Ask HN: I hate gym. How to stay in shape?

> You may like it, but it's not healthy in the long run.

I disagree. Not all marathon runners are made equal. Talking about the long run means an extreme training routine that is consistent through a long period of time.

The vast majority of marathon runners are casual runners, rarely logging more than 40km a week. And after a while most simply stop or reduce significantly their training to casual (in terms of intensity) but consistent training.

AFAIK, most research about negative effects of marathon running is related to professional athletes, who have a career in running. Endurance athletes usually start from a very young age, and peak at around 30-40. That's 20 to 30 years of extreme training. And the key aspect here is oxidative stress, which means they are aging faster. There's also a risk that your heart will change in shape to respond to a greater demand, and that may lead to conditions such as arrythmia.

I think I can speak for most of the amateur athletes I know. We're all well aware of the risks. There's just no point in not taking them.

I second the home gym. Got a fairly inexpensive progear rack, progear bench, and go beast dip rack. I already had the 45lb bar, curl bar and 300lbs of weights from a previous set so the upgrade was pretty seamless. Bought the cable pull down separately off Amazon for 1/4 of the price. Can now do almost every type of lift with no spotter. Yes is does take up most of a small room in my basement but for being in my 40s think I am the best shape of my life minus lung power hard for me to believe that. If you don’t have room push-ups pull-ups (playground near by?), sit-ups and jogging will be better than nothing. Also recommend an e-bike. Still get exercise but can travel faster and further making it practical. If you have money left over grab a one-wheel great for the core and closest thing to snowboard in the summer. Also great winter (snow) for snowboarding/skiing this year. Wow after writing that all out now know where all my money went, but hey it’s for my health. Cheers!

SI unit?

Did you try a pull-up bar with an elastic (or resistance) band? For example see [1].

As a strange coincidence, I just did my pull-ups for the day just minutes ago. I have the pull-up bar and the elastic band under my bed. I take them and mount them on a doorframe, and when I'm done put them back under the bed.

You may ask, why not straight pull-ups. I just can't do that many. With a resistance band you can do many more, and you utilize the muscles more completely.

[1] https://www.walmart.com/ip/XPRT-Fitness-Resistance-Bands-Pul...

I go to the gym ~5 times a week and still have a love/hate relationship with exercise in general. I’ve developed a variety of ways to hack around it that work for me:

- Playlists. I enjoy music but have learned to more-or-less limit listening to music during “gym time”. I don’t look forward to the gym, I look forward to my gym playlists.

- Looking at it as a balance of time. I frequently have to tell myself “It’s 1/16th of my day”. I’m in a position where (thankfully) I almost always enjoy the other time in any given day so rationalizing “It’s one of the few things I have to push myself to do, and for an hour a day that’s not bad”.

- Pacing inside or walking outside during conference calls. Almost everyone in my immediate family (for whatever reason) naturally “randomly walks around” when on the phone. The standardization of video from COVID has cut into this a bit but it’s not unusual for me to log at least an hour of walking a day (inside or outside) because of meetings and conference calls. It’s pretty amazing to randomly walk around your house in loops when you’re occupied on a call and realize you’ve ended up walking a few miles. I’m at the point now when my phone rings I immediately stand up and start walking - and in a given week that really adds up.

- Progress is VERY slow but at a certain point external validation really helps. It’s very vain but I’m at a point now when people who haven’t seen me in years routinely remark “Wow, you got HUGE”. I don’t consider myself “HUGE” but I’m still very happy with myself in that many people would consider me in better physical condition nearing 40 than 20. At this point I feel like I need to (at least) maintain this level - even though I know that’s not really possible (less TRT or similar) with age.

- Personal trainer as a “jump start”. My progress rapidly advanced after seeing a personal trainer twice a week. VERY expensive (to the point I realize it’s out of reach for most people) but what I would do is essentially copy a personal training workout another 1-2x in the week (alternating) to accelerate my progress.

- Sleep and eat well. Especially for strength training, sleep is where progress is actually made. The good news is sleep is better and more natural anyway when you’re physically tired. Eating well (or just better) is also easier when you feel good from exercising and know you’ll end up feeling gross if you eat poorly.

- Perfect is the enemy of good. 30 minutes of exercise (even just moving around) everyday puts you an fairly elite portion of the population (at least in the US). Eating relatively poorly for a “cheat meal” (or for me day - I LOVE food) really isn’t that much of a setback compared to most western diets (double so for the US).

- Accepting age. Just yesterday I was at the gym working out next to two girls who appeared to be in good shape (college town - they were probably teenagers). There’s a grocery store immediately next to my gym and I ran into them again at checkout. I was buying salad and chicken, they were literally buying a gigantic bag of candy and a big bottle of soda. That’s youth for you.

- It gets addicting. At this point when a study is done on poor diet or lack of exercise (or when I just look around) I’m in total amazement what eating poorly and not doing any physical exercise must feel like. I know when I eat poorly and don’t exercise (really busy with work, vacation, etc) I start to physically feel sick towards the end and really look forward to getting back to my routine.

- Fitness tracker. My Apple watch calorie goal is 1k calories/day. I usually exceed it just with these tips but on the occasional day where I don't even break half every time I check the time I think "that's not good".

- Caffeine. I take caffeine pills so I'm able to tightly control my caffeine intake. 100mg in the morning (replacing morning coffee for most) and 200mg in the afternoon-ish. There's something about caffeine pills. I suspect it's from being an "immediate dose" vs progressively drinking coffee over some time period. In the afternoons when I take 200mg I can feel it "kick in" - to to the tune of "oh, there it is". Really helps to jump the lag you can feel through the day and (for me at least) it's almost "too much" - to the point where I feel like I need to burn it off with physical activity. 300mg/day still puts me well within medically recommended daily caffeine intake. Let's not kid ourselves - caffeine is a drug and it's great. That almost high feeling jump start afternoon kick is also a great way to motivate a gym trip - telling myself "You're taking these and you'll enjoy it but you better promise yourself you're going to the gym after". Plus they're CHEAP (a month of caffeine for < $10), always available (no finding a coffee shop, figuring out what to do when traveling, etc) and always consistent. I'm actually kind of amazed people randomly brew or purchase coffee and consume a drug without having any idea how much.