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To the people who dont feel better after excercise, maybe you just haven’t found a sport or excercise that you like?
For me it is biking but yours could be different.
I dislike exercising, I often have to “parent” myself into starting, I have to fight the urge to stop several times during a session, and I almost always feel worse immediately after. Sore, tired, sweaty, or various other uncomfortableness, and I haven’t found a recovery activity that erases that temporary badness.
But, my life when I’m not exercising has gotten better, and it’s at least partially due to the exercise.
Well, maybe try something else. For example:
- swimming - can’t be sweaty of you’re surrounded by water
- cycling - do errands on your bike; you’ll still be tired and sweaty, but at least you also got groceries
- hiking - see nature and get the exercise for free
I have tried swimming and hiking, and while I can enjoy doing those activities, I fail to maintain an elevated heart rate if I’m enjoying them.
I live in a rural area, the Grocery store I use is 15+ miles up a US Hwy.with narrow/shoulders in places. I can’t do errands on a bike. I haven’t actually been on a normal bike in years, but on the stationary bikes at the gym, it’s another scenario where I won’t maintain my heart rate.
What about a local library? Fruit vendor?
I’m in a suburban/semi-rural area (some farms, and lots of single family homes), so I’m spoiled for choice, but anything that’s within about 5 miles is perfect for running errands on a bicycle.
As for elevated heart rate, I guess that comes down to personality. I’m very competitive, so I like to see how fast I can do things, and very much dislike doing anything slowly. When I hike, I pass other hikers; when I cycle, I set time goals; when I swim, I try to increase the number of laps; when I lift weights, I try to increase weight or reps (I target 5-10 reps with “one in the tank”). If you’re not competitive, I can see how motivating yourself could be difficult though.
There are places I could get to on a bike, but none that are currently in my routine errands. I suppose I could hit the post office on the bike.
I set time goals for my 5k treadmill sessions, but I only meet then by converting over to a pace and setting the treadmill there. I continue to increase my weights, too, though I generally don’t go up until I can do an “extra” set.
I get close to the NIH recommendations and I keep pushing myself to be better, and I still dislike exercising. It’s just non-optional maintenance for this shell until I can shed it.
Exercise for its own sake sucks, which is why I like replacing other things I need to do anyway with something that includes exercise. When I lift weights, I listen to podcasts or audiobooks between sets, and when I was in school, I would do pushups or situps as a study break. My first job was about 10 miles from home, so I would ride my bike 2-3x/week (we had a shower), which would take 35-45min, which was about twice what driving would take, but I’d get home and have already gotten my exercise for the day.
I honestly can’t just do exercise for its own sake, it needs to be accompanied by some other activity I enjoy or need to do.
Podcasts or music are not essential to my gym experience, but they are important. My pace on the treadmill certainly suffers if I forgot my headphones.
A few weeks ago some “commedian” decided he needed to get my attention (pause playback, turn off noice cancelling, “yes?”) twice for idiotidic jokes like “When are you going to be done with that machine, because there aren’t any others: gestures to empty gym with only He and I”.
He did pay me an appreciated comment during one of those interruptions, but overall his behavior was grating and made the session worse than average.
I haven’t yet found a combination activity where I still feel like I’m getting sufficient exercise. I think combination activities work better for many people and you gotta find a way that exercise works for you, or you really won’t get enough.
Unfortunately it’s not that simple. :(
I’m not sure why but I find pretty much all excercise mind numbingly boring. I found that walking my dog in the park is a lot more stimulating mentally because you gotta look out for your little critter and she always does interesting things. The only thing is she gets cold easily so I can only walk her properly in the summer…
Dog tax: https://imgur.com/a/rEII2ih
People who try to start an exercise activity very commonly do too much their first time(s) at it, and end up injuring themselves or hurting too much which makes it hard to continue and even harder to start doing it again after they inevitably quit. The best thing to do is to start with something absurdly small - like biking a half-mile, walking (or running) 200 feet, or driving to the gym and then driving home without even going inside - and then very gradually ramp things up. The most important thing is to establish exercising as a regular habit, and then worry about turning it into actual physically effective exercise later on.
It won’t make me feel any endorphins though, because my brain don’t work right
Yep, I get no positive feelings from exercise. I do it to keep my blood pressure down and I fucking hate it. People say after a while it begins to feel good and you look forward to it and I want to punch all those people in the face. I started about 4 months ago and I’ve hated every day I’ve gone.
