> We know from one study that people who played tennis a few times per week lived roughly 10 years longer than average. So we'll use that value going forward.
There has to be some incredible correlation between having the time and money to play tennis “a few times per week” and being significantly wealthier than the average person. And being wealthy is clearly the healthiest thing you can do.
Also, if you have health issues, you will not be playing tennis twice a week. Plus tennis is on the expensive to stay active in when you need a club membership and courts to play.
Not in North America. Not sure about Mexico, but in the US and Canada the majority of tennis courts are public and free (some of them are being converted to pickle ball, but that's a rant for another post). You can pick up a racquet at a thrift store for a few bucks. A can of balls (a few bucks more) can be used for a long time, especially if you're a beginner to intermediate. If you become more advanced, the biggest expense can be shoes and strings, but that depends on your form/play style.
I find tennis an incredibly cheap sport to do recreationally. Basketball can be cheap, too, but I think you'd go through shoes pretty fast, especially on a city hard court. Soccer maybe cheaper, but it's too much organization (hard to get 10+ people on the same page at the same time).
Depends on the health issues. In the US, northeast and Florida at least there are many free courts almost everywhere. And plenty of older folks with small or medium health issues still find the time and motivation to play.
I am begging HNers to at least pull up the study in scihub and see if there was multivariate adjustment (there was) before they hip-fire the first thought they had when they saw someone summarize a study in a blog post.
I understand but incompetence is so common everywhere in society that mistakes like this genuinely are the first thought people should have.
I have the opposite opinion - if criticism like this is so obvious (and it is), then it's up to the article to refute it immediately - this saves time of everyone reading it and gives it more credibility.
There are plenty of wealthy people who are unhealthy.
Wake up at 4:30am and go for a run. You’re already accomplishing more at that point in the day than most wealthy people who are comfortably laying in bed.
The hard thing is doing the thing. Just do, that’s it.
About that, what hours people that wake up at 4.30 am go to bed? If they're so conscious about their well being I'd assume at least 8 hours of sleep, so maybe they go to bed at... 8~9 pm? my question is what do they do to end their day at 9pm? If you work 9-5, you have just 4 hours left after work. Less if you commute, have dinner and a "go to be" routine of maybe 30 min. How about social life after work? Run errands? In my case, if I need to do anything out of my house it has to be after work hours (because almost everything is closed between 6am and 9am when I start work).
Sleep matters great deal for the health. So does vitamin D from sun. Considering that, why the hell should people wake up at such absurd hour for run? And no, they won't get additional time with that, they will need to go to sleep sooner.
Since I've been a child, living in multiple countries across Europe and Asia, there's always been either free or cheap tennis courts near me. I don't even play tennis much and I know this, I'm sure if I was searching I'd find way more low cost options.
It's more likely that the demographic who play tennis tends to be wealthy, rather than the sport itself being expensive.
If you're disciplined enough to put something in your calendar and do it over a period of months, without someone breathing down your neck to do so, whether you feel like doing it or not, then you are likely able to apply that effort in other areas of life.
So then it's a bidirectional correlation. You're more likely to be fit if you are wealthy and more likely to be wealthy if you are fit.
Essentially, what you're looking at is that people who engage in self improvement end up better off than those who don't.
It's a priori obvious but some people are uncomfortable with it for some reason - trauma response / coping mechanism, something like that.
Exactly. Some guy once told me that "research" shows that people who play golf live longer. I still didn't pick up the sport yet. Not sure I'll pick it up anytime soon, although I like the idea of living longer.
I bet it's even simpler than that: people who can play tennis a few times a week are a healthier cohort than people who are unable to physically do this
There's really overwhelming evidence that exercise itself has a causal role, and it only gets more impactful the more effective it is at raising your fitness (i.e., given the logistical constraints of your life, the more that the exercise you can do raises your strength and endurance, the greater the benefits without a clear obvious ceiling (though the benefits do get increasingly marginal)).
Even if we lived in a world where it didn't causally extend lifespan, the extension to healthspan [0] or QALYs [1] alone would be reason enough.
Derek Thompson's written about recent research to this effect [2]:
"Last year, Ashley and a large team of scientists conducted an elaborate experiment on the effects of exercise on the mammalian body. In one test, Ashley put rats on tiny treadmills, worked them out for weeks, and cut into them to investigate how their organs and vessels responded to the workout compared to a control group of more sedentary rodents. The results were spectacular. Exercise transformed just about every tissue and molecular system that Ashley and his co-authors studied—not just the muscles and heart, but also the liver, adrenal glands, fat, and immune system.
"When I asked Ashley if it was possible to design a drug that mimicked the observed effects of exercise, he was emphatic that, no, this was not possible. The benefits of exercise seem too broad for any one therapy to mimic. To a best approximation, aerobic fitness and weight-training seem to increase our metabolism, improve mitochondrial function, fortify our immune system, reduce inflammation, improve tissue-specific adaptations, and protect against disease."
