191–200 of 317 posts
Haven't read the whole study, but i assume people with fewer symptoms of X are able and motivated to exercise more because they have fewer symptoms.. And the article is just inventing the most interesting causal link for a study that doesn't travel far from correlation?
The benefits of exercise are abundant and I don't know many that would argue against that. If exercise is so beneficial to the whole being, why is it such a difficult thing for us to implement regularly on a long-term basis? Even during periods of life where I've been in a good routine with working out, there still seems to be some sort of internal resistance to going to "do the thing."
Our bodies use of exercise for healthy regulation of our mental state is probably an evolved dependency of that life as well.
Exercise is the best drug there is. When you hurt afterwards, it's not your body saying, "do that less." It's your body saying "do that more!"
When I was less wise, I remember suggesting exercise to someone suffering from depression. Didn't go so well. You reach an unfortunate point when depressed that makes it difficult to listen to actually useful advice. It's an unfortunate state of mind to say the least.
Someone tells you about something that absolutely commands their total attention. It's of very little consequence to you. You suggest they try something /obvious/. It's reasonable to assume they might have considered it. How is that going to be perceived positively as a suggestion? Do you think it possible? For someone with major depression, maybe it's like suffering from major arterial bleeding and we suggest an ban…
For me it was fixing a shower by myself that started that upward cycle.
For someone else it could be a single exercise session that leads to it.
It's always worth a try to encourage someone to take that first step.
Certainly can't speak for everyone, but the most effective form of exercise that I have found is Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Couple of reasons. First: The deeper you get into it the more you learn its primarily an intellectual pursuit - its just hidden in a very physical endeavor. When I'm doing Jiu Jitsu, I have to actively think, engage my problem solving skills, I can't go on auto pilot as I do in other things - rowing m…
Then I hurt my back three years ago doing weight lifting. I haven't been able to practice BJJ ever since, and I've been suffering with constant anxiety for the past three years. Every day since has been a struggle, with some really bad days, and some better ones.
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MTB has pretty much all the good stuff in one. You're outside, in nature, breathing fresh air, it's cardio and mindfulness on the climbs and flow and focus on the descent, add adrenaline to taste. The community is pretty rad too, it has the atmosphere of surfing and hiking combined.
Please tell me more. You might influence someone to try a new hobby
They can be windy smooth trails through the forest, or rocky technical trails to test your bike handling, or gnarly steep downhill trails, or jump trails, the list goes on. You have full control over what you get yourself into, and I can just barely scratch the surface of the variety of riding available across all the disciplines and locations. The basics are the same, you and your bike on some trails.
You can develop your bike skills and challenge yourself on fast or technical trails, or you can just take it easy on flowy easy trails or cross country trails. You can dial up the adrenaline as much or as little as you want, and the terrain can be vary wildly from trail to trail so it's always new and interesting. You'll end up riding parts of your locale you'd never imagine and if you go travelling with it, there are trails in rainforests, deserts, mountain ranges, rolling hills, all over.
For the fitness side, you build strength and dexterity across your whole body as you ride more, and the ride up the hill will develop your cardio and often be interesting trails of their own.
Check out the Trailforks site/app to find trails near you, go rent a bike for ~$50 for the day from any MTB store. It's very easy to try without spending much.
The only equipment you need is a helmet, any bike helmet will do for your first rides. You'll figure out the rest of the gear as you go. Modern bikes are so easy to ride and have made it a crazy fun.
For anyone looking to start exercising, try a rowing machine. It’s practically a shortcut to getting in shape and building muscle (when done with proper form and pushing yourself). Even 5 minutes of HARD rowing a day and you’ll see amazing results.
I don’t know if this has changed for younger generations, but a lot of people, particularly those in intellectual pursuits, suffer to one degree or another from thinking of themselves as a brain being carried around as a meat sack. We are learning more about mind body connections and this is very not true (the ways the vagus nerve can totally fuck with your mental state is terrifying, and there are people with dysfun…
The thing that made me transition from a mindset of “I have a body” to “I am a body”, was actually Zen meditation. This was surprising to me. Before I tried it, I thought of meditation as a purely mental thing, I didn’t expect that the first really noticeable effect of regular meditation would be a changed relationship to my body, Much later I discovered contemporary dance, quit my phd in machine learning and became…
That said, weight training completely transformed my relationship with my body. You can only lug a big hunk of iron into the air so many times before you start thinking about how much we really have in common with a gorilla. Yeah we grew opposable thumbs and a much more active prefrontal cortex, but 96% of our DNA is the same as theirs after all. By the pound we're mostly monkeys or something like them and it's a bit conceited to imagine otherwise.
If you're a knowledge worker who sits in a chair and thinks all day it's easy to believe you're nothing like a monkey, but strenuous exercise dispels that notion because it recruits all of your body's monkey systems and makes all of the parts of you work together. In retrospect it shouldn't be surprising at all that letting most of your anatomy wither away is unhealthy and puts you out of balance. It's like getting your car serviced but telling the shop that you only want them to look at the electronics.
These kinds of articles are always annoying because it invites a certain kind of person who will gush unendingly about how great exerting yourself is.
For me, exerting myself sucks, it is only something I want to do when it's attached to a game I want to play (and even that gets stale). It's only ever something I am either forcing myself to do (yuck) or doing for something besides the physical aspect of it (saving gas, playing a video game).
But instead of health advice being tailored to someone with my neurological makeup that causes this dislike of useless exertion, I'm just told that I need to "meditate" more or do yoga/X. If anything, meditation makes my body seem less like "me".
Just to add my contrarian two cents to a comment section that is otherwise mostly the former.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please tell me more. You might influence someone to try a new hobby
The ancestor comments are spot on. I just wish it didn't require driving. The good stuff is 10+ miles from where I live. Not that far, but it's still burning gas just to ride a bike. I also suggest XC / blue / "intermediate" / rolling trails. They're less exposed and dangerous than steep descents, and better cardio. The MTB industry and press is increasingly downhill-oriented, but you can ignore that noise. Before yo…
I am lucky enough to live within riding distance of a trail centre, they aren't the best trails but having any trails nearby in a suburban area is amazing. It's a 10 minute pedal and I get out once or twice a week to those trails.