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Comment by pizzabearman | Hacker News Reader

My 2 cents: Exercise = hard. I hate exercising but love doing almost any sport. Many Sports have side effect of good exercise. I think it triggers my instinct to keep it up when I am tired. Chasing a soccer ball similar stimulus to run and catch prey, or run away from danger. Find a sport you like. Even if your terrible at it, you will get better at it. Both physically and skill wise.

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Similarly, I can't bring myself to do exercise for its own sake, but I am quite happy to actually work to make things happen, such as moving furniture for friends or even digging ditches.

Unfortunately, I still have the problem of motivating myself to get started on my own chores. I have a much easier time helping other people with theirs.

Have you considered a chore buddy? Where you both cheer each other on in doing chores, that way you’re doing your own chores “for someone else”.

I have not, and I'm now trying to imagine what that would look like.

I'm kind of an introvert and haven't really gotten to know my neighbors that well, and most of my friends are too distant for that to be any kind of regular thing.

I have a couple neighbors I could probably ask, though. It's far enough out of my comfort zone that I don't think I'll do it, but thanks for the suggestion!

You're right. Also, yard work is generally unpleasant. I have found that by approaching yard work as exercise, I then enjoy both a lot more (like a _lot_). My whole attitude about squatting down, pulling weeds, cutting, etc. etc. is really a pile of opportunities to squat, bend pull, push as repetitive strength and stretching exercises. I've change my techniques of the actual tasks to make them more focused on muscle groups, etc. The "two birds killed with one stone" benefit is very reinforcing for me, too.

YMMV.

I do this as well, and I have put some weights in a backpack, and I wear that while I'm mowing the lawn or picking up dog poop, etc. Really raises the difficulty level and ensures that my heartrate goes up sufficiently. Right now I have between 35 and 40 pounds of weights in my backpack.

I do a similar (minor) hack in converting my unpleasant work commute to exercise by biking to work/the train station.

20 minutes a day of not very hard cycling provides a pretty decent base fitness. Or at least I like to think that.

I hate running as exercise. It's a painful way to get from A to A, and some part of me is always pushing to simplify the task by staying at A.

But put me in a team sport and I can chase a ball until I collapse!

Team sports are also great for the social obligation. Both to help the team win, and to show up each week.

Running painful? Some find it boring, but it's not inherently painful. It can be painful if your form is bad, if you run too often, too long, if some of your muscles are too weak, if you have an imbalance between right and left side (most of it can be corrected with exercise), etc. Basically if you do it wrong.

I wouldn't call weak muscles and right/left imbalance "doing it wrong".

I'm probably in the weak muscle category. Possibly added to by a negative attitude.

> I hate running as exercise. It's a painful way to get from A to A,

Couldn’t agree more - and it’s so slow. My completely made up theory is that some people are the wrong shape. I prefer cycling as it’s way faster and doesn’t hurt.

This is probably true now. Originally humans were excellent long distance runners but since that’s no longer required I think you might be right

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