How about you instead of trying to “get away with” as little exercise as possible you found a way to move your body that you genuinely enjoy? One should not optimise away sleep, nutrition and exercise. Yes we live in a ridiculous fitness and gym boom, but weight training might not actually be a good fit to most people. I love having to psych myself to lift big amounts of steel, I’m ok with bit of pain etc. - mostly people are not. There’s thousands of sports and ways to move out there. You don’t like running, well don’t. Go dancing, hiking, play a team sport, do tai-chi, yoga, goddammit change a hobby every two months, it doesn’t matter. Just do it and do it consistently every week.
And what best helps you in that is enjoying what you do, as well as doing it with a friend.
I am one of “these people.” I’m pointing out something to the gp comment that people don’t consider when they make generalizing, moralizing comments like this.
You’re putting far too much into the response than is there. The point being responded to was “why optimize something like exercise?” a reason was given. It’s not as uncommon as you seem to be making it out to be.
Not necessarily to the same degree. Physical activity can be extremely painful with certain disabilities. In those cases, it can be useful to know how much is enough to stay healthy.
For those people, any kind of a generalized take on "how much you can get away with in terms of fitness" wouldn't be helpful either. They will need a way more specific advice tailored to their individual needs and physical limitations.
It is pretty obvious the grandparent comment was just attempting to give a generalized advice, without claiming that it would comprehensively apply to every single niche condition out there (and it would be rather silly to expect it to).
Obviously there is disabilities that make almost all physical activity impossible. I don’t see your point, I should have made a disclaimer ”except of course people who have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, [list every possible disabling condition]?”
But plenty of people with very disabling conditions became those world class athletes, or live life where they use their bodies to the extent they can. I bet it is because they have found a way to move they truly love. If you do something you like doing, you do it more.
And those limitations don't mean people can't exercise as a whole. As the list they provided explains, the goal is to find something you can do relatively consistently that gets you active. Walking even 5 minutes more than normal is an improvement for many, and you can even reach the level of sports like wheelchair rugby.
If you are in this situation, you should see a physical therapist.
Exercise is even more important if you have a disability, because your muscles will atrophy from disuse and cause even greater disability.
E.g. if you stop moving your leg because you have a bad knee, you will now have a bad knee and a weak leg. If you go to PT and do exercises to strengthen the muscles around the knee, it can take load off the joint and improve function.
I assume this is sarcasm? In the US, getting a medical plan to pay for physical therapy is an uphill battle akin to hiking Mt.Everest. Observed this both with my partner and parent. It's nearly impossible to achieve.
I do not understand this type of objection. What is the point of shooting down a reasonable recommendation (in this case exercise and having fun doing so) with a handwavy moral plight such as yours?
What objection is there? Talk about “handwavy” comments there. This framing is ableist, whether intentional or not, and I was pointing out not everyone is in a situation where this is the case:
> How about you instead of trying to “get away with” as little exercise as possible you found a way to move your body that you genuinely enjoy? One should not optimise away sleep, nutrition and exercise.
Answer: because exercise can be physically very painful, impossible, or sometimes dangerous for people with certain medical conditions. Knowing how much is enough can be useful to know without being shamed for “optimizing” away exercise.
Hope that helps. Pointing out that people with different situations exist to a generalizing comment should not cause such offense, imho.
I've read before that tall people get more cancer than short people, if it's relative to how many cells you have then an extra 30 kilograms of muscle might make a difference too!
This might be good advice for people who haven't already had the rest of the living optimized out of their lives. But not everyone is so lucky...
Also, the article kind of agrees with what you're saying, even if you don't realize it. Any exercise, even if it's not organized like a weight lifting regimen might be, might be enough to keep you healthy. I think leaning into that could make exercise more genuinely enjoyable for many more people, instead of just an exercise in optimization.
Have you ever heard of the motivational technique where, instead of telling themselves "I'm going for a run", people will say "I'm going to put my shoes on and see how I feel, no commitment and no pressure", and they end up nearly always going for a run anyway plus they do it more often and have more fun?
Also, have you read Dynomight's blog post[0] about how the biggest barrier to starting exercise isn't improving too slowly, it's overtraining and giving up?
This article could be seen as a way to do the minimum exercise possible. I think a better reading is that all exercise is good, you can spend five minutes on the exercise bike or do a few leg raises and push-ups, no pressure, it's still good for you, and maybe tomorrow you'll go for a run or make it to the gym.
