If I am walking outside I often will call a friend. Or listen to my iPod.
Inside I have a TV and dvd player set up.
I don’t like excercise. As a matter of fact, I hate it, but I do it because I have to. I have hypothyroidism, so a walk now and then doesn’t shed any pounds. What you describe is fine for maintenance, but motivating yourself to lose 40 lbs is significantly more difficult.
If you enjoy any type of exercise that’s fantastic, but I can’t wrap my mind around that concept.
At the gym, running: Music (and sometimes drumming the treadmill rails to the beat…), watching whatever’s on the televisions, people-watching.
At the gym, on the elliptical: Music and/or reading.
Outside: Music and humming along.
If I’m just out walking or biking for the sake of exercise, I can still get bored. So mostly I bike to work, errands, and any other places I need to go anyway. I’ve set myself a goal of biking 10 miles minimum every day, which is easily achievable by biking to/from work and to/from lunch. For longer weekend rides I pick a specific goal or destination to make it interesting (e.g. riding to a restaurant at the other end of town, or trying to beat my own record riding up a nearby mountain).
Also, exercising became a lot more fun after I bought a really fast bike*. I still get the same amount of exercise for a given amount of time, but I get to travel farther. Which also means I use it to go to more places, and therefore use it more often.
*not my actual bike, but the same model
I only really exercise at the gym, its been years since I’ve had a bike. I personally don’t feel bored while doing weights, I just chill out for a couple minutes between sets, stretch, get a drink of water, zone out a little.
For cardio I find that I need my music otherwise it gets really dull. Music & watching the tv screens up on the wall, along with (being totally honest) checking out the ladies as well. I also try very hard not to stare at the clock, that helps.
This right here. If I had to do this or that exercise on doctor’s orders, I’d absolutely hate it too. This isn’t exactly deep, profound advice, but if there’s some form of exercising that you find you actually like, find a way to make that suit your needs and screw the rest.
When I walk, which is during most of my breaks at work, I prefer to go with a friend. For everything else I listen to music. I bring my MP3 player out with me when I shovel snow, too, and that’s one of the most boring, difficult activities ever.
I have two sets of gym buddies - twice a week I go with my husband and a friend, and the other two days I go with a separate friend. I chat with them in between sets.
Music is definitely important. My cardio playlist has lots of songs that motivate me - mainly 80s pop hits with peppy beats and cheesy workout songs like Eye of the Tiger and Christina Aguilera’s Fighter.
I get my weights program changed every few months.
I also find that the exercises I find less tedious are the ones where I have measurable goals. When I started at the gym I was benching something like 10kg. I’m at 30kg now and within a couple of months of my 40kg goal. My next goal will be to bench press my bodyweight. I also found the couch to 5k program great and I’m just starting the 100 push-ups program.
I enjoy intense cardio classes. The instructor varies the routine so it’s not the same exercises all the time and it’s so full-on that I don’t have time to get bored. It also encourages me to keep going a little longer since everyone else in the class is. The instructor turned 50 last year and has an incredibly tight and toned body - that’s a huge motivator.
You know, I used to like shoveling snow. Of course I was a kid and only had to do it maybe 8-10 times per year. Of course, there’s never enough to shovel here.
I choose dance video workouts with complicated steps so that at first trying to figure them out and keep up chases away boredom, and once I know them it’s just fun to dance and I’m never bored with that. I get as much exercise as I can doing hard physical work outdoors and that isn’t boring either. I listen to music when I lift weights and if I absolutely can’t avoid having to use the exercise bike I watch TV. When the weather is nice I take my camera down to the coast and go on long hikes out to see the elephant seals or further up into the mountains under the redwoods. If I had to go to a gym or do calisthenics or endless repetitive movements I’d never do it.
I upload audio books onto my Ipod and listen to them while working out.
For me, there’s almost nothing duller than running. Even an ipod helps only a little. Find an exercise you’re more interested in. For me, it’s jumping rope or working a heavy bag. The ipod just makes it even better.
If you miss it, move to New England. We got more than ten feet of snow last year. Just six feet so far this year, but it snows through March and into April…
I play racquetball 4 times a week. Great exercise and competition. How can competition get boring.
