I have a stationary exercise bike. It sits in the living room where I can watch and control the TV. That way if it’s raining outside…I can exercise. If it’s freezing cold…I can exercise. If it’s three in the morning… In other words I’ve destroyed every potential excuse not to do it. Plus, the bike is not in some back room where it’s out of sight/out of mind. But as a reward, I can watch TV while I exercise. That distracts me from the “work” involved and the length of the program times me.
I know some find being stationary “boring.” Traffic can be bad around here but I also have a regular bike and ride it sometimes. It’s different in that I have more resistance in pedaling, but I can always coast (so there goes elevating your heart rate).
When I was young I used to play 3 different types of football in winter, and train for all 3. I trained for cricket and swam for hours, ridiculously early in the morning, when I was swimming competitively in summer. I happily walk 15 minutes to the shops with a duffle bag to shop, and when I go out I often park at the first place I find even if it means a decent walk to where I am going.
But I have never spent one minute in a gym training to go to the gym and the idea of jogging, just for the sake of being fit enough to go jogging, has never held any attraction at all.
This^ I don’t like exercise, but I like the results. There are activities that are exercise, but I enjoy them. Right now, taking long walks around the golf course to go get the mail. When available, water exercise, but I will rarely go alone.
I hate rote exercises, any and all of them. Hate gyms, hate swimming laps, hate jazzercise and all the leotard ladies classes, I even hate yoga if it is with a bunch of other people.
What I do like: gardening. walking in nature. Hiking in nature. Riding horseback in nature. Riding a bicycle in nature. Is there a theme?
It is not exertion that bothers me, it is the goal-oriented, We’re Getting Healthier And Stronger! atmosphere that surrounds improving ‘exercise’. My moody loner spirit rebels, and I have learned that eventually, it will win, 100% of the time.
If any of this resonates with you, you might examine what makes you happy, instead of what you believe you “should” be doing. Whatever moves your body is a good thing.
Yes, that’s because they have a very high tolerance to unpleasant stimulus. If they had a low tolerance to unpleasant stimulus they would find it unpleasant. All exercise involves some sort of unpleasant stimulus.
That’s true to some extent, but quite often people like different exercises differently. Someone may enjoy running in a 10K race, but hate running all by themselves. The activity of running is essentially the same in both cases. Or someone may enjoy playing basketball but not enjoy Zumba classes. Or enjoy hip-hop dancing but not kickboxing. Quite often people will enjoy different activities differently even though the activities may have similar levels of exertion and discomfort.
I highly recommend VZFit which basically turns a stationary bike into a VR game controller. It’s the only thing that can get me on an exercise bike. I’ve been doing it 1/2 hour every single day during the lockdown. Sometimes twice a day.
There are some things I like to do that include exercise. I like to hike, I like to garden, I like to dance. But I don’t enjoy exercise. I hate feeling sweaty. I don’t like anything that hurts.
I exercise some anyway, because I’m old enough that if I don’t use it, I’ll lose it, and I would prefer to maintain some strength and flexibility and cardiovascular fitness. You know, so I can do stuff I DO want to do, like those exercise things, but also like carrying pots around the kitchen and other ordinary tasks.
But if you have to take drugs to do it, it’s probably not a good idea. And I’m sure it’s not a good idea to take opioids just to walk on a treadmill or something.
I’ll go against the flow and say I like working out. My gym has been closed for six weeks now, and I am jonesing for my endorphin fix.
I have been walking the dog for five or six miles a day, and doing some stuff with the very limited equipment I have, but I don’t have access to a pull up bar or a leg press machine, and limited amounts of plates for the bench. And higher reps just don’t cut it - I need enough volume at enough intensity to maintain muscle mass.
[ul][li]I can’t go to church[/li][li]I can’t go to the gym[/li][li]We can’t have people over for dinner We can’t do date night[/li][/ul]Those are my concerns with the quarantine, pretty much in order.
I have a deeper understanding of why convicts lift weights. It keeps them from going stir crazy.
I have always hated exercise. This follows from two things. 1) Labor being a punishment as a young man 2) Being beaten to the point of bruises, literally dozens of times, over the period of many years in gym classes.
I’ll tell you a secret, though. I went white-water rafting a few years ago & absolutely loved it. I actually enjoyed - really enjoyed - the physical activity - for the first time in my life. I never thought it would happen for me, but I now have a teenie tiny sense of how it might be possible for a people to honestly say that they enjoy exercise.
Although I will never go back, I am glad that it happened for me that one time. Check that one off the bucket list.
I didn’t vote. One reason I work out/walk so much is I don’t enjoy how my body feels when I don’t exercise. My restless legs syndrome gets worse. I get restless. My muscles ache.
No, I don’t think so. I got my left knee (the worse one) scoped back then, and I remember the doc showing me x-rays of calcium deposits in there. I suppose if I were a pro athlete, they’d have scooped all that shit out of both knees at that time, but I wasn’t, so they didn’t.
So to answer your question, I think it was just the luck of the genetic draw (making me prone to calcium deposits in my knees).
Do I like it? Kind of. Do I like the way it makes me look and feel? Hell yes. Do I miss my workout buddies now that my gym is closed? Like crazy. Do I strut when I up my weight? You better believe it.
And here. I’ve worked out consistently for about 35 years, I’m regularly complimented on my physique (which isn’t all that exceptional), and people are always stunned when I mention I don’t like exercising. Exercise is good for you, so I do it.