I either go over the things I need to get done for the day or go over something that’s bother me/worrying me/making me happy.
Wondering when I’ll have got enough weight off to make jogging a viable alternative to walking. 
All manner of odds and ends, depending on whatever point the stream of consciousness has reached. Sometimes related to what I’m doing at the time, like wondering if I have enough steam left for an extra half-mile and if so how best to fit it in. Mentally reviewing progress to date and what my chances are of being below 200lb by the end of May. Often nothing at all relevant or important.
Tried that. Doesn’t work. But I have strong childhood memories of crying while swimming competitively. True, I was very young (8 and under slot), but I am not all that competitive. I became slightly more so(I swam for 8 years), but I never had that deep urge to be first. I was happy to have placed, if I did.
I liked to run for how it made me feel afterwards. I never had a runner’s high in my life. I want to be fit for my health alone.
When I exercised regularly in the gym, my usual musing was why the volume control on my MP3 player didn’t go high enough to drown out the RnB they played. I want good exercise music that inspires me to keep going, not some bloke whining because he can’t keep a job, ruined his favourite trousers and his woman done treat him bad.
My next thought was usually, “why am I doing this?”
I run with my dad in the mornings and shoot the breeze with him during, so…whatever one talks to one’s dad about. Work, sports, news, etc. (paying back-of-the-mind attention to pace and form, of course). If I’m running by myself, I guess whatever mundane stuff you’d think about while you were vacuuming or doing your dishes…unless I’m doing intervals or speedwork, in which case it’s more like “my, so this is what inhaling liquid fire feels like.”
I compose music or musical arrangements while I’m walking. Occasionally I’ll have extremely graphic and morbid thoughts of dying. Those I’m able to shake off fairly quickly. If I’m on a really long walk, about halfway through I’m thinking “why the heck did I decide to go this far”.
But mostly I’m thinking about the cup of coffee that I’m going to get when my walk is over. (I always walk in the morning as soon as I get up).
When I used to go to Curves, this happened to me, without the MP3. They played such awful music–covers of Teen Angel and the like. Gah. :eek:
I stopped going because of the music.
Usually something along the order of “Okay let’s go! Doing okay okay okay meh meh bored bored bored oooh good song okay okay meh bored bored bored gack can’t breathe now but i gotta lose this weight so let’s go another 5 more minutes bored bored bored how could only 30 seconds have passed since I last checked the time cant breathe cant breathe cant breathe…”
I’m usually concentrating on whatever’s on the TV. Each elliptical, treadmill and stationary bike at the gym has its own little built-in LCD TV, with basic cable. So I’m usually thinking about The King of Queens, or college football, or Iron Chef America.
For running, especially treadmill running, I count. One count every 4 steps. And I play strange math games with the count. When music (from commercials - I watch tv on the treadmill) interrupts, it’s a bit annoying because the beat of the music throws off the counting.
For swimming, math games with the number of laps (usually figuring out the percentage of laps done to the number I need to do for the night or for that segment to at least two decimal places.) It helps keep count.
For swimming and running and cycling, I daydream a lot, too. Between counts.
For weights or dance or yoga, I’m mostly concerned about precision, so there’s a lot of “is my leg in the right place? am I balanced on both sides? hold it - where did the instructor reach to, is that supposed to be halfway up or straight out? can I push farther? Am I supposed to push farther?”
I don’t run or jog unless chased anymore, but back in middle/high school I would congugate French verbs while running.
je vais, tu va…
I end up playing a bunch of math games with the time I have left on the elliptical. “I’ve gone eight minutes, so I’m about a fifth of the way done… It’s like waiting for two bags of popcorn to pop… I’ve done about 90 calories so that’s a quarter of my sandwich at lunch so if I go another 40 minutes I’ll be 90 calories under what I ate etc. etc. etc.”
I run a lot, and I tend to do a lot math. Only really badly. For some reason, my attention span is about 30 seconds when running, so I’ll start dividing something, get distracted by something (Oooh! pretty leaf! bird! tree! sky! etc) and then have to start all over again. I don’t count, exactly. It’s more like I’ll start converting distances from miles to km, over and over again. Or I’ll add up distances I’ve run out to two decimal places. I’ll also do this for pacing, and estimated distances via pacing.
I used to be extremely negative, but lately I have been good at focussing on how much fun I’m having, how beneficial the exercise is, and how nice it is to be losing weight and getting in better shape. Sometimes I’ll get into the “this sucks this sucks this sucks can’t breathe this sucks legs hurt ow ow ow cramp aaarrggh I wanna go home” mood, but I shake it off pretty easily. The only negative thoughts I get often are feelings of jealousy as people pass me. Of course, they are hardcore athletic freaks and thus my self-esteem is saved until somebody else passes me
It helps a lot that my jogging path is the circumference of a beeyootiful reservoir/park.
I hate sweating.
The guy next to me smells horrible. Do I smell that bad?
I'm bored. I wish I had an iPod.
I want to ride the recumbent bike so I can watch the CC'd TVs.
Why are there only three crosstrainers and why is one is always broken?
Is it possible to get a serious illness from gym germs?
I hate the upper body weight machines. I wish I had more upper body strength.
(I didn’t realize my thoughts were so negative…)
Yeah. But, “I’m making my heart and lungs and muscles stronger. I am becoming faster and gaining more endurance every day.” is not near as much fun as bitching and moaning.
Let’s face it. If you don’t feel like bitching about it you are not working hard enough
Running, it varies. For the first few minutes it’s a constant litany of “just keep going another thirty seconds another tenth of a mile you’ll hate yourself if you don’t do this”. Then I hit that point, and for a bit, all thoughts go away. There ideally is loud music blaring through my headphones, my feet are going up and down, and that is all I’m aware of.
If I’m doing weight training it’s pretty much “oh god I hate this, but I’ll feel so much better afterwards.”
Sometimes when I’m exercising, I end up doing a mental re-run through different things going on in my head or major life issues. Sometimes, it ends up being a bit like a spastic three year old’s theme song that they sing aloud, and other times, I actually have some sort of entertainment, so I end up thinking about that. I find that if I’m annoyed about something, I tend to work harder.
When I played volleyball, I would be really focused on the task at hand, but mostly because our drills and the position I played required a lot of teamwork and hand-eye coordination. Sometimes I’d think about other stuff, but it’d be a background monologue rather than the foreground inner monologue.
When I’m on the elliptical I watch a DVD and that keeps me occupied.
When I’m lifting I am usually concentrating on good form or trying to get one more rep.
Solving the Killer Sudoku and Cryptic crosswords
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