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A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

herman.bearblog.dev

11–20 of 99 posts

Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

#11
Why is this titled "Advice for New Developers"? The actual blog post is called "The best investment".

A proper title for HN, imo, would be "A personal fitness trainer is the best investment".

I wouldn't have clicked on that one and saved myself from reading an article that is irrelevant to me.

Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

#12

> Having a trainer has a better set of incentives. Firstly there's the loss-aversion of having already paid for the session. Humans are irrationally motivated by loss-aversion and regualrly succumb to the sunk-cost fallacy. I disagree. "Having paid for it" is a bad motivation and sparingly works. I know several folks who bought expensive cameras, bicycles, and guitars which only gather dust. The bicycle I rode almost…

Gyms finance themselves by the people who are paying and not coming.

My advice on building a sports habbit is: Get enough stuff to get yourself motivated. If you are running, getting good (!= expensive) shoes and some sports clothes is a good starter. If it helps to have one of those fitness watches go for it, but there are free phone apps that can do basic things as well. Gear is never an excuse in running. There are people who run marathons barefoot.

Having good shoes and clothes helps you not to stop because of some excuse tho. Clothes are important, because with good clothes you can run also when it is raining, windy and it has single digit Celsius temperatures. Shoes the same: with good shoes the pain point will come later.

Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

#13
The advice I would give to my 20 years old self is to stop considering sleep as a waste of time. Good sleep is the best productivity boost, it is also a canary for your overall well-being.

Good sleep is something that is worth investing into, bed, noise, temperature, light, and many other factors.

The second advice would be to learn to cook your own meals.

Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

#14

> Having a trainer has a better set of incentives. Firstly there's the loss-aversion of having already paid for the session. Humans are irrationally motivated by loss-aversion and regualrly succumb to the sunk-cost fallacy. I disagree. "Having paid for it" is a bad motivation and sparingly works. I know several folks who bought expensive cameras, bicycles, and guitars which only gather dust. The bicycle I rode almost…

I think having a personal trainer creates incentive more around anxiety, rather than sunken cost. It's different than gear.

Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

#15
> Humans are irrationally motivated by loss-aversion and regualrly succumb to the sunk-cost fallacy.

This is not irrational and it's not a fallacy. As you have proved to yourself. It's a mental heuristic that works. You spent money to get something valuable, it would be foolish to let that go to waste. What about that exactly is irrational?

Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

#16
post #9

> I've also passed the threshold of exercise feeling like a chore. It's now something I enjoy and even look forward to. This took over a year to achieve but it does happen, I promise. This was the most surprising part for me : I used to be the stereotypical anti sport nerd when I was young, and when I started training, even a bit, it was a proper chore and something that required motivation. But after running regular…

Although I never hated sports I had the same experience. A few points for those who think about getting into running: * make sure you are doing training units of at least 30 mins regularily. Going shorter than that is not really useful to get you actually trained. * If you try to get better endurance most of your training should be aerobic (instead of anaerobic), this means it should be easy for you to do. Doing anae…

Not an expert, but I don't think what you say represent the current state of knowledge. As far as I know...

> make sure you are doing training units of at least 30 mins regularily. Going shorter than that is not really useful to get you actually trained.

That's not true. Less time can be effective as well, given that the intensity is high enough.

> If you try to get better endurance most of your training should be aerobic (instead of anaerobic)

It's actually the opposite and interval training (mixed aerobic and anaerobic) seems to be more effective.

> the most important thing are the fitting shoes (to avoid pain in the joints). Retailers will often offer a analysis of your running style and offer you the fitting shoes. Those should then be changed every 600 to 800 km.

Running without shoes (or barefoot-shoes) is probably even better once you have adapted to it.

> for certain people with bad joints or other related issues cycling or swimming might be better choices

Even rope jumping is considered much better than jogging since the force is always distributed across both legs at the same time.

Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

#17
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I never hated sports I had the same experience. A few points for those who think about getting into running: * make sure you are doing training units of at least 30 mins regularily. Going shorter than that is not really useful to get you actually trained. * If you try to get better endurance most of your training should be aerobic (instead of anaerobic), this means it should be easy for you to do. Doing anae…

Not an expert, but I don't think what you say represent the current state of knowledge. As far as I know... > make sure you are doing training units of at least 30 mins regularily. Going shorter than that is not really useful to get you actually trained. That's not true. Less time can be effective as well, given that the intensity is high enough. > If you try to get better endurance most of your training should be ae…

>> for certain people with bad joints or other related issues cycling or swimming might be better choices

> Even rope jumping is considered much better than jogging since the force is always distributed across both legs at the same time.

If your joints are bad enough, you have to specifically avoid impact. Rope jumping is slightly less bad than running but still one impact after the other.

Cycling and swimming require cyclical motions that you can perform without having to sustain impacts.

Speaking from close personal experience here (my SO), rope jumping is actually what caused the joint problems. She can't do running or rope jumping anymore. Swimming and cycling are no problem though.

All this just to back up GPs claim that swimming and cycling are great alternatives to running if you have bad joints. As parent said, rope jumping is indeed slightly better than running, but still not a great alternative due to impacting motion.

One more thing: not a doctor.

Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

#18
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I never hated sports I had the same experience. A few points for those who think about getting into running: * make sure you are doing training units of at least 30 mins regularily. Going shorter than that is not really useful to get you actually trained. * If you try to get better endurance most of your training should be aerobic (instead of anaerobic), this means it should be easy for you to do. Doing anae…

Not an expert, but I don't think what you say represent the current state of knowledge. As far as I know... > make sure you are doing training units of at least 30 mins regularily. Going shorter than that is not really useful to get you actually trained. That's not true. Less time can be effective as well, given that the intensity is high enough. > If you try to get better endurance most of your training should be ae…

    >> If you try to get better endurance most of your training should be aerobic (instead of anaerobic)

    >It's actually the opposite and interval training (mixed aerobic and anaerobic) seems to be more effective.
Wrong and easy to prove that its wrong, just look at a training regiment of any elite runner in any distance. Most coaches agree that 80% percent of your volume should be easy aerobic for any goal. Doing high intensity without a well developed aerobic base means you will hit a plateau with your performance sooner or later.

    >Running without shoes (or barefoot-shoes) is probably even better once you have adapted to it.
The Born to Run fad has been over for years now. Consensus is incorporating barefoot running into your training makes little difference to performance except you'll probably injure yourself if you're not careful.

I've been walking in barefoot shoes for 2 years now and I've gotten tremendous benefits, but running serious mileage in them is a completely different story. Unless you want to get better at barefoot running, it's not useful.

Again, if it was useful at all you would be seeing professional athletes doing it. The most they do is some barefoot strides on the grass by the track.

Re: A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

#20

Quoted post unavailable.

Pure plagiarism of Cryptonic's top-level comment

Possibly because it works for more people than Cryptonic?

I could say exactly the same thing with different details (walking and some martial art for me). The most difficult thing is dragging your butt to practice regularly.

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