Yes. I ran a half-marathon few years back when I used to box actively (didn’t compete, but sparred competitors). I woke up early 3 times a week to do 5km run no matter the weather. These days I just lift heavy weights. I think I know every motivational technique there is at this point.
What matters is that you move, consistently, every week, for years, for rest of your life. I’m kinda person who wants to just lay on bed and eat potato chips drinking beer. I used to start some regime or another, always getting bored after few month. Then I just found types of sports and exercises that worked for me and company they are fun to do with, and guess what, I need almost zero motivation to lift some several thousands of kg’s of iron every week.
Consistency, intensity, motivation. Best motivation is fun, especially fun with other people.
Median age of 61… 4.4 minutes of “vigorous” activity. Hard to interpret this as anything else that if you remain being able to be somehow active in your later years you will be better off.
I find all of the studies of “how little exercise” is needed sad. Instead we should be focusing on how to restructure modern lifestyle to allow everybody to achieve the minimum of cardiovascular and strength exercises.
I think what the poster was getting at is that finding a minimum is a negative way to view human health (what is the minimum amount of food a human needs to survive, what is the minimum I need to brush my teeth so they don't fall out of my head, etc.).
Restructuring society in healthy ways (shorter work weeks, bike lanes, green cities, etc.) will allow us to achieve whatever that minimum would have been (had we measured!) and more!
At least I think that's the distinction.
The only time I prefer to sit is after I have done a good deal of exercise. I don't mean that as a jab of any sort, just a differing perspective from someone who gets much more than a minimum of required exercise.
I'm confused. You're saddened by people researching the minimum exercise needed, but want society to aim to give people that minimum? How would society know what the minimum is?
1. Ban overworking. Make it a federal offense. Actually jail CEOs if their employees work >50 hours a week
2. These exercise tracking apps should pay people for the exercise they do. The money will come from health insurance. They pay $1 per mile you run or hike, they save $10 on your future hospitalization.
3. City sponsored exercise events and sports competitions open to everyone, not just athletes. Give tax deductions to those who participate and demonstrate attendance.
The solution is right here, above. Whether the politicians choose to listen, is not something I can influence. But I have given the solution.
Your health insurance or employer may already offer a similar program. Mine does. I get up to $500 added to my HSA every year if I hit step count goals on their app.
That said, looking around my office, I don't think it's very effective. It's hard to get people to exercise and a few hundred bucks doesn't change that.
Agreed. I've figured it out during the drier months in the NW of the States. Plenty of work in the woods, workshop, maintenance, and helping neighbors with the same. But winter and the rains I would inevitably put on 10 pounds and lose my super old guy muscles. My mildly successful campaign against the trend is long rain walks and Convict Conditioning workouts.
It would be cheaper than continuing down the current path. Like I said, the answer is obvious and conceptually simple. Getting people to accept the truth is the hard part.
It may sound crazy, but a properly installed pull up bar on your room doorway is a fun way to apply Pavel Tsatsouline ‘grease the groove’ principle. And it’s both easy and fun. You can do pull ups, and train your abdomen several times a day without getting psychological resistance (from google overview: "Grease the Groove" (GtG) is a strength training method popularized by fitness expert Pavel Tsatsouline. It involves performing a specific exercise frequently throughout the day using only 40–60% of your maximum reps. By avoiding muscle failure and staying fresh, your nervous system efficiently adapts to the movement.")
I'm moving to a new place and my office will have an exposed I-beam and I'm stoked. The healthiest points of my life seem to correlate with industrial architecture that I can hang on directly or with rings!
Way back, working for the 2010 Census, I had an ex-Navy coworker who did something like that: whenever he was bored in the office, he would do a couple of push-ups before looking for new work to do.
Less than 5% of the population can do a pull-up. I can after having climbed for a bit and worked towards doing it, but you might be surprised to learn how few this would actually benefit.
This is where calisthenics comes into play. You can quite easily increase and decrease the leverage on the muscle to workup to the 'main exercise' and even past it. IE, for pull ups, you can hang under a table and do a 'horizontal' pull, you can 'cheat' up the movement (jumping), you can use resistance bands, etc. This is the same for almost every muscle group.
A few friends and I did this during Covid. We'd do 10 pushups at the top of the hour all day long. Each effort was pretty easy, but overall we'd end up doing 100ish pushups a day. After a while we'd increase the number per set a bit.
