No app. Apps are all now.
Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising
71–80 of 94 posts
Re: Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising
#72No app will work. You just have to reprogram yourself to do it. Nothing else but ACTION will suffice for exercising. A very fit friend of mine said to me many years ago "I just don't give myself any choice about whether I'm going to the gym." You can talk and use apps and make plans and get trainers and coaches and excuses etc etc etc but in the end the ONLY thing that works is ACTION - go and exercise. Find an exerc…
It's 102. All the CrossFit gyms in Texas don't have ac. I'm miserable. Also I don't have a death wish.. no choice no option.
I'm about to force myself to spend 180 a month for a crowded upscale 24 fitness. But the Olympic gym that wanted 320 a month takes the Cake.
When I wasn't living in a literal oven I would go as far as the drive 30 minutes to do CrossFit or Oly. I have a metal block on not group classes. Only CrossFit works for me. I never get results at a vanilla gym. But you are right its a no choice situation. But for me it works to have a chart with weekly cells.. hard to break that chain when you need a new poster board...
Re: Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising
#73No app will work. You just have to reprogram yourself to do it. Nothing else but ACTION will suffice for exercising. A very fit friend of mine said to me many years ago "I just don't give myself any choice about whether I'm going to the gym." You can talk and use apps and make plans and get trainers and coaches and excuses etc etc etc but in the end the ONLY thing that works is ACTION - go and exercise. Find an exerc…
Having said that - I think it's a great business to make apps for this stuff and there is big money in it. The reason is simply because people don't want to take action. They want to procrastinate and avoid and find ways of almost exercising and there's absolutely no better way to do that than to delegate all your emotional energy on the subject to some sort of app. Apps to encourage you to exercise are awesome busin…
(Assuming that reply wasn't sarcastic to the core.)
> Apps to encourage you to exercise are awesome business - they just aren't a way to actually become an exercising person but who really cares about that.
Moral human beings with any sense of self-respect.
Trade is about voluntarily exchanging value. I give you something (like money), you give me something in return (like an app that does what I need), we're both happy. What you're praising here is a violation of this - it's encouraging people to lie about the value they're offering. It's wrong.
Re: Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising
#74I started regularly excercising every day, after I realized I could use it as a means of procrastination.
I can seriously recommend it. Go for a run, if you're finding yourself putting off something with the intention of working when you get back.
Re: Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like poor streak design if it never lets you miss a day. Kind of tragic that they'd impose that on humans.
They have streak freeze now. Not sure if it’s because I’m a premium subscriber or not, but it keeps my streak going if I miss a day but come back.
I think they realized streak breaking is a serious problem for people (that people only discover when they're about to break it; I can confirm my wife had this very situation with Duolingo) - and figured out they can make money off it. AFAIK, freezing streaks is tied to in-app purchases somehow, or otherwise burns some gems or points you can replenish with money.
My own experience in trying maintaining chains of habits confirms it too - once I slipped on a longer streak, I immediately thought "screw this, I'm not doing this anymore" - because my mental set point moved from "doing something" to "I need to do a streak at least as long as the previous one, and man, how long will that take...".
Re: Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
They have streak freeze now. Not sure if it’s because I’m a premium subscriber or not, but it keeps my streak going if I miss a day but come back.
I think they realized streak breaking is a serious problem for people (that people only discover when they're about to break it; I can confirm my wife had this very situation with Duolingo) - and figured out they can make money off it. AFAIK, freezing streaks is tied to in-app purchases somehow, or otherwise burns some gems or points you can replenish with money. My own experience in trying maintaining chains of habi…
Streak freezing things can be purches with their in-app currency "gems", which can be obtained without paying. Not even sure if you can buy them. I have so much more of these than I'd ever need, just because you can do barely anything with them
Re: Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
A wall calendar helped me as well with a meditation habit. My longest streak was 100+ days of at least 20mins sitting. I tried with apps later on, but nothing matches a huge calendar and marking the box with a big X. I'm glad to hear someone else had the same experience. I wonder what it is that causes one to work better than the other...
I think wall calendar is always there. I have it in my bedroom, so I see pretty much first thing when I wake up and last thing when I sleep. App - you have to look for it and it is constantly in your face, so to say.
It's still somewhat dependent on the person. I tried the wall calendar and even large whiteboard in my room to track streaks and habits, and then discovered my brain has repurposed its internal adblock to remove these habit trackers from my conscious attention. :/. I have the same problem with TODO lists, so I have to switch the way I track tasks every couple weeks.
Re: Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising
#78My current trick for aerobic exercises is... Beat Saber. It's a rhythm game for VR headsets, in which you use your controllers as light sabers and have to cut apart cubes and avoid obstacles, all to the beat of music. At higher difficulty levels it gets pretty intense, so it works great as an exercise, and it's also fun. You don't even notice when you start sweating from exertion.
My wife and I talked a lot about getting a dancing mat, which was my college friend's go-to exercise technique (he ended up going semi-pro and winning some awards in StepMania competitions), but dancing mats - especially hard ones - make a lot of noise, making them unsuitable for use in an apartment in a block of flats. Dancing games have similar benefits - exercising becomes fun, and there's built-in progression to guide you. But after Oculus Quest - a standalone, untethered VR headset - came out, we decided to go the Beat Saber route. Waving hands doesn't make the noise stepping does, and untethered headset is even more portable than the dancing mat.
Re: Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising
#79For me it's the opposite issue - I am paid to motivate me to sit at a desk and stare at a screen. At all other awake times I cannot resist cooking, eating, running, cycling and rowing as much as possible. Occasionally I enter challenging endurance events. I prefer trail running because its the most challenging for me. I am not great at any of it but I just love doing it.
Re: Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising
#80No app will work. You just have to reprogram yourself to do it. Nothing else but ACTION will suffice for exercising. A very fit friend of mine said to me many years ago "I just don't give myself any choice about whether I'm going to the gym." You can talk and use apps and make plans and get trainers and coaches and excuses etc etc etc but in the end the ONLY thing that works is ACTION - go and exercise. Find an exerc…
It's 102. All the CrossFit gyms in Texas don't have ac. I'm miserable. Also I don't have a death wish.. no choice no option. I'm about to force myself to spend 180 a month for a crowded upscale 24 fitness. But the Olympic gym that wanted 320 a month takes the Cake. When I wasn't living in a literal oven I would go as far as the drive 30 minutes to do CrossFit or Oly. I have a metal block on not group classes. Only Cr…
> I never get results at a vanilla gym.
How are you defining results?
If you watch yt videos by Arnold or Jay Cutler and just go to the gym, you'll be the strongest guy there in about a year.
If you mean lose weight, that's 99% an intake problem.