Everyone really should be making it a priority to work up to at least meeting the physical activity guidelines as well focusing on the other core pillars of health described by the Barbell Medicine guys [3]. Anyone focused on biohacking and supplement stacks without having these in order is fundamentally unserious, majoring in the minors.
100%. There’s no point in nitpicking on this post. There’s an outsized return on exercise and it’s measurable. People don’t get — especially young people — that exercise is like eating, sleeping, and pooping. Your body needs it in regular intervals otherwise its carefully balanced system goes out of whack.
"Atherosclerosis generally starts when a person is young and worsens with age. Almost all people are affected to some degree by the age of 65. It is the number one cause of death and disability in developed countries. Though it was first described in 1575, there is evidence suggesting that this disease state is genetically inherent in the broader human population, with its origins tracing back to CMAH genetic mutations that may have occurred more than two million years ago during the evolution of hominin ancestors of modern human beings."
I set up a treadmill desk during the pandemic. It has definitely improved my focus and concentration. The book In Praise of Walking has a lot of the science behind why.
Advising people to exercise doesn't work and doesn't scale. Gyms are for people who have plenty of intrinsic motivation and money and time.
To improve physical activity at the population scale and over a lifetime, it literally has to be built into the design of the cities, so people get enough exercise while walking to work or grabbing groceries.
I think that one huge factor is that people almost seem to be intent on turning sport onto a chore and moral duty. And tests of characters end up being around as appealing as cleaning the toilet.
Sport can be pleasant and fun. It can be social for people who want social. It can fulfill more then one goal.
But, instead the expectation is that people will pick the most boring thing (running, gym), that they will commit to amounts of times and periodicity that makes life's harder and that nothing fun enough actually counts.
Really sad that modern life/society is generally not structured for actual wellbeing. One thing I will complain about forever is the sheer lack of time one has. After work/study, chores, and basic self care, there is no time left in the day. I would exercise more if it wasn't competing on a list of 100 other things I need to do today in the 1 spare hour I have. By the time it gets to the weekend, I'm so tired I don't want to do anything much, let alone difficult exercise.
> Advising people to exercise doesn't work and doesn't scale.
Agreed, in so much as telling people to exercise leads to a relatively small increase in the number of people exercising.
> Gyms are for people who have plenty of intrinsic motivation and money and time.
I'd say yes most people who regularly exercise at a gym have some kind of intrinsic motivation, but that's generally true of anyone with any activity.
Gyms with almost any kind of equipment, classes, and amenities are absurdly cheap: ~$30 / month. For the vast majority of Americans, that cost is well within a reasonable budget.
Time: TFA's time of 3 hours a week as an example is not insignificant but I wouldn't categorize it as extreme or "plenty of time." This investment could easily take from the amount of time Americans spend sitting and looking at a screen for entertainment. (Saying this as an American)
> To improve physical activity at the population scale and over a lifetime, it literally has to be built into the design of the cities, so people get enough exercise while walking to work or grabbing groceries.
I'm a bit more cynical as I believe a significant increase in the percentage of Americans who get a good amount of exercise is extremely unlikely. Any program or proposed change to policies necessary to affect such a change is DOA.
People don't go to a gym because the vast majority of folks are uninterested in exercise for exercise' sake: they want to look good. Unfortunately, improved physical appearance due to exercise takes longer than folks expect it to take.
> Gyms with almost any kind of equipment, classes, and amenities are absurdly cheap: ~$30 / month. For the vast majority of Americans, that cost is well within a reasonable budget.
This is not true. I believe you if you say it's true in your area, but in most places it's not. I'm a traveling healthcare worker and I usually can't find a gym for under $80. There may be some that advertise cheaper prices, but that always comes with hidden fees which make them about the same as the expensive gyms.
What? Every city and small town I have ever lived in has had publicly accessible outdoor workout stations and running paths. A pair of running shoes is about 120 USD and good for ~500 miles.
You've misunderstood. It's not about people taking extra time out for exercise, it's about designing urban areas so that the normal activities of life are also exercise. For example, in cities with great bike infrastructure people will use it for their daily activities (see Copenhagen, Netherlands, Paris) getting exercise in the process of doing the stuff they are going to do anyway.
I hated exercise. Still do. People talk about a glow or a good feeling after exercise. My SO does too. I never felt it.
Until I dieted down to being 'at weight' not overweight. Only then did it feel good to exercise, and only then after I exercised. The act itself is still a terrible experience.
I've put on weight again and, yep, I hate exercise now. But now I know there is a light at the end of the dieting and weightless tunnel. Without the experimental results, I would never have known.
So, its not that I don't trust the science here, I mean, how can I refute it? It's just that my lived experience says that I'm a freak and I'm sitting out on the end of some bell curve or whatever. I know that it got a high ROI, that's why I did these weight loss experiments in the first place. It's just that for some reason, my body and mind hate exercise until I get down to healthy levels.
Same. Still working on reducing body fat percentage (5'9", 230lbs, 32% body fat) but have been exercising twice a week with a personal trainer for over a year. Have put on quite a bit of muscle. Easily the strongest I've ever been and an in the best shape of my life.