It was a fun way to bond and share in exercise therapy.
Find something you enjoy doing, then "hack" it to make you participate more.
For example, I play a lot of ultimate in the summer. I play with a lunchtime pickup group, so there is a forcing function to play. I like to bike, and helping coach my daughter's high school mountain bike team ensures I get a lot more miles than I would otherwise. In the winter, I have friends that I ski with. I also enjoy exercising on my own, but some activities are better as a group.
When I worked in an office, I played a lot of ultimate (lunchtime pickup), but also would do walks with colleagues. Great way to combine debugging, learning, and exercise.
I love to run, and even in winter, in the dark, in the rain, I will get home from work at 6pm, eat a small dinner, and head out for a 40-60 minute jog or interval session a few days a week. I do a aerial circus class once a week, too.
I am single and have no children or care giving obligations yet. I bet that when I (hopefully) have small children one day, it will be much harder for me to fit in 3-4 hours a week of running, especially when sleeping enough to feel rested. It would be nice to know what I can do to keep up my health during that phase of life.
I live on 3rd floor with no elevator so I usually have to walk up these twice a day, this along with walking and hanging from a door frame is just enough to keep alive.
What a weird question.
The amount depends on what you hope to accomplish.
Want to be able to get on the floor and play with your grandkids? That's going to require a certain amount of mobility work.
Want to be able to hike up Mount Whitney? You'll need regular cardio.
I also hate the phrasing that exercise is something to "get away with". Most people who exercise regularly enjoy it. Moving your body is fun, especially once you get fit enough to do it without pain or immediate exhaustion.
Gotta fuckin love hn, where you can't say the simplest thing without getting thrown into a well, actually.
I wasn't claiming to have run a damned study. Just making an observation. The thing is, people who don't enjoy exercising but start exercising anyway tend to find they enjoy it after a while. Saying people enjoy exercise is only slightly more controversial than saying "ice cream tastes good". There's a bit of activation energy required, but it's not a huge stretch to notice that something that is good for our bodies gives us pleasure.
And because the most people don't exercise, it's easy to conclude, that the most people don't enjoy it.
One can even conclude reverse, that only people who enjoy exercising, are doing it.
People have all kinds of self-defeating behavior, and those behaviors seem to be on the rise since smartphones became popular. It's likely that people enjoy it and won't do it anyway.
That's a reasonable start for some people but it lacks the resistance training necessary to prevent sarcopenia later in life. Some people get that as part of their job but most of us need to do at least some weight training. Carrying groceries isn't nearly enough.
One thing people out here periodically is how causation is hard to find. Someone who is dying may be not inclined to do anything 'cause they feel lousy all the time.
Lift weights. Do it multiple times a day and chase that pump. Do it for stress relief. Do it to help you fall asleep. Do it to wake up.
It's not all about cardio. Your muscles are such a significant part of your metabolism and far too many people avoid strength training. A ton of problems that arise while aging are ultimately hormonal. Even your skin improves. Cardiovascular health begins here. People are literally running before they can walk.
That's the realistic answer for most people under 65 trying to make it to at least 80 with a decent quality of life.
Yeah I agree, but considering this is HN, there's a large audience of people who want a serious answer despite it being a somewhat silly question. I already know these comments will be absolutely polluted with conjecture that isn't practical.
If someone works from home and doesn't have kids and hates going outside, this is it. If you can at least get into the habit of lifting weights, you're doing better than most.
I'm going to be the one that says it: people avoid cardio because they instantly feel like crap. Why? They lack the strength. Your legs are considered a "second heart" for a reason. When you get your strength up, you feel amazing. That run will no longer feel like a chore.
People not liking cardio was always a weird one to me. Kids love to run around. They naturally do it, no one has to prompt them. Not sure what happens to people as they grow up that makes them lose this joy.
As a person who started lifting weights in my young age of 40 something, and doing it for a bit over 2 years consistently, I'll add that your muscles absolutely fucking love it. Seeing something which is a round skin and bone turn into angular muscle and tendon mass is intoxicating and a great morale booster. I just wish I have started earlier which probably would have saved me for going to two ugly spine surgeries.
