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How little exercise can you get away with?

economist.com

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Re: How little exercise can you get away with?

#81

Post by nradov »

annzabelle wrote: post #53

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 r…

Buy a jogging stroller. You'll have to accept some loss of sleep though, that's just the way it goes.

Re: How little exercise can you get away with?

#82

Post by sublinear »

confidantlake wrote: post #74
sublinear wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: How little exercise can you get away with?

#83

Post by JohnMakin »

Legend2440 wrote: post #49
JohnMakin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people have disabilities or physical limitations.

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…

Luckily PT is cheap and affordable and available under most us insurance plans.

Re: How little exercise can you get away with?

#84

Post by thefz »

xnx wrote: post #54
daseiner1 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: How little exercise can you get away with?

#85

Post by jjav »

JohnMakin wrote: post #83
Legend2440 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: How little exercise can you get away with?

#86

Post by tessellated »

andai wrote: post #78
delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #11

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 p…

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.

Re: How little exercise can you get away with?

#87

Post by delis-thumbs-7e »

JohnMakin wrote: post #66
delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: How little exercise can you get away with?

#88

Post by delis-thumbs-7e »

strken wrote: post #75
delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #11

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 p…

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 t…

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.

Re: How little exercise can you get away with?

#89

Post by jq-r »

loeg wrote: post #55
sublinear wrote: post #48

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 r…

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.

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.

Re: How little exercise can you get away with?

#90

Post by yoz-y »

RugnirViking wrote: post #8
yoz-y wrote: post #4

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'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?

We know the recommended minimum of 150 minutes of cardio exercise and two resistance strength training sessions per week. For many people this is unrealistic.

But this is not what the research for minimum is for. There are all those “20 minutes a week”, “7 minutes a day” programs to basically just avoid croaking from not moving at all.

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