Then I walk from 1 3/4 to 5 miles a day with 2 beagles. They will not allow me to skip. We have a 16 mile long park a block from my house and we chase squirrels and rabbits.
It seems I’m a bit unusual in this, judging by the other posts, but generally when I’m exercising I daydream. I tend to play out little scenes in my head, often related to what’s going on in my life at the time and they tend to morph into more fantastic stuff. Sometimes if I’m struggling with the exercise I’ll concentrate on motivating myself, for example I’ll break the remaining distance into small goals and will myself on to each one.
I definitely agree that it’s ideal if you can find some exercise that you enjoy. I surprised myself recently when I discovered that I enjoy running. I used to like it when I was a teen but over the last decade I’ve always been put off by pain in my legs and knees and the sense that I wasn’t making any progress. Not long ago I decided to give the Couch to 5k running plan a go, and I’ve found it to be pretty good. After the first couple of weeks I got over the pain hurdle and really started getting into it.
At the start of my C25K running I would amuse myself by counting my steps as that was easier than checking my watch or measuring a distance, after a while that became impractical as the time spent running increased and so I changed to running a measured distance and daydreaming to pass the time.
I’m doing couch-2-5k. I like to listen to right wing talk radio while I run. I spend so much time getting all worked up thinking “he’s so stupid” and coming up with counter arguments that I don’t notice the time passing by.
I don’t do the music thing - one, my ears get sweaty with the earbuds (and sweaty ears leads to fungally infected ears which get itchy and yucky and weeks of treatment). Two, I find the music distracting. When running, I usually just count paces - 1,…,2,…,3,…,4,…,1,…
Same on the bike, but I enjoy the changing scenery. Swimming, I’m breathing, avoiding fellow swimmers and trying to keep count of lengths. On the rowing machine, I compute percentage complete.
In the gym, there is a bit more to engage my attention - a pretty fellow exerciser in a tight top, for example.
The skipping segments of Boxercise class are particularly … diverting. 
Also, the news (with captioning). Otherwise, I mentally make up plotlines and dialog for soaps - Emmerdale is good for this, because I really have no idea what is going on, although The One Show can be good for this, too (riffing on the Christine Bleakley/Adrian Chiles thing).
The worst episode of gym distraction I ever encountered was getting on an exercise bike during a close All Blacks/Australia match. Lots of guys just slowed down and eventually stopped as the tension increased. I kept watching and spinning my legs, and was completely knackered when I realised that I had worked right through the second half. :smack:
Usually when I go, I’m with someone else, and we talk.
over and over and
Over, outdoors an orange leaf
tumbles and turns, until it twists in
the opaque Ohio river. It’s October and
the foliage is falling, fast as snow.
Inside, I incline on an isometric board,
warming up for my workout, watching
August’s grass ever green in a game
of ball that Bonds, Bonilla, all the boys,
the Pittsburgh Pirates, played and play yet.
The tape deteriorates, but the time is eternal.
Now in November this is not news
but warm inside walls I watch, waiting
for a rally. The river freezes and I root,
piling on pounds and pounds of iron pumping,
over and over and over and over and
the golden leaves go as I grunt
soaking in streams of sweat, and the sun
dying in December is in January dead,
and forgotten by February, faded
like my tan. My triceps, and the TV tape,
are strong still, and still I strain
my vertebra, invigorated by viewing videos,
knowing each nuance, every nod and nudge and
move each manager makes. “More
Weight!” I wail, “Way more!” and winter’s
storms of snow and sleet smother
fallen foliage and flakes still fall
over and over and over and over and
I do the same thing; not just when exercising, but whenever I’m bored. It gives me something to focus on other than what I’m doing. Other than daydreaming, I like to listen to music when I’m walking. My iPod hasn’t worked since December, so I make a Youtube playlist of various kinds of music and blast it as loud as I can. Oftentimes people will catch me lip-synching to something embarassing, like Peter Cetera.
I usually listen to audiobooks. Music just doesn’t hold my attention enough.