So by a cruel twist of fate, I’ve found myself doing research which entails watching a good 200 hours of television over the next three months. I absolutely hate being inactive, so I was considering buying a cheap indoors exercise bike (I need to be able to listen, but not necessarily look at the screen). However, I was hoping to find something that was free… aside from basic aerobics (jumping jacks, running in place, building a full-sized SEALS-style obstacle course in the TV room), is there anything obvious I can occupy myself with while watching?
A mini-trampoline is fun and relatively cheap. I picked mine up for £25.
I got a great treadmill free, on www.craigslist.com
I guess you are not watching porn then?
Hah, reminds me of a Harrison Ford interview on the Daily Show. They were talking about how technology, and how the internet was a great place for online shopping and watching porn.
Jon Stewart: “Of course I’m not implying that you shop online. You pay people to do that.”
Harrison Ford: “I pay people to watch my porn, too! Then they report back on what they’ve seen.”
Anyway, no. XD I’m watching news broadcasts, mostly; I’m doing a study on broadcaster English over the last 40 years, and looking for correlates between changes in television English and changes in colloquial or formal spoken registers. That’s why I don’t need to watch it 100% of the time; I can hear most of the patterns, and if something weird crops up in the statistics I’ll go back and start looking for correlates in the facial expressions.
If you are anywhere near St Charles you are welcome to my stationary cycle and/or my Nordictrack. Nearly mint condition 
since I have come to realization of just how dangerous exercise is.
I also have a step-up platform (unused also). This seems to be the cheapest and sturdiest alternative to nothing if you insist on exercising at home.
Do you shoot? You can dry-fire at the TV, shooting the bad guys, or whatever. It’s not exercise but it’s something. Make sure your gun can be dry-fired safely, which may require a dummy round or an empty in the chamber. The late Jeff Cooper suggested doing this for practice, though I think he suggested shooting at the number zero when it appeared, or something like that.
I don’t go to the gym, preferring body-weight exercises. I dunno if that falls into the “basic aerobics” that you aren’t interested in but I do pushups, crunches, chinups, dips and so on in front of the TV (often with a DVD of appropriate music going). I also bought a set of weighted exercise balls (2lbs apiece, about the size of big grapefruits) and juggle them. Several of my friends have a treadmill/exercycle/elliptical/nordictrack device facing their TV as well (I prefer to actually get outside for that stuff…an actual bicycle is cheaper than all those doodads).
Kegels?