Exercise fucking sucks. I get hot and sweaty and feel like shit afterwards. The only positive emotion is a vague sense of relief that it’s over when I’m finished.
“Jogging is the worst. I mean, I know it keeps you healthy; but God, at what cost?” -Ann Perkins
I felt good once when I found out I could leg press the full stack of plates, but that was like a year into exercising regularly.
Only thing that actually changed is that I don’t absolutely hate it anymore I just dislike it now.
I like lifting, I genuinely hate core Day. Something about it convinces my body I’m dying and all I want to do is vomit.
The core is connected up quite intimately to the whole digestive system and when nerves reorganise there it can get funky indeed.
That said, try hanging. Not necessarily pull-ups… though while you’re at it might as well do some negatives at least: jump up, let yourself down as slowly as possible until you get that rotation in the shoulder and then you are hanging properly. Then stay there, move your legs, explore the load shifts, such stuff. That’s going to tickle nerves that you might never have tickled before, but which need occasional tickling or your whole back gets confused because we happen to be monkeys and hanging from stuff is in our biomechanics, the nervous system expects those kinds of loads. Generally works miracles when it comes to back issues, and core issues are often just reflections of that.
I never got a runners high before 10k or so. But even then it’s not a “high” it’s a strong feeling of well being and the sense that I could keep going indefinitely.
Now that I don’t jog so much the mood improvement I get from regular exercise is even more subtle, but I still feel it’s significant.
Well, there are a lot of exercise options, surely you haven’t tried them all…
For example, I like riding my bike to do errands. Not only do I get exercise, but I also save some money, cross off items from my list, and feel hardcore. I don’t actually like cycling, but I hate driving more, so being able to get my exercise and avoid driving while doing errands feels like cheating.
I get hot and sweaty and feel like shit afterwards.
Have you tried swimming? Hot and sweaty definitely won’t be a problem there.
For the record though I also hate cardio. It’s fine at levels which I can sustain for hours on end, that is, not jogging pace, definitely not interval training, but hiking pace. If you want interval training without grinding your brain field sports might be an option, it’s different when you have teammates and a ball.
I had the same problem. Then, I was prescribed a medication used to increase dopamine, and adrenaline, production, and now it does.
Not saying this is some trick to make exercise suddenly release a bunch of endorphins, but it very much did that for me, and when I told my doctor about it, she said that was something that commonly reported. It has even been looked into as a performance enhancing drug, by a number of sports regulation organizations.
This is my take on your comment but going to the gym and doing exercises does the same for me. I did it, I knew why I did it but I fucking hated every second of it and didn’t get any high.
On the other hand, even middle level exercises in rugby or cycling gets me that high, fucking love it. It doesn’t even matter if I’m good at it or not.
Sometimes, it’s more about the sport than the exercise.
My wife is doing a genetics study and said there is some evidence that CoQ10 can help people who hate exercise. 🤷♂️ Ymmv
The thing to adapt to with this information is goal maintainence, and improvement tracking.
I HATE exercise, PLUS the humilation aspect that got pushed into me growing up as a fat kid.
The thing that gives one good feelings for me, isn’t the exercise, it’s the improvement that gives/gave me pride.
Instead of group exercise, I started doing bouldering. Going up the difficulty levels, being able to literally get over obstacles made me feel proud of my achievements.
Try tracking progress. it could help give you pride and self esteem.
I hang out with horses 2-3x a week and if I can’t go for any reason, I actually feel like shit physically and mentally until the next time I go. I also burn like 2400-3000 calories when I work with the horses, so it’s hella crazy exercise for someone who lived a totally sedentary life until I started doing this horse stuff about 4 months ago.
“hella crazy exercise… doing this horse stuff”
Lol for me it is. I have a chronic pain condition, so stuff that isn’t intense for others, is intense for me lol
Oh, for sure it is work. I just chuckled at the innuendo.
I always feel worse after I walk. I’m told this must be incorrect. Things have been incorrect every time so far.
If you hate exercising, there are other ways to get it “for free” that don’t involve tediously lifting and dropping weights over and over, etc. For example, play ball games with friends. Take up climbing (indoor or outdoor!). Rekindle your love of cycling around town on a bike. Paintball with friends. Take up a martial art. Pretty much anything that has movement as a side effect, rather than it being the ‘main event’.