At least 30 minutes in a day, probably 3 days a week at minumum as the body requires it to maintain itself that is though if you want to live a happy and good life, but then over doing its isnt good as well, theres need to be a balance in everything
Overdoing it is a real risk, I learned recently. If you work out too hard, you actually produce free radicals. The tricky thing is that some people can get used to higher heart rate so it doesn’t matter if they are working out hard consistently because they are used to it.
That's not how any of this works. Exercise causes some oxidative stress but this isn't a problem in practice. There is only a tiny fraction of committed athletes who over train to the point where it becomes detrimental; most people simply don't have the time or discipline to get anywhere close to that point.
As for heart rate, going above threshold is never comfortable. But it's a good pain and you can get used to tolerating it for occasional high-intensity interval workouts. Over time this will decrease your resting heart rate and reduce the risk of a major adverse cardiovascular event (MACE).
You need to ramp up, of course. Given you're training at an appropriate rate, and you're doing sensible things - you should be fine. By sensible things I mean: short and intense weight training, intense cardio sessions, and not-too-long endurance sessions (eg: < 5h). More endurance is fine, but it can be very fatiguing, especially for the older athlete. If you ramp up to those over time, you needn't worry about "free radicals" (that's an oversimplification).
Recent research highlights a number of things, but what sticks out is that it's important to maintaining muscle mass because we lose a bunch as we get older, and loss of muscle is a leading morbidity factor.
The level which means you keep doing it is the right level.
For me that's 20 minutes a day on a rowing machine plus some body weight strength exercises.
Which is about a YouTube video long and as a result I basically only watch YouTube content when I'm doing it (hey I'd like to watch this -> I should go start rowing) is a surprisingly good motivator.
Folks should be getting out for a brisk >20 minute/1mile/2km early/late walk everyday when its cool outside, and if you have a dog it is 2 to 3 times a day with shorter <10min sessions if you value the carpets.
Many that complain about neck or back problems are almost always suffering from stress/burnout, RSI, and or a sedentary lifestyle. Take it slow at first to avoid injuring yourself, and head home if you feel out of breath each journey. And remember to stay hydrated with normal clean water.
Getting outside regularly will help most folks live better longer lives. Have a wonderful day. =3
How about you instead of trying to “get away with” as little exercise as possible you found a way to move your body that you genuinely enjoy? One should not optimise away sleep, nutrition and exercise. Yes we live in a ridiculous fitness and gym boom, but weight training might not actually be a good fit to most people. I love having to psych myself to lift big amounts of steel, I’m ok with bit of pain etc. - mostly people are not. There’s thousands of sports and ways to move out there. You don’t like running, well don’t. Go dancing, hiking, play a team sport, do tai-chi, yoga, goddammit change a hobby every two months, it doesn’t matter. Just do it and do it consistently every week.
And what best helps you in that is enjoying what you do, as well as doing it with a friend.
Some people have disabilities or physical limitations.
Do these people you mention read a comment on the internet saying people should exercise more and think that comment is referring to them?
I am one of “these people.” I’m pointing out something to the gp comment that people don’t consider when they make generalizing, moralizing comments like this.
But if the comment wasn't considering you, then they weren't telling you to exercise.
Nobody is telling someone who physically can't run to run. There is no reason to interpret it this way.
You’re putting far too much into the response than is there. The point being responded to was “why optimize something like exercise?” a reason was given. It’s not as uncommon as you seem to be making it out to be.
All the more reason to be more active. Everyone struggles.
Not necessarily to the same degree. Physical activity can be extremely painful with certain disabilities. In those cases, it can be useful to know how much is enough to stay healthy.
For those people, any kind of a generalized take on "how much you can get away with in terms of fitness" wouldn't be helpful either. They will need a way more specific advice tailored to their individual needs and physical limitations.
It is pretty obvious the grandparent comment was just attempting to give a generalized advice, without claiming that it would comprehensively apply to every single niche condition out there (and it would be rather silly to expect it to).
There’s even Paralympics in this world. People with disabilities do sports, although obviously it complicates things.
Those people are world class athletes. Lots of disabilities cause physical activity to be extraordinarily painful or difficult.
Obviously there is disabilities that make almost all physical activity impossible. I don’t see your point, I should have made a disclaimer ”except of course people who have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, [list every possible disabling condition]?”
But plenty of people with very disabling conditions became those world class athletes, or live life where they use their bodies to the extent they can. I bet it is because they have found a way to move they truly love. If you do something you like doing, you do it more.
