/FCvtqy4-RS8

they call it functional training

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