Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A personal trainer is the best investment I've made

herman.bearblog.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 99 posts

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

#81

Post by tacon »

The pandemic forced many boutique personal training businesses to go virtual. Discover Strength out of Minneapolis is a leader in high-intensity personal training, and they have organized the Resistance Exercise Conference (REC) for more than ten years now. You can hear what a Discover Strength virtual session is like on a recent podcast[0]. They have a free introductory virtual session, and after that sessions are about $41/half hour. No matter where you live, you can sample a personal trainer for free, and compare the professionalism of their trainers with what you have locally. I attended the REC last year, though I train in my local physical gym (LA Fitness with pretty good Nautilus machines).

0: Luke Carlson – How to Design, Assess, and Optimise Your Virtual Personal Training Service https://highintensitybusiness.com/300-luke-carlson-how-to-de...

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

#82

Post by potatochup »

okamiueru wrote: post #80
tomxor wrote: post #26

> What keeps fit people going to the gym on a regular basis isn't wearing their running shoes to bed at night. It's discipline and accountability. There is an alternative, less resistant path which I believe is more sustainable and better for the soul... find something you love that involves exercise, not much discipline is needed once you do, because you probably wont be able to stop yourself from doing it when it's…

I'd throw in a suggestion of: dancing. You'd be surprised how many introverted people do social dancing. And the bar is usually very low. So, not being a long time dancer, musically gifted, etc, is seldom a problem.

As someone who is pretty involved in social dance communities, I agree. The bar is pretty much: don't be a creep, don't injure anyone. Then if you're at least a little bit friendly you'll be welcomed.

The only downside (for some) is that scheduling can be inflexible, and it's usually an evening activity so not great for early birds.

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

#83

Post by kritiko »

pydry wrote: post #78
kritiko wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of these are lifestyle sports that come with the benefit of a built in community. Sailing - boat club Climbing - gym Surfing - the other folks at the spot Skiing - lift/lodge people (also if you really care about skiing all the time you probably move to SLC or somewhere that can accommodate that) Once you have that community, the "willing partners" part kind of solves itself.

Right. Still left with weather, cost, locational dependency and organizational issues though. Anyway, "just move to SLC and ski" is clearly A solution to the problem of "i cant motivate myself to exercise" but it's a fairly drastic one.

It's the "love your job and you'll never work a day in your life" theory of exercise. For me, I struggle to stick to training without a trainer, but I'll happily climb or ski or hike for hours because they are "peak experiences" - pun intended.

If folks are reading this and thinking about how to reduce friction to start exercising - putting all the equipment in your house is one approach. (I made it work in the pandemic, although downstairs neighbors can limit what you can do....) But the pull of finding something that puts you into flow state or has a social accountability component like Crossfit can be worth the "issues."

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

#84

Post by tomxor »

kritiko wrote: post #70
tomxor wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:D thanks for the illustrative insight. I don't have much experience with that one, but can recommend rock climbing, which I've been doing for most of my life, it exercises pretty much everything. As something that demands good power to weight ratio you tend to drop the useless stuff.

Don't get me wrong, climbing can help you build muscle that's very aesthetic - arms, core, shoulders - but the "useless stuff" that people drop is what's useless for climbing, not other sports. The conventional training wisdom (I learned about it from the Anderson Bros in RCTM, but others advocate it too) is to avoid carrying too much weight on your glutes/quads etc. I.e. skip leg day. So that's probably in conflict…

I was referring to fat, and when it comes to power to weight ratio it's utterly useless. However it's true there is a bias towards upper body in climbing, but probably not as much of a bias that some other sports put on the body like cycling or running. You don't really grow big muscles, relatively speaking, climbing makes you lean and works out your entire body, after a certain point larger muscles actually become a burden... though strong feet and calf muscles are vital to be able to stick around on tiny feet holds and execute high tension manoeuvrers.

I would agree that doing a lot of cycling/mtb would probably have a slight negative affect on your climbing ability, i'm not sure about the reverse though - what most people don't realise is that climbing is a very technical sport, and you are totally using your legs most of the time, in fact one of the most obvious identifying behaviours in novices is people hauling themselves up walls using their arms and getting tired really quickly - it's not constant cut loose campusing, those are only the most extreme moves, the crux of a hard climb or a boulder problem.

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

#85

Post by wbsss4412 »

exabrial wrote: post #53
trhoad wrote: post #10

Too much emphasis is put on organised exercise. I think it's an American thing, where nobody seems to walk anywhere. Better advice is to build more functional "exercise" into your day-to-day life. This is where real lifestyle change happens without you really knowing it. Take the stairs, walk to the shops, cycle to work (where possible), household chores that involve getting on your hands and knees and breaking a swe…

The real difference though is American cities blossomed with the same arc automobile came into fruition. I just recently got back from Germany and the primary thing I noticed about their public transportation infrastructure is that most of it is using right of ways that have been in place for… hundreds of years. Driving in America is an unfortunate necessity in the vast majority of places (The minority being the olde…

This is often repeated, but it misses the full story.