And those limitations don't mean people can't exercise as a whole. As the list they provided explains, the goal is to find something you can do relatively consistently that gets you active. Walking even 5 minutes more than normal is an improvement for many, and you can even reach the level of sports like wheelchair rugby.
If you are in this situation, you should see a physical therapist.
Exercise is even more important if you have a disability, because your muscles will atrophy from disuse and cause even greater disability.
E.g. if you stop moving your leg because you have a bad knee, you will now have a bad knee and a weak leg. If you go to PT and do exercises to strengthen the muscles around the knee, it can take load off the joint and improve function.
Luckily PT is cheap and affordable and available under most us insurance plans.
I assume this is sarcasm? In the US, getting a medical plan to pay for physical therapy is an uphill battle akin to hiking Mt.Everest. Observed this both with my partner and parent. It's nearly impossible to achieve.
I do not understand this type of objection. What is the point of shooting down a reasonable recommendation (in this case exercise and having fun doing so) with a handwavy moral plight such as yours?
It truly is a bizarre spin on whataboutism.
What objection is there? Talk about “handwavy” comments there. This framing is ableist, whether intentional or not, and I was pointing out not everyone is in a situation where this is the case:
> How about you instead of trying to “get away with” as little exercise as possible you found a way to move your body that you genuinely enjoy? One should not optimise away sleep, nutrition and exercise.
Answer: because exercise can be physically very painful, impossible, or sometimes dangerous for people with certain medical conditions. Knowing how much is enough can be useful to know without being shamed for “optimizing” away exercise.
Hope that helps. Pointing out that people with different situations exist to a generalizing comment should not cause such offense, imho.
"but weight training might not actually be a good fit to most people. I"
People will eventually realize it causes cancer. Weight training literally generates inflammation.
just raise interest rates to counteract, then
perhaps you meant inflammation
resistance training doesn't cause cancer though
I suppose that if your muscles grow rapidly, you could call that inflation of some kind? Connection to cancer still unclear though.
Can you provide studies/sources for your claims?
I've read before that tall people get more cancer than short people, if it's relative to how many cells you have then an extra 30 kilograms of muscle might make a difference too!
Virtually no one puts on 30 kg of muscle by weight training without steroids. Certainly not by accident. Those are like college-NFL football numbers.
The studies I've seen point to a reduce risk & mortality of diseases inclusive of cancer, not sure what you've been reading from.
> People will eventually realize it causes cancer. Weight training literally generates inflation.
Inflation? I don't think this comment could have better intentionally illustrated how ill-informed it is if you tried.
Lol. Sorry typo. Fixed.
walking, walking, walking, walking
having a well-rounded diet and getting an hour of walking in daily is like 90% of the way there for good health.
(actually, proper sleep is the #1 most important thing)
And exercise helps sleep! It's an unbelievable virtuous cycle.
Not in every case. Endurance work will destroy sleep quality for 1-2 nights.
This might be good advice for people who haven't already had the rest of the living optimized out of their lives. But not everyone is so lucky...
Also, the article kind of agrees with what you're saying, even if you don't realize it. Any exercise, even if it's not organized like a weight lifting regimen might be, might be enough to keep you healthy. I think leaning into that could make exercise more genuinely enjoyable for many more people, instead of just an exercise in optimization.
Have you ever heard of the motivational technique where, instead of telling themselves "I'm going for a run", people will say "I'm going to put my shoes on and see how I feel, no commitment and no pressure", and they end up nearly always going for a run anyway plus they do it more often and have more fun?
Also, have you read Dynomight's blog post[0] about how the biggest barrier to starting exercise isn't improving too slowly, it's overtraining and giving up?
This article could be seen as a way to do the minimum exercise possible. I think a better reading is that all exercise is good, you can spend five minutes on the exercise bike or do a few leg raises and push-ups, no pressure, it's still good for you, and maybe tomorrow you'll go for a run or make it to the gym.
[0] https://dynomight.net/2021/01/25/how-to-run-without-all-the-...
Yes. I ran a half-marathon few years back when I used to box actively (didn’t compete, but sparred competitors). I woke up early 3 times a week to do 5km run no matter the weather. These days I just lift heavy weights. I think I know every motivational technique there is at this point.
