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Thought experiment, not completely serious but something worth considering. This would be 5 h per week, or 250 h per year, or over 10 years, 3.5 months of cont

Thought experiment, not completely serious but something worth considering. This would be 5 h per week, or 250 h per year, or over 10 years, 3.5 months of continuous 24/7 exercise. This is a large amount of training. 4% of your waking time would be spent on exercising. Or 6% of free time. At what point does it turn net negative, ie as time that it eats away from life. You can't attend events or hang out with family since you're always at the gym. I have understood smoking reduces your life span 8%. On the other hand, if you replace watching reels with gym, maybe it's also positive time otherwise.

andy_ppp 2mo ago
You will feel better and be in hospital at the end of your life for a lot less time on average so yes it’s a lot but potentially the chances of being a fit 80 year old could be worth it.
PowerElectronix 2mo ago
The logic of exchanging 3.5 months every 10 years to be as healthy and able as possible for as long as you are alive seems to me to be absurdly compelling. Who wouldn't take that deal?
arrrg 2mo ago
I totally get your thought process, especially with the dry exercise description in the comment you responded to. That’s maybe an approach for some people but it also doesn’t seem that sustainable. My view on exercise is that it should give me something in the moment. That also helps keep me motivated. So arduous hikes and bike tours aren’t something I do for the exercise, that’s just a nice side benefit. I do those because I want to get to exciting places or explore the world at a pace that makes sense. I ride my exercise bike to keep in form and be able to do those hikes and bikes tours, even to go further and enable me to reach new places and do new things. Same with swimming, though that also helps me to clear my head and think about stuff. Both of those can potentially be boring, but at least I always feel amazing and energized afterwards. Strength training is admittedly something I do almost exclusively for its long-term health benefits (and struggle the most with), though I also like feeling stronger and seeing my body change at least a tiny bit. Oh, and it’s an activity (as well as some Yoga and flexibility exercises) I do together with my partner, so it always has that social component. Bouldering and badminton (both of which I absolutely suck at) also have that social component: it’s something I do with other people. Oh, and then I don’t own a car, so my bike is my only means of getting from a to b and transporting things. So I automatically get moving that way and it never feels like wasted time or even exercise to me. That’s much more than five hours per week spent exercising and very little of it is boring or feels like empty time that is merely an investment into my future. I do think that’s the trick to being and staying active. At least for me.
nradov 2mo ago
5 hours per week is very little training. How much time do most people spend scrolling social media or watching TV? There's your 5 hours. It doesn't have to detract from any other life activities.
vrc 2mo ago
Counterpoint: you can't replace Reels/TikTok or smoking time with exercise and you _have_ to displace something meaningful to do dedicated exercise. Phone activity time is almost irreducible because it's not dedicated or de-fragmentable by design. It's almost always concurrent with something else, or in the "in-between" periods where your alternatives are limited. One successful strategy here is to offload exercise into "snacks" that compete for this time. And that might buy back time you spend at the gym. Strength training and mobility work where the emphasis isn't on getting your HR up can easily be squeezed in here. So you might go to the gym, do your pressing exercise in 20 minutes, then come home and do pushup press variants as your accessory work in small increments over the day. The one area this does not work on is CV training, where you need a dedicated amount of time in target zones to get the benefit. For that, you need to treat it as a first-class obligation, find some protocol that meets your constraints, and hold it sacred to get it done.

andy_ppp 2mo ago

You will feel better and be in hospital at the end of your life for a lot less time on average so yes it’s a lot but potentially the chances of being a fit 80 year old could be worth it.

PowerElectronix 2mo ago

The logic of exchanging 3.5 months every 10 years to be as healthy and able as possible for as long as you are alive seems to me to be absurdly compelling. Who wouldn't take that deal?

arrrg 2mo ago

I totally get your thought process, especially with the dry exercise description in the comment you responded to. That’s maybe an approach for some people but it also doesn’t seem that sustainable. My view on exercise is that it should give me something in the moment. That also helps keep me motivated. So arduous hikes and bike tours aren’t something I do for the exercise, that’s just a nice side benefit. I do those because I want to get to exciting places or explore the world at a pace that makes sense. I ride my exercise bike to keep in form and be able to do those hikes and bikes tours, even to go further and enable me to reach new places and do new things. Same with swimming, though that also helps me to clear my head and think about stuff. Both of those can potentially be boring, but at least I always feel amazing and energized afterwards. Strength training is admittedly something I do almost exclusively for its long-term health benefits (and struggle the most with), though I also like feeling stronger and seeing my body change at least a tiny bit. Oh, and it’s an activity (as well as some Yoga and flexibility exercises) I do together with my partner, so it always has that social component. Bouldering and badminton (both of which I absolutely suck at) also have that social component: it’s something I do with other people. Oh, and then I don’t own a car, so my bike is my only means of getting from a to b and transporting things. So I automatically get moving that way and it never feels like wasted time or even exercise to me. That’s much more than five hours per week spent exercising and very little of it is boring or feels like empty time that is merely an investment into my future. I do think that’s the trick to being and staying active. At least for me.

nradov 2mo ago

5 hours per week is very little training. How much time do most people spend scrolling social media or watching TV? There's your 5 hours. It doesn't have to detract from any other life activities.

vrc 2mo ago

Counterpoint: you can't replace Reels/TikTok or smoking time with exercise and you _have_ to displace something meaningful to do dedicated exercise. Phone activity time is almost irreducible because it's not dedicated or de-fragmentable by design. It's almost always concurrent with something else, or in the "in-between" periods where your alternatives are limited. One successful strategy here is to offload exercise into "snacks" that compete for this time. And that might buy back time you spend at the gym. Strength training and mobility work where the emphasis isn't on getting your HR up can easily be squeezed in here. So you might go to the gym, do your pressing exercise in 20 minutes, then come home and do pushup press variants as your accessory work in small increments over the day. The one area this does not work on is CV training, where you need a dedicated amount of time in target zones to get the benefit. For that, you need to treat it as a first-class obligation, find some protocol that meets your constraints, and hold it sacred to get it done.