Exercise still sucks. I hate it, it's an awful experience. The only thing I feel during and after exercise is tired and sore. There is no glow, no feeling of being refreshed, energized, satisfied, or accomplished. Just discomfort.
It doesn't matter the exercise, the intensity, cardio or strength, 15 minutes or an hour and a half. It also doesn't matter how long I consistently exercise. I'm at 13 months during this attempt and it's just as miserable an experience as it was day one. Despite assurance from multiple people it'll start feeling good after just a few months more than however long I'd been doing it.
In fact, I would say my actual day-to-day quality of life has gone down since I've started exercising regularly because now I'm sore from exercising most days of the week, whereas I was never sore like this before regular exercise. I deeply wish that exercise could be a positive experience.
I'm always worried I'll fumble and lose the habit because it would feel so, so much better to just stop exercising. (A personal trainer is quite expensive to boot, but there's no way I'd get to the gym and work out otherwise)
You at least have given me some hope that this might change if I get my weight down, so that's something I'll keep in mind.
At this point the only reason I put up with it is in 30 years I'll thank myself.
I’m feeling benefits from just doing 10K steps a day.
And that involves putting in earbuds, listening to podcasts or an audiobook, and just wandering around the house. I try to walk after my meals to help digestion. It’s no burden if you’re engrossed in what you’re listening to.
I’ve tried many forms of exercise over the years, but it’s true that consistency beats everything else.
It took me ~4 years before I finally got my act together. I had found an exercise routine I tolerated well enough (Deck of Pain), but it wasn't until I did a (frankly horrible) calorie focused diet that I started weight loss in earnest. 1k calories/day of dieting was awful for a year, but it did work.
It is very much worth it though. I have more energy for the family now and my friends too. I finally got the weight off and, like I said, that's when I finally felt the good feelings about exercise. I was pretty surprised by it too, felt that I was somehow genetically doomed to just hate exercise. Nope, the MDs are right here, being overweight is really bad for you. I just didn't think that it was a mental thing too, but in retrospect, it makes a lot of sense.
I am someone who enjoys exercise, but I only enjoy certain types of exercise. I cannot stand mindless "monostructural" endurance events like running or swimming. However I'll happily chase a ball until I am exhausted. I need some complexity and mental stimulation in my exercise. My favourite type of exercise, which I only discovered relatively late in life, is what I call "compositional movement", where the movement complexity is the point. Things like gymnastics, dance (particularly breakdance), some kinds of parkour, and so on. In other words, I think different kinds of exercise suit different kinds of personalities. It's unfortunate that most physical education doesn't do a good job of introducing people to a range of movement possibilities.
This is really where the focus needs to be for young people, and I think it's where our education system is really failing.
What exercise is best? Why... the one you enjoy and will continue doing!
Focusing on ROI can be a good way to view it for the right personality type, but I think that mentality can be harmful for the wrong personality type who will just grind out activities they don't really enjoy until they give up in exasperation.
I suspect for most people the trick is just finding something - anything - that is physically demanding that they enjoy, and then sticking to that.
You may want to find some activities you enjoy while doing them.
I don't know what you tried, but sometimes a small variation is enough to make it fun and rewarding during the exercise. For example, I find slow road running pretty boring. The only value is doing exercise and relaxing my brain. I gave up many times. But replace the roads by challenging technical single tracks, and I'm very happy and havn't gave up in years.
Yeah, I get this every time I talk about weight loss/exercise.
For reference, I've swum miles at once, run a marathon, played team sports, combat sports, pick up basketball, roughhousing with kiddos, etc. I've not done literally everything, but I feel like I've tried enough things to make a reasonable call.
Look, I just hate exercise. I don't feel energized or happy or fulfilled or whatever. I just feel exhausted and tired and sweaty and gross. There really isn't a second, throughout my life, where I've ever wanted to exercise for it's own sake.
I know, that seems like crazy talk to you probably. But, form what i know of myself and my life, it's just the way it is.
Like I said, when I was 'at weight' for my height and in a good BMI, then afterwards I would feel good and nice and that exercise was worth it. But when I am overweight, then exercise looses that feeling for me. I just feel bad.
Still, thank you for the encouragement and ideas, I do appreciate it.
I hate exercise and I can't even imagine doing it in the morning because it just makes me tired and sleepy. After two hour bike ride or 3 hour walk, I just drop and fall asleep in the middle of the day messing up my sleep schedule. Somehow I feel that even for the author of this article exercise would feel different if he wasn't chasing it up with 45 minutes of binging coffee.
Did you misread the article? The author doesn't suggest a two hour bike ride or three hour bike ride at any point, they only suggest a 45 minute routine.
If you’re struggling with exercise and with getting it into a routine, I can’t recommend standalone, wireless VR enough. It was fun and engaging enough to keep me coming back without feeling that I was doing a boring chore, and nearly every game has you moving, with the exception of the flying and driving sims.