What matters is that you move, consistently, every week, for years, for rest of your life. I’m kinda person who wants to just lay on bed and eat potato chips drinking beer. I used to start some regime or another, always getting bored after few month. Then I just found types of sports and exercises that worked for me and company they are fun to do with, and guess what, I need almost zero motivation to lift some several thousands of kg’s of iron every week.
Consistency, intensity, motivation. Best motivation is fun, especially fun with other people.
I have a deep, visceral revulsion to physical effort in all its forms, with three exceptions: riding a bicycle, swimming and climbing things.
Small doses of psychedelics invert this, and I find myself running and doing push-ups and enjoying it. I have no idea how that works.
I call it dancing.
Median age of 61… 4.4 minutes of “vigorous” activity. Hard to interpret this as anything else that if you remain being able to be somehow active in your later years you will be better off.
I find all of the studies of “how little exercise” is needed sad. Instead we should be focusing on how to restructure modern lifestyle to allow everybody to achieve the minimum of cardiovascular and strength exercises.
> allow everybody to achieve the minimum of cardiovascular and strength exercises
Aren't you just asking the same question?
I certainly prefer sitting then doing exercise, I just also don't like the consequences of doing none.
I think what the poster was getting at is that finding a minimum is a negative way to view human health (what is the minimum amount of food a human needs to survive, what is the minimum I need to brush my teeth so they don't fall out of my head, etc.).
Restructuring society in healthy ways (shorter work weeks, bike lanes, green cities, etc.) will allow us to achieve whatever that minimum would have been (had we measured!) and more!
At least I think that's the distinction.
The only time I prefer to sit is after I have done a good deal of exercise. I don't mean that as a jab of any sort, just a differing perspective from someone who gets much more than a minimum of required exercise.
I'm confused. You're saddened by people researching the minimum exercise needed, but want society to aim to give people that minimum? How would society know what the minimum is?
Presumably it’s a known amount approximately matching what they do.
Restructuring the modern lifestyle, allowing people more free time to focus on their health, is unprofitable.
Whereas minimizing the amount of free time people spend on their health, allowing people more time to labor or consume, is profitable.
100% agree. The real battle isn't the actual exercise. It's initiating it in the face of endless distractions.
Once you make it a habit like brushing your teeth the distractions cease to be an obstacle.
It's not hard to restructure it at all.
1. Ban overworking. Make it a federal offense. Actually jail CEOs if their employees work >50 hours a week
2. These exercise tracking apps should pay people for the exercise they do. The money will come from health insurance. They pay $1 per mile you run or hike, they save $10 on your future hospitalization.
3. City sponsored exercise events and sports competitions open to everyone, not just athletes. Give tax deductions to those who participate and demonstrate attendance.
The solution is right here, above. Whether the politicians choose to listen, is not something I can influence. But I have given the solution.
Your health insurance or employer may already offer a similar program. Mine does. I get up to $500 added to my HSA every year if I hit step count goals on their app.
That said, looking around my office, I don't think it's very effective. It's hard to get people to exercise and a few hundred bucks doesn't change that.
Agreed. I've figured it out during the drier months in the NW of the States. Plenty of work in the woods, workshop, maintenance, and helping neighbors with the same. But winter and the rains I would inevitably put on 10 pounds and lose my super old guy muscles. My mildly successful campaign against the trend is long rain walks and Convict Conditioning workouts.
Completely restructuring society seems so simple to some people.
What needs to be done is relatively simple. Convincing society to fix what's broken is the hard part.
We need to restructure cities away from being driving focused.
A lot of Americans genuinely like their cars and low-density single family neighborhoods.
This would also be a massive and expensive undertaking that would require rebuilding the majority of city infrastructure.
It would be cheaper than continuing down the current path. Like I said, the answer is obvious and conceptually simple. Getting people to accept the truth is the hard part.
It may sound crazy, but a properly installed pull up bar on your room doorway is a fun way to apply Pavel Tsatsouline ‘grease the groove’ principle. And it’s both easy and fun. You can do pull ups, and train your abdomen several times a day without getting psychological resistance (from google overview: "Grease the Groove" (GtG) is a strength training method popularized by fitness expert Pavel Tsatsouline. It involves performing a specific exercise frequently throughout the day using only 40–60% of your maximum reps. By avoiding muscle failure and staying fresh, your nervous system efficiently adapts to the movement.")
I'm moving to a new place and my office will have an exposed I-beam and I'm stoked. The healthiest points of my life seem to correlate with industrial architecture that I can hang on directly or with rings!
