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Comment by seanflyon | Hacker News Reader

> Real Exercise isn't about finding something you simply enjoy and love.

Unless you find exercise that you also simply enjoy and love. That's even better. I love rock climbing and do not consider it boring. Climbing is painful, especially when I climb with friends that encourage me to push myself, but pain does not prevent it from being interesting and fun.

> It is very intense work

Yup

> and something that you need to learn to love; kind of like programming.

I didn't need to learn to love climbing just like I didn't need to learn to love programming. I did need to learn to push through the boring parts of programming (such as fixing my build environment which I should be doing right now) but the fundamental act of programming (building something out of logic) has always interested me. Just as I push through the boring parts of programming I push through the pain of climbing.

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Pain isn't fun, that's all I'm saying. When I said you need to learn to love it, all I meant was that you need to condition yourself against the pain. If you didn't need to do that, all the better to you. The main point is, it's not the type of fun that requires zero effort or zero pain; and exercise is definitely not boring.

> Pain isn't fun, that's all I'm saying

If that is all you are saying now then I agree with you. Earlier you were saying that "Running isn't boring" which is a very different statement. I don't find running as boring as some do, but I find the notion that you cannot be bored while in pain to be quite alien. If you work that way then fine, but neither I nor anyone I know who has been stuck doing something boring while in pain has had the same result as you.

@seanflyon

I don't think we're in agreement. You can't be bored and be in pain at the same time. You're either bored, or you're in pain, you can't be bored while getting punched in the face or running 100 miles.

I don't think we are in agreement either, that's why I qualified that statement with "If that is all you are saying". You said "Pain isn't fun, that's all I'm saying" and while I could tell that was not all you were saying, I was humoring you. I can most defiantly be bored while in pain. I have determined this experimentally. Many people I have talked to have clearly stated that they have been bored and in pain at the same time. You are the first person I have seen claim that they could not be bored and in pain at the same time. If that is true for you, then you are the only outlier in my (admittedly small) data set.

Your statement "You can't be bored and be in pain at the same time" is utterly ridiculous. According to Google, bored means "feeling weary because one is unoccupied or lacks interest in one's current activity". Pain does not hold my interest so it does not prevent me from lacking interest in my current activity.

Different people respond to pain differently. You are allowed to be different and given the small sample size available to me it is even possible that people like you are common. What I find annoying is you inability or unwillingness to understand that not everyone is you. Or perhaps you just don't know what "bored" means.

I nominate the word drudgery for simultaneous pain and boredom.

I probably have issues of some kind, but I like pain. For me, the best part about exercising regularly is being kind-of sore all of the time. I also enjoy the feeling of running into walls when I'm learning something new. Obviously, doing it too much can be discouraging, but I like having an apparently insurmountable obstacle to overcome.

I don't know how much of this is superstition or a natural perception of the good effects that come after the pain. I love it when I'm sore because I know I'll feel sharp and light next morning.

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