Imagine fighting ninjas and dodging bullets as your workout. You can literally get that and more with VR.
Can you recommend any specific games that meet these requirements? I don't have VR, but I remember playing "Super hot VR" and getting a surprisingly good workout from that game.
If I can promote one myself, Synth Riders can be a hell of a workout. People like comparing it to beat saber. Unlike beat saber, there's no swords, so there's a lot less wrist movement and a lot more arm/full-body movement. It feels a lot like dancing while you're doing it. I'm no great fan of exercise, but if I'm not careful I can exercise myself deep past exhaustion in this one -- especially on the harder difficulty charts.
And beyond that there's a mode where you punch the notes instead of trying to catch them. I haven't tried it, but that sounds even more demanding.
But aside from anything else, it's just fun! Great option for training cardio, it really works out the arms.
Holotfit (paid subscription) works with rowing machines
Racket Club
Until you fall
Blade and Sorcery
Dragon Fist Kung fu (if you want to go all the way with Pc and don’t mind wires, this one supports foot tracking)
Blast on!
Stride
Battle talent
Space pirate trainer
Racket NX
Gorilla tag
Stride
Blacktop Hoops
Masters of Light
Mothergunship forge
There’s so many other games that I missed listing.
Really any action VR game where you’re the first person hero will get you moving enough as a habit. You are now the character instead of a puppet master controlling one via buttons. Need to duck or crouch? You will feel it and sweat sooner or later.
If walking had enough intensity to count as actual exercise, no one would have a problem with working out. The only time it works as exercise is if you don’t use a car to commute and you walk everywhere.
As you age, you will lose lean muscle and bone density. But you do have some control in maintaining a healthy level of strength for your elder years.
You can maintain strength and density by engaging in resistance training.
The total amount of training required is up for debate. I follow Dr. Peter Attia and he discusses needing about 1 hr a week of resistance training.
The other aspect of maintaining strength is protein intake. Dr. Attia describes it as a “chore”, that is to consume 1g of protein supplement for each pound of body mass. That’s a lot!
Think about your future, do you want to be strong and mobile into your later years? I see older unhealthy people walking the streets and don’t envisage myself letting that happen.
You must take good care of yourself and put in the time to exercise and eat properly.
I am embarrassed to admit I always thought people focused too much on protein and it was bro science but I also never managed to get stronger despite resistance training. Then in my forties I finally started eating 150-180 g of protein a day and doing resistance training to exhaustion a couple days a week and the difference has been huge. I wish I’d done this 20 years ago.
I'm 6'1 and 190-200lb, and I went from 130g to 80g a day of protein for the last year and have only gained more lean mass.
I do think proteinmaxing is mostly food/supp industry hype + advice for people who need to tricked into replacing donuts with something healthier. So YMMV.
But I think the training until exhaustion part of your comment is the important bit.
I think a lot of people simply aren’t aware of how little protein they are eating per day. Some people are only getting a pathetic 30-40g a day which isn’t really enough to build new muscle and barely even maintains muscle you already have.
Yep this. Every time I see an old person who can't walk normally or without a walker, is really overweight, etc., I tell myself that's not going to be me.
There's a difference between soreness and pain. My muscles get sore all the time from exercise, but it's not painful. That soreness just tells me I'm probably going to be a little bit stronger because of the exercise I just did. (Of course it's a continuum: certain higher levels of soreness mean I probably overdid it.)
Joint pain is a whole other thing, though. Usually joint pain means that you're doing some sort of exercise incorrectly, or that you're using too much weight or intensity for your current level of physical fitness. Or you have a previous injury that can't fully heal and there are some exercises that you just shouldn't be doing, but you do them anyway.
But I think the author is talking about less pain in a different way. For example, I threw out my lower back 25 years ago in college, and it's never been the same since. But doing core exercises and strengthening the muscles around that area means much less chance of pain doing regular day-to-day activities.
Sorry, but overexerted muscle feels exactly the same for me as the one hit with something hard and heavy or one that received a dozen injections that had a bit of tissue damage as a side effect.
> Usually joint pain means that you're doing some sort of exercise incorrectly
Joint and ligament pain means that you do too much of exactly what you are doing and you should do something at least a bit different. There's no such thing as correct or incorrect. You can do literally anything, just not too much. You only need to be careful because for some movements in some people 1 rep is too much already.
There's a big difference between recovery pain and chronic pain. Also, if someone has joint pain, they are doing the wrong exercises. For example, running trashes my knees, but biking does not. Also, picking up heavy shit (weights - squats and deadlifts) is the only thing that resolved lower back pain (from sitting all day).
Doing anything more than you should will trash something in your body. How much of something you should be doing? Pain is a good indicator. I you are below 40 you shouldn't feel it at all. If you are above, you should feel it a bit and observe it closely while reducing the load. If it gets weaker with time, you have appropriate load, if it doesn't or gets stronger, your load is still too high.
Some ways to exercise avoid injury & get results, and some.. don’t.