Way back, working for the 2010 Census, I had an ex-Navy coworker who did something like that: whenever he was bored in the office, he would do a couple of push-ups before looking for new work to do.
Less than 5% of the population can do a pull-up. I can after having climbed for a bit and worked towards doing it, but you might be surprised to learn how few this would actually benefit.
if it's sturdy/you're light then doing eccentrics (jump up, come down unassisted) is a good way of working up to full pull ups.
This is where calisthenics comes into play. You can quite easily increase and decrease the leverage on the muscle to workup to the 'main exercise' and even past it. IE, for pull ups, you can hang under a table and do a 'horizontal' pull, you can 'cheat' up the movement (jumping), you can use resistance bands, etc. This is the same for almost every muscle group.
A few friends and I did this during Covid. We'd do 10 pushups at the top of the hour all day long. Each effort was pretty easy, but overall we'd end up doing 100ish pushups a day. After a while we'd increase the number per set a bit.
It was a fun way to bond and share in exercise therapy.
My dentist told me I don't have to floss all of my teeth, just the ones I want to keep. You don't have to exercise all of your muscles either.
https://archive.is/mai5w
Find something you enjoy doing, then "hack" it to make you participate more.
For example, I play a lot of ultimate in the summer. I play with a lunchtime pickup group, so there is a forcing function to play. I like to bike, and helping coach my daughter's high school mountain bike team ensures I get a lot more miles than I would otherwise. In the winter, I have friends that I ski with. I also enjoy exercising on my own, but some activities are better as a group.
When I worked in an office, I played a lot of ultimate (lunchtime pickup), but also would do walks with colleagues. Great way to combine debugging, learning, and exercise.
I love to run, and even in winter, in the dark, in the rain, I will get home from work at 6pm, eat a small dinner, and head out for a 40-60 minute jog or interval session a few days a week. I do a aerial circus class once a week, too.
I am single and have no children or care giving obligations yet. I bet that when I (hopefully) have small children one day, it will be much harder for me to fit in 3-4 hours a week of running, especially when sleeping enough to feel rested. It would be nice to know what I can do to keep up my health during that phase of life.
Buy a jogging stroller. You'll have to accept some loss of sleep though, that's just the way it goes.
I live on 3rd floor with no elevator so I usually have to walk up these twice a day, this along with walking and hanging from a door frame is just enough to keep alive.
What a weird question. The amount depends on what you hope to accomplish.
Want to be able to get on the floor and play with your grandkids? That's going to require a certain amount of mobility work.
Want to be able to hike up Mount Whitney? You'll need regular cardio.
I also hate the phrasing that exercise is something to "get away with". Most people who exercise regularly enjoy it. Moving your body is fun, especially once you get fit enough to do it without pain or immediate exhaustion.
Most people who exercise regularly enjoy it.
There's a huge selection effect here.
Gotta fuckin love hn, where you can't say the simplest thing without getting thrown into a well, actually.
I wasn't claiming to have run a damned study. Just making an observation. The thing is, people who don't enjoy exercising but start exercising anyway tend to find they enjoy it after a while. Saying people enjoy exercise is only slightly more controversial than saying "ice cream tastes good". There's a bit of activation energy required, but it's not a huge stretch to notice that something that is good for our bodies gives us pleasure.
> Most people who exercise regularly enjoy it.
And because the most people don't exercise, it's easy to conclude, that the most people don't enjoy it. One can even conclude reverse, that only people who enjoy exercising, are doing it.
I doubt it.
People have all kinds of self-defeating behavior, and those behaviors seem to be on the rise since smartphones became popular. It's likely that people enjoy it and won't do it anyway.
I’ll tell you an easy way to get away with absolutely no exercise: design your life in such a way that moving around is a normal part of it.
Live in a "fifteen minute city." Work someplace that’s either a thirty minute walk or thirty minute bike ride from home. Carry your groceries.
If you get your minimal daily requirement of exercise by just living your normal life, any additional exercise you do is bonus, icing on your cake.
That's a reasonable start for some people but it lacks the resistance training necessary to prevent sarcopenia later in life. Some people get that as part of their job but most of us need to do at least some weight training. Carrying groceries isn't nearly enough.
One thing people out here periodically is how causation is hard to find. Someone who is dying may be not inclined to do anything 'cause they feel lousy all the time.