Running on a treadmill is fucking awful to me, I hate it so much. But running as a consequence of playing a sport or moving around a boxing ring or whatever, that’s different. I don’t hate running per se, but on its own? I’d rather take the L and die years earlier than I should. Seriously. Gyms and gym equipment make me want to fling myself under a passing bus.
Gym allows me to safely play sports, run around after the dog, swim without feeling like drowning is inevitable etc
I’m not a gym nut by any stretch of the imagination but as I approach middle age I can’t be as spontaneous with breaking into a run or lifting heavy things. Too many injuries and anatomical idiosyncracies have built up over the years.
The gym maintains all my muscles so I can use them when I want without injury. It’s made a big difference going about 2-3 times a week for 45 min. Then I can do all the stuff I enjoy (mostly all outdoors) without worrying about a tweak or a joint blow out.
I don’t really like cycling, but I’ve found I dislike driving more, so replacing car trips w/ bike trips has worked really well. I get exercise, save money, I get better parking spots, and I’m not stuck in a stupid car. Oh, and I’m quite competitive, so I like to see how quickly I can get from A to B, so my heartrate stays high.
I also have gymnastic rings in my garage for my upper body. I’m not a fan of that either, but it at least feels cooler than lifting weights. So I’ll alternate between doing errands on my bike and using the gymnastic rings.
I’m the opposite. Never much liked sports, and when I am not held to a pace like a treadmill does, I’ll not maintain enough heart rate elevation.
So, for me, if I don’t get to the gym a couple of times a week, I fall well short of the NIH guidelines.
The full report is quite clear that heart rate elevation is the most significant population-wide contributor.to general health. 150 “points” per week, which you can in theory knock out with one long (~75 minutes) high-intensity work out.
Resistance training across all major muscle groups is secondary, and really only needs one set, on two separate days each week. Your don’t need to build bulk or anything, just keep then fully active. Add some weight if you could do an extra set before exhaustion.
Stretching is good, in particular if you don’t reach a range of motion, you are likely to lose it as you age, but no specific recommendations are given
Don’t you just hate it when health fanatics are right?
I’m one of those forever-exceptions to many rules. I don’t doubt that exercise is good for me, but it has never made me feel better or happier. Lots of people report pleasure from physical activity, but all I ever get is pain. Oh, and no, I’m not a disgusting slab of fat, my BMI is 21.
I used to exercise quite a lot, I know what the runners high feels like and how being sore and able to use motion and stretching to alleviate the soreness felt so good. I could easily lose myself when I exercised.
I don’t get that anymore. I have bad joint pains, I never get that high feeling anymore, and everything is a distraction. I want to go back, but whatever happy chemicals used to work no longer do and what’s left over makes the whole endeavor feel the opposite.
I’ve tried to find a nice balance of exercise. I always figured I was supposed to go to the gym and lift and run on treadmills and do push-ups. I’ve honestly found that a simple 30 minutes of walking is all I need
The idea that I could be doing less activity than walking 3 miles a week and not understanding how bad I’m feeling because of it… Is extremely depressing. I’m so glad I figured this out like 12 years ago!
Just the idea of not doing something that you are doing makes you depressed?
The initial comment resonated so much with me, that I feel the need to answer, even though I wasn’t even asked: YES
A few years ago I was in a really dark place. I lost 3 kg in 2 months and when I wasn’t at work, I was lying in my bed on the verge of crying, half-listening to YouTube just to scare the thoughts away.
But the thing, that finally got me out of the loop, was getting myself a houseplant, after watching a plant YouTuber for a while. And when I got home, rather than cry, I obsessively cleaned every speck of dust off the leaves, measured the soil moisture with a stick and just watched it be. And something just clicked inside me and I realized that I had found something I wanted to do; probably forever, if given the chance.
Still have the same plant; cut, repotted and propagated. And while I’m at a much better place now - physically, mentally, financially - just thinking about giving that (houseplants) up feels like going back.
I love this story. I’m so glad you found something that made a difference for you!
Nice story but not the same thing at all. If you already had the house plant and watched a video about not having a houseplant and got depressed, that would be the same thing.
Yeah. I was super depressed then and it was worse because of being fat. Thinking about that is sad. Ya know, words aren’t always meant 100% literally
Literally is exactly how you take words. You just made a mistake. I understand what you mean now.
Literally is exactly how you take words.