I’m a triathlete of 4 years now - love to be sore but have never been injured & unable to train.
There are three things you must do:
1. good technique: lift with the right muscles, run at the right cadence & target heart rate.
2. listen to your body when it needs less or more load.
3. treat recovery as equally important as exercise itself. Exercise’s mirror.
That said, instead of actual complaints, your friends might be social signaling! Bringing it up to bond over the joy of exercise. Humans do that subconsciously, and there is a ton of joy to bond over!
When you start working out, you will have soreness in your muscles from lactic acid because your body isn’t used to it.
Once you get in a routine of doing it at least twice a week you won’t get that soreness anymore. People who start working out, then miss a month, then start back experience it all the time. Consistency is key.
When you start drinking something like unsweetened tea, initially it's almost unbearably bitter. But as you drink it long enough, it feels less and less bitter. It didn't get any less bitter, you just impaired your ability to sense this kind of bitterness.
I wonder what happens with muscle soreness. Do they get actually get less sore after consistent exercise? Or do you just blunt your nervous system into not detecting chemical signatures of the damage? I'm guessing it's the second case because people here are commenting that after exercising long enough you can still have gains but no pain of muscle soreness.
From personal experience strength training has been key to recovering from injuries (caused by doing stupid things, not exercise itself). So maybe the correlation between exercise and pain is incorrect? The exercise is the cure to the pain...
My personal thoughts and anecdote, assuming you're not talking about the kind of "bro I got in a killer workout yesterday, my biceps are still sore" Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness humblebragging:
I have a controlled autoimmune disorder like arthritis that causes me some joint pain. But it basically goes away if I do regular strength training. If you do strength training or any sport long enough you'll eventually hurt yourself. Usually that's just a pulled muscle because you woke up on the wrong side of the bed and it goes away after a few days. These micro-injuries actually seem to happen to me a lot, probably because of my condition I'm just prone to this stuff. But I prefer it to the pains of inactivity.
Even for people without arthritis, you have a question to answer: which would you rather suffer from? The pains from not working, out like having a weak core and bad posture and the discomfort of being unable to climb a few sets of stairs? Or the pains from working out, like pulling a back muscle because you didn't warm up or some shin or knee pain from too much running?
The answer is obvious to me. You're going to get hurt either way. I'll go with the path that makes me feel better, live longer, look hotter, and is a rewarding challenge.
If folks are regularly sore and their goals are not some lofty races or even higher and further down the progression path, they are doing it wrong.
You should feel the exercise and specific muscles afterwards, sometimes even a day after (like hamstrings and thighs from squats, those don't get much workout during normal life), but after initial beginner phase the continuous long term goal is to get enough workout that muscles are not sore, just notch below. Properly sore muscle needs few days rest, a well used one can be again fully loaded in 48h easily.
And overall definitely less pain or more like 0 pain, ie back from weak core is pretty typical. Another one are knees, but to train knees around some already-damaged tissues is more tricky, but definitely worth it.
After starting weightlifting (on top of some sports like ski touring, climbing, hiking etc) I can handle much more, heavier and longer. Need to move your/friend stuff to another apartment? All day carrying with them feels like mild stretch, compared to them complaining for back pain for another 3 days.
Anecdotally, weight training eliminated my chronic shoulder and hip pains from sitting at a desk. I’ve read several similar stories but I’d be interested to see studies on this.
For me personally: My fitness routines are regular but sloppy.
I’m often complaining about soreness here, a lightly pulled there, a big joint that needs to be left alone for a few days. It’s annoying but also even kinda satisfying, and I know how to avoid serious injury.
I’m not complaining about lower back pain because my fitness activity has rid me of it. That pain would have stopped me from being able to move easily, work on my cabin, play with children, and would have eventually made me overweight and chronically ill.
The tradeoff is really a no-brainer in my case, and I don’t think my case is so unique.
Every life long runner I know has had a serious knee problem or other injury.
But I think running is higher impact on the body that a lot of of other exercise. You're putting your full body weight on a small area several times a second for many minutes every day.
In my case, it's "good" pain. If you exercise regularly, you're going to be sore a lot of the time, but you grow to like it. It's a reminder that you worked hard and not really debilitating.
Some people just like to complain? Or at least make it clear they are working out to everyone around them? Or they are working out too hard for their fitness level? Lots of reasons.
Despite decades of being told about the benefits of exercise, I had absolutely no idea what the actual time investment looked like to go from unfit to fit.
I couldn't put a number on it, and part of me assumed it must be enormous otherwise, why wouldn't anyone just say the number?
Then I discovered Couch to 5K: 30 minutes, 3 times a week. A concrete, achievable number that delivered (to me) mind blowing results.
How could it be so low? How could i not know this? How is anyone walking around ignorant (as i was) of this?
Readit News
There has to be some incredible correlation between having the time and money to play tennis “a few times per week” and being significantly wealthier than the average person. And being wealthy is clearly the healthiest thing you can do.