Lift weights. Do it multiple times a day and chase that pump. Do it for stress relief. Do it to help you fall asleep. Do it to wake up.
It's not all about cardio. Your muscles are such a significant part of your metabolism and far too many people avoid strength training. A ton of problems that arise while aging are ultimately hormonal. Even your skin improves. Cardiovascular health begins here. People are literally running before they can walk.
That's the realistic answer for most people under 65 trying to make it to at least 80 with a decent quality of life.
Lift weights, but like 30-60 minutes 3x a week is plenty. You definitely don't have to do it multiple times a day if that would be inconvenient.
Yeah I agree, but considering this is HN, there's a large audience of people who want a serious answer despite it being a somewhat silly question. I already know these comments will be absolutely polluted with conjecture that isn't practical.
If someone works from home and doesn't have kids and hates going outside, this is it. If you can at least get into the habit of lifting weights, you're doing better than most.
I'm going to be the one that says it: people avoid cardio because they instantly feel like crap. Why? They lack the strength. Your legs are considered a "second heart" for a reason. When you get your strength up, you feel amazing. That run will no longer feel like a chore.
I can't object to any of that. If you can swing the space for a squat rack at home, it's pretty life-changing. Highly recommend.
People not liking cardio was always a weird one to me. Kids love to run around. They naturally do it, no one has to prompt them. Not sure what happens to people as they grow up that makes them lose this joy.
Kids have a higher strength-to-weight ratio. It's not psychological.
It's less effort for them to move around like that, which was my original point.
As a person who started lifting weights in my young age of 40 something, and doing it for a bit over 2 years consistently, I'll add that your muscles absolutely fucking love it. Seeing something which is a round skin and bone turn into angular muscle and tendon mass is intoxicating and a great morale booster. I just wish I have started earlier which probably would have saved me for going to two ugly spine surgeries.
At least 30 minutes in a day, probably 3 days a week at minumum as the body requires it to maintain itself that is though if you want to live a happy and good life, but then over doing its isnt good as well, theres need to be a balance in everything
Overdoing it is a real risk, I learned recently. If you work out too hard, you actually produce free radicals. The tricky thing is that some people can get used to higher heart rate so it doesn’t matter if they are working out hard consistently because they are used to it.
That's not how any of this works. Exercise causes some oxidative stress but this isn't a problem in practice. There is only a tiny fraction of committed athletes who over train to the point where it becomes detrimental; most people simply don't have the time or discipline to get anywhere close to that point.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jshs.2020.04.001
As for heart rate, going above threshold is never comfortable. But it's a good pain and you can get used to tolerating it for occasional high-intensity interval workouts. Over time this will decrease your resting heart rate and reduce the risk of a major adverse cardiovascular event (MACE).
You need to ramp up, of course. Given you're training at an appropriate rate, and you're doing sensible things - you should be fine. By sensible things I mean: short and intense weight training, intense cardio sessions, and not-too-long endurance sessions (eg: < 5h). More endurance is fine, but it can be very fatiguing, especially for the older athlete. If you ramp up to those over time, you needn't worry about "free radicals" (that's an oversimplification).
Recent research highlights a number of things, but what sticks out is that it's important to maintaining muscle mass because we lose a bunch as we get older, and loss of muscle is a leading morbidity factor.
The level which means you keep doing it is the right level.
For me that's 20 minutes a day on a rowing machine plus some body weight strength exercises.
Which is about a YouTube video long and as a result I basically only watch YouTube content when I'm doing it (hey I'd like to watch this -> I should go start rowing) is a surprisingly good motivator.
If you're going to exercise 3+ times a week, make sure to work on different parts of your body during each session or you risk injuring yourself.
For example if you are doing arm exercises Monday, don't do arm exercises again Tuesday, work another muscle groups like your legs.
I had to learn this the hard way when I was starting out..
Folks should be getting out for a brisk >20 minute/1mile/2km early/late walk everyday when its cool outside, and if you have a dog it is 2 to 3 times a day with shorter <10min sessions if you value the carpets.
Many that complain about neck or back problems are almost always suffering from stress/burnout, RSI, and or a sedentary lifestyle. Take it slow at first to avoid injuring yourself, and head home if you feel out of breath each journey. And remember to stay hydrated with normal clean water.
Getting outside regularly will help most folks live better longer lives. Have a wonderful day. =3
zero, duh.