I myself used to believe that to be the case, but fairly recently learned that many European cities used to have significantly more car infrastructure and reversed course, while at the same time, many American cities had walkable infrastructure that was later bulldozed for cars.

There’s nothing inevitable about the way we build/built cities in America, it’s a matter of choice and priorities.

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

#86

Post by AnonC »

tomxor wrote: post #26

> What keeps fit people going to the gym on a regular basis isn't wearing their running shoes to bed at night. It's discipline and accountability. There is an alternative, less resistant path which I believe is more sustainable and better for the soul... find something you love that involves exercise, not much discipline is needed once you do, because you probably wont be able to stop yourself from doing it when it's…

> There is an alternative, less resistant path which I believe is more sustainable and better for the soul... find something you love that involves exercise, not much discipline is needed once you do, because you probably wont be able to stop yourself from doing it when it's something you look forward to - which in a way is "wearing your running shoes to bed", it's passion.

Unfortunately, I don’t like going out and I don’t have any outdoor activities or sports I like. So the only thing I’ve got is ensuring I do some workout at home and keep the rings on my smartwatch closed. This is also a bit easier to find motivation for when you find external/other situations/experiences scary on the health side.

> Examples: rock climbing, mountain biking, sailing, surfing, skating, skiing.

I’d have to travel considerably far to even try any of these. :(

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

#87

Post by AnonC »

trhoad wrote: post #10

Too much emphasis is put on organised exercise. I think it's an American thing, where nobody seems to walk anywhere. Better advice is to build more functional "exercise" into your day-to-day life. This is where real lifestyle change happens without you really knowing it. Take the stairs, walk to the shops, cycle to work (where possible), household chores that involve getting on your hands and knees and breaking a swe…

Personally, I’ve concluded that most housework isn’t anywhere close to proper exercise that raises heart rate a lot or stresses muscles a lot. Not that housework is useless, but it’s not going to offer the benefits of even an at home workout program.

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

#88

Post by AnonC »

Balgair wrote: post #69
Majestic121 wrote: post #8

> 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…

It took me until the pandemic to find an exercise routine that worked for me. When it all started, I knew that I had to get a healthy routine put in place or the WFH was going to really wreck me. So, I googled around a bit, tried some exercise routines, and found a good one. I've been on it since and look forward to doing it about 3x a week. The key for me was pairing it with a favorite podcast. I can only listen to…

This sounds interesting and intriguing. Which exercise do you have for each suit? Do you also cycle through different exercise assignments (say, in different months or weeks)?

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

#89

Post by tomxor »

nonameiguess wrote: post #79
tomxor wrote: post #26

> What keeps fit people going to the gym on a regular basis isn't wearing their running shoes to bed at night. It's discipline and accountability. There is an alternative, less resistant path which I believe is more sustainable and better for the soul... find something you love that involves exercise, not much discipline is needed once you do, because you probably wont be able to stop yourself from doing it when it's…

This can be quite difficult to sustain over the long run for a variety of reasons. First, these kinds of hobbies are quite time-consuming. Going mountain biking or outdoor rock climbing is likely to consume an entire weekend at least every time you do it. It's difficult to just do an hour a day every day. Second, you need consistent access to the places where it can be done. Live in Los Angeles? Great, you can surf,…

I've been managing to sustain climbing for over 20 years, i can fit a couple hours in at an indoor climbing wall in the winter, or go to various locations outdoors, local and far, depending on available time... yes sometimes I do weekend trips, sometimes week trips, but when you love it, you are happy to spend more time doing it because it's fun, you don't consider it time lost, you consider it time well spent and return home refreshed, satisfied, not merely "exercised".

It's true not each possible activity is going to be convenient or practical to everyone, but there will be enough that intersect your life circumstances that you can find something... but I feel on average, most people here are going to benefit from trying something a bit more adventurous and getting out into nature, if only for the life experience. Weights is very convenient but doesn't give you any of that.

> There's also long term wear and tear. I've been a very historically active person and did a lot of these things. Outdoor rock climbing, open water swimming, bicycling, thru hiking, summitting This is a real concern, once you become passionate about such a sport it's quite easy to over do it (and I have), but I'd argue climbing is one of many viable long term sports provided you take care of yourself. There are lots of "silver crimpers" in the climbing world which shows it can be done. Injury prevention in these more niche activities is also an emerging area, for climbing specifically i'd check out Dave McLeod excellent books... but this is only relevant when you are really pushing the activity, a lot of fun and good exercise can be had without risking injury from just rambling up some easy routes... That's what I aspire to in old age, to continue moving and having fun in new places. I think this probably transfers to most other actives too, so long as you find them intrinsically fun, you should be able to continue to do them without pushing yourself to the limit 100% of the time.

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

#90

Post by AnonC »

shubhamjain wrote: post #7

> 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…

> > 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.

Yup, I’ve seen the same behavior in myself and others for years. Paying a sum of money, however large it is, doesn’t motivate people to get some value out of it. And gyms thrive on this. What I’ve seen happen is people swearing off gyms after losing money once and probably going back to almost no exercise.

Post reply on HN