I find tennis an incredibly cheap sport to do recreationally. Basketball can be cheap, too, but I think you'd go through shoes pretty fast, especially on a city hard court. Soccer maybe cheaper, but it's too much organization (hard to get 10+ people on the same page at the same time).
I have the opposite opinion - if criticism like this is so obvious (and it is), then it's up to the article to refute it immediately - this saves time of everyone reading it and gives it more credibility.
Wake up at 4:30am and go for a run. You’re already accomplishing more at that point in the day than most wealthy people who are comfortably laying in bed.
The hard thing is doing the thing. Just do, that’s it.
About that, what hours people that wake up at 4.30 am go to bed? If they're so conscious about their well being I'd assume at least 8 hours of sleep, so maybe they go to bed at... 8~9 pm? my question is what do they do to end their day at 9pm? If you work 9-5, you have just 4 hours left after work. Less if you commute, have dinner and a "go to be" routine of maybe 30 min. How about social life after work? Run errands? In my case, if I need to do anything out of my house it has to be after work hours (because almost everything is closed between 6am and 9am when I start work).
So, what's the secret?
No one said correlation is 1. It's just on average wealthy people live longer.
There's a free court near me, and both balls and racquets can be gotten for peanuts.
Since I've been a child, living in multiple countries across Europe and Asia, there's always been either free or cheap tennis courts near me. I don't even play tennis much and I know this, I'm sure if I was searching I'd find way more low cost options.
It's more likely that the demographic who play tennis tends to be wealthy, rather than the sport itself being expensive.
How can tennis be an expensive sport?
My kid just bought (a few months ago) a couple of used rackets for $5. Tennis balls can be had for a few dollars. Courts are free.
Aside from jogging, tennis seems like one of the cheapest sports possible.
I think the only cheaper sport might be swimming, but only if you live near the ocean.
So then it's a bidirectional correlation. You're more likely to be fit if you are wealthy and more likely to be wealthy if you are fit.
Essentially, what you're looking at is that people who engage in self improvement end up better off than those who don't.
It's a priori obvious but some people are uncomfortable with it for some reason - trauma response / coping mechanism, something like that.
It's not surprising there's a strong correlation between "rich people" hobbies (horses, golf, tennis, sailing, etc.) and health outcomes/longevity.
I'm curious how affects lifespan having a private chef at home and a private driver.
https://www.usta.com/en/home/play/facility-listing.html
Even if we lived in a world where it didn't causally extend lifespan, the extension to healthspan [0] or QALYs [1] alone would be reason enough.
Derek Thompson's written about recent research to this effect [2]:
"Last year, Ashley and a large team of scientists conducted an elaborate experiment on the effects of exercise on the mammalian body. In one test, Ashley put rats on tiny treadmills, worked them out for weeks, and cut into them to investigate how their organs and vessels responded to the workout compared to a control group of more sedentary rodents. The results were spectacular. Exercise transformed just about every tissue and molecular system that Ashley and his co-authors studied—not just the muscles and heart, but also the liver, adrenal glands, fat, and immune system.
"When I asked Ashley if it was possible to design a drug that mimicked the observed effects of exercise, he was emphatic that, no, this was not possible. The benefits of exercise seem too broad for any one therapy to mimic. To a best approximation, aerobic fitness and weight-training seem to increase our metabolism, improve mitochondrial function, fortify our immune system, reduce inflammation, improve tissue-specific adaptations, and protect against disease."
Everyone really should be making it a priority to work up to at least meeting the physical activity guidelines as well focusing on the other core pillars of health described by the Barbell Medicine guys [3]. Anyone focused on biohacking and supplement stacks without having these in order is fundamentally unserious, majoring in the minors.
[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/healthspan
[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quality-adjusted_life_year#En...
[2] https://www.derekthompson.org/p/the-sunday-morning-post-why-...
[3] https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/where-should-my-priorit...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atherosclerosis
Exercise is vital!
"Atherosclerosis generally starts when a person is young and worsens with age. Almost all people are affected to some degree by the age of 65. It is the number one cause of death and disability in developed countries. Though it was first described in 1575, there is evidence suggesting that this disease state is genetically inherent in the broader human population, with its origins tracing back to CMAH genetic mutations that may have occurred more than two million years ago during the evolution of hominin ancestors of modern human beings."
To improve physical activity at the population scale and over a lifetime, it literally has to be built into the design of the cities, so people get enough exercise while walking to work or grabbing groceries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPUlgSRn6e0&ab_channel=NotJu...
https://cs.stanford.edu/people/jure/pubs/activity-inequality...
Sport can be pleasant and fun. It can be social for people who want social. It can fulfill more then one goal.
But, instead the expectation is that people will pick the most boring thing (running, gym), that they will commit to amounts of times and periodicity that makes life's harder and that nothing fun enough actually counts.
I find that hard to believe.
I'm a single parent and manage to find the time for exercise. I wonder what life situation you have that you have "1 spare hour".
> By the time it gets to the weekend, I'm so tired I don't want to do anything much, let alone difficult exercise.