Except for constantly, where the reverse is true
Specifically people say “depressed” to mean “sad” quite often. You’ve surely seen/heard it many times if you consume media in English
Imho, anything you can do to increase overall bloodflow is beneficial to your entire system. One of the reasons caffeine makes us feel good is the increased bloodflow. If that can be increased without drugs, youre one up on the masses. Enjoy it dont hate it
… lol.
If the effects were truly the same, I’d rather drink a few coffees a day than go for a walk. It’s faster and tastes better.
I feel like they are both bitter tastes people only like through aquirement. Have you tried sweetening your exercise with sugar?
Yeah I hated the process of becoming one of the exercise people, but it really is the lowest effort to increase in happiness activity I’ve added to my life
Eating well is even lower effort, but inversively fun.
Kurzgesagt did a video on exercise! It’s a good watch, and it shows that while exercise is not a cure for all that ail’s ya, it does increase your overall quality of life.
Of course don’t overdo it- during lockdown I began to run a 5k a day during my lunch break. I set Sunday as a recovery day, but still I was 25 and had the last bits of my “made out of rubber and magic” era, so ya know, I’d stretch for 60 seconds and call it good.
I’m still very active, and I switch between running and climbing, but only after being sidelined for 2 weeks to take care of my IT band. I now have to stretch for a good 15-30 minutes before and after. My recovery day now is a good yoga stretching session.
Thank God I am self employed so I have time in the day for it, but still, exercise is awesome but you need to be careful and do it right. You only get one body, so take care of it. It’s the best instrument you will ever own.
Anyway, time to hit the wall with my buddy and then grab an IPA. 🍻
I’d stretch for 60 seconds and call it good
I used to stretch for 30 to 45 minutes before a run (5K to 10K) and I still found the running part to be incredibly painful. I couldn’t understand why I found running to be so unpleasant when 50 mile bike rides were no problem for me, and I eventually considered the fact that I never stretched or warmed up at all before a bike ride. I tried not stretching before a run and the pain went away. There is a growing view in exercise physiology that static stretching before strenuous activity is not good for you.
Come to think of it I remember that too! Maybe I just need new shoes…
FWIW it’s worth stopping running altogether. I used to run six miles every other day, but I developed severe arthritis in one knee and had to quit. The knee feels a whole lot better since I stopped. There are just so many cases of runners getting their bodies all fucked up one way or another eventually. For me, bicycling is where it’s at.
Unfortunately many of those “exercise people” this tweet is referring to do not take any disabilities into consideration. I can’t tell you how many people have told me to just “go for a walk” when my disabilities require me to do specific exercises from a horizontal position. At some point I might be able to do slightly more intense recumbent stuff (very slow, low resistance cycling) but walking/running will unfortunately never be something that helps me. And don’t get me started on the HIIT fad. I would die lol (not joking though)
Swimming maybe? Is that an option?
Yeah, if you mean laps etc it’ll be when I can move up to more intense stuff. Right now I can basically sit and float around.
Right now the exercises I do feel like I’m doing nothing (until later, then I’m exhausted for days). It’s frustrating because before all of this happened I was doing a lot of incline and strength training, which I can’t do anymore. The exercises I’m able to do now basically amount to a few flutter-like moves and some shoulder work. Even that was too much this week so going to have to tell my trainer we have to pull back even further.
One of the many reasons I value living in a walkable city. I don’t have to go out of my way to walk. It’s just a part of daily life.
I biked to work every day as my only regular exercise and was relatively happy with my body and endurance - COVID taking that away by turning my job remote only really showed me how important that daily activity is - first time in my life signed up for a fitness studio after those could open again.
For me it’s the time. It takes me from 7am to 9pm to get my hours done at work, do the school run and get the kid fedded and bedded. I’m doing all the hacks I can: cycling during lunch and in the weekend, as much as possible, but it’s not adding up to enough. You just get a good routine going and then they throw in a school holiday to wreck everything up.
Started walking 10k steps a day after seeing myself in pictures and hating how I looked. I’d been fairly active in the past, but some injuries sidelined me. I found getting out and walking was much better for my mental health and creativity than staring at a screen. Embraced the zen of walking when it was cold or rainy out - I’m lucky to often see animals around me that I know most people near me are never seeing. Now instead of dreading exercise, I have the opposite problem of getting restless and pissy if I don’t get my walking or biking in.