I can't help but think you just don't want to exercise...
Agreed, in so much as telling people to exercise leads to a relatively small increase in the number of people exercising.
> Gyms are for people who have plenty of intrinsic motivation and money and time.
I'd say yes most people who regularly exercise at a gym have some kind of intrinsic motivation, but that's generally true of anyone with any activity.
Gyms with almost any kind of equipment, classes, and amenities are absurdly cheap: ~$30 / month. For the vast majority of Americans, that cost is well within a reasonable budget.
Time: TFA's time of 3 hours a week as an example is not insignificant but I wouldn't categorize it as extreme or "plenty of time." This investment could easily take from the amount of time Americans spend sitting and looking at a screen for entertainment. (Saying this as an American)
> To improve physical activity at the population scale and over a lifetime, it literally has to be built into the design of the cities, so people get enough exercise while walking to work or grabbing groceries.
I'm a bit more cynical as I believe a significant increase in the percentage of Americans who get a good amount of exercise is extremely unlikely. Any program or proposed change to policies necessary to affect such a change is DOA.
People don't go to a gym because the vast majority of folks are uninterested in exercise for exercise' sake: they want to look good. Unfortunately, improved physical appearance due to exercise takes longer than folks expect it to take.
This is not true. I believe you if you say it's true in your area, but in most places it's not. I'm a traveling healthcare worker and I usually can't find a gym for under $80. There may be some that advertise cheaper prices, but that always comes with hidden fees which make them about the same as the expensive gyms.
I hated exercise. Still do. People talk about a glow or a good feeling after exercise. My SO does too. I never felt it.
Until I dieted down to being 'at weight' not overweight. Only then did it feel good to exercise, and only then after I exercised. The act itself is still a terrible experience.
I've put on weight again and, yep, I hate exercise now. But now I know there is a light at the end of the dieting and weightless tunnel. Without the experimental results, I would never have known.
So, its not that I don't trust the science here, I mean, how can I refute it? It's just that my lived experience says that I'm a freak and I'm sitting out on the end of some bell curve or whatever. I know that it got a high ROI, that's why I did these weight loss experiments in the first place. It's just that for some reason, my body and mind hate exercise until I get down to healthy levels.
Thanks for letting me share this.
Exercise still sucks. I hate it, it's an awful experience. The only thing I feel during and after exercise is tired and sore. There is no glow, no feeling of being refreshed, energized, satisfied, or accomplished. Just discomfort.
It doesn't matter the exercise, the intensity, cardio or strength, 15 minutes or an hour and a half. It also doesn't matter how long I consistently exercise. I'm at 13 months during this attempt and it's just as miserable an experience as it was day one. Despite assurance from multiple people it'll start feeling good after just a few months more than however long I'd been doing it.
In fact, I would say my actual day-to-day quality of life has gone down since I've started exercising regularly because now I'm sore from exercising most days of the week, whereas I was never sore like this before regular exercise. I deeply wish that exercise could be a positive experience.
I'm always worried I'll fumble and lose the habit because it would feel so, so much better to just stop exercising. (A personal trainer is quite expensive to boot, but there's no way I'd get to the gym and work out otherwise)
You at least have given me some hope that this might change if I get my weight down, so that's something I'll keep in mind.
At this point the only reason I put up with it is in 30 years I'll thank myself.
I’ve tried many forms of exercise over the years, but it’s true that consistency beats everything else.
It took me ~4 years before I finally got my act together. I had found an exercise routine I tolerated well enough (Deck of Pain), but it wasn't until I did a (frankly horrible) calorie focused diet that I started weight loss in earnest. 1k calories/day of dieting was awful for a year, but it did work.
It is very much worth it though. I have more energy for the family now and my friends too. I finally got the weight off and, like I said, that's when I finally felt the good feelings about exercise. I was pretty surprised by it too, felt that I was somehow genetically doomed to just hate exercise. Nope, the MDs are right here, being overweight is really bad for you. I just didn't think that it was a mental thing too, but in retrospect, it makes a lot of sense.
You got this, keep it up
What exercise is best? Why... the one you enjoy and will continue doing!
Focusing on ROI can be a good way to view it for the right personality type, but I think that mentality can be harmful for the wrong personality type who will just grind out activities they don't really enjoy until they give up in exasperation.
I suspect for most people the trick is just finding something - anything - that is physically demanding that they enjoy, and then sticking to that.
I don't know what you tried, but sometimes a small variation is enough to make it fun and rewarding during the exercise. For example, I find slow road running pretty boring. The only value is doing exercise and relaxing my brain. I gave up many times. But replace the roads by challenging technical single tracks, and I'm very happy and havn't gave up in years.
For reference, I've swum miles at once, run a marathon, played team sports, combat sports, pick up basketball, roughhousing with kiddos, etc. I've not done literally everything, but I feel like I've tried enough things to make a reasonable call.
Look, I just hate exercise. I don't feel energized or happy or fulfilled or whatever. I just feel exhausted and tired and sweaty and gross. There really isn't a second, throughout my life, where I've ever wanted to exercise for it's own sake.
I know, that seems like crazy talk to you probably. But, form what i know of myself and my life, it's just the way it is.
Like I said, when I was 'at weight' for my height and in a good BMI, then afterwards I would feel good and nice and that exercise was worth it. But when I am overweight, then exercise looses that feeling for me. I just feel bad.
Still, thank you for the encouragement and ideas, I do appreciate it.
It takes a certain adaptation to reach this level of fitness - and it should be no guess how you get there.
Imagine fighting ninjas and dodging bullets as your workout. You can literally get that and more with VR.
It was my gateway back into fitness.
[1] https://www.stepmania.com/download/
If I can promote one myself, Synth Riders can be a hell of a workout. People like comparing it to beat saber. Unlike beat saber, there's no swords, so there's a lot less wrist movement and a lot more arm/full-body movement. It feels a lot like dancing while you're doing it. I'm no great fan of exercise, but if I'm not careful I can exercise myself deep past exhaustion in this one -- especially on the harder difficulty charts.
And beyond that there's a mode where you punch the notes instead of trying to catch them. I haven't tried it, but that sounds even more demanding.
But aside from anything else, it's just fun! Great option for training cardio, it really works out the arms.
Thrill of the Fight
Synth Riders
Pistol Whip
Body Combat
Les Mills XR Dance
Supernatural (paid subscription)
Fix XR (paid subscription)
Holotfit (paid subscription) works with rowing machines
Racket Club
Until you fall
Blade and Sorcery
Dragon Fist Kung fu (if you want to go all the way with Pc and don’t mind wires, this one supports foot tracking)
Blast on!
Stride
Battle talent
Space pirate trainer
Racket NX
Gorilla tag
Stride
Blacktop Hoops
Masters of Light
Mothergunship forge
There’s so many other games that I missed listing.
Really any action VR game where you’re the first person hero will get you moving enough as a habit. You are now the character instead of a puppet master controlling one via buttons. Need to duck or crouch? You will feel it and sweat sooner or later.
1) What kind of free space do you need? 2) What would you recommend in terms of headset if one plans to be swinging around a lot?
Meta Quest 3. Quest 2 and 3s work but there’s no point in getting a headset with a fresnel lens anymore.
Why Quest? It’s standalone wireless. i.e. you don’t need a separate PC or console and wires are not conducive to working out and moving
As you age, you will lose lean muscle and bone density. But you do have some control in maintaining a healthy level of strength for your elder years.
You can maintain strength and density by engaging in resistance training.
The total amount of training required is up for debate. I follow Dr. Peter Attia and he discusses needing about 1 hr a week of resistance training.
The other aspect of maintaining strength is protein intake. Dr. Attia describes it as a “chore”, that is to consume 1g of protein supplement for each pound of body mass. That’s a lot!
Think about your future, do you want to be strong and mobile into your later years? I see older unhealthy people walking the streets and don’t envisage myself letting that happen.
You must take good care of yourself and put in the time to exercise and eat properly.
I do think proteinmaxing is mostly food/supp industry hype + advice for people who need to tricked into replacing donuts with something healthier. So YMMV.
But I think the training until exhaustion part of your comment is the important bit.
Is there anything to back this up? The people I know who work out are always complaining about their muscles and joints.
Joint pain is a whole other thing, though. Usually joint pain means that you're doing some sort of exercise incorrectly, or that you're using too much weight or intensity for your current level of physical fitness. Or you have a previous injury that can't fully heal and there are some exercises that you just shouldn't be doing, but you do them anyway.
But I think the author is talking about less pain in a different way. For example, I threw out my lower back 25 years ago in college, and it's never been the same since. But doing core exercises and strengthening the muscles around that area means much less chance of pain doing regular day-to-day activities.
Sorry, but overexerted muscle feels exactly the same for me as the one hit with something hard and heavy or one that received a dozen injections that had a bit of tissue damage as a side effect.
> Usually joint pain means that you're doing some sort of exercise incorrectly
Joint and ligament pain means that you do too much of exactly what you are doing and you should do something at least a bit different. There's no such thing as correct or incorrect. You can do literally anything, just not too much. You only need to be careful because for some movements in some people 1 rep is too much already.
I’m a triathlete of 4 years now - love to be sore but have never been injured & unable to train.
There are three things you must do:
1. good technique: lift with the right muscles, run at the right cadence & target heart rate.
2. listen to your body when it needs less or more load.
3. treat recovery as equally important as exercise itself. Exercise’s mirror.
That said, instead of actual complaints, your friends might be social signaling! Bringing it up to bond over the joy of exercise. Humans do that subconsciously, and there is a ton of joy to bond over!
Dead Comment
Once you get in a routine of doing it at least twice a week you won’t get that soreness anymore. People who start working out, then miss a month, then start back experience it all the time. Consistency is key.
I wonder what happens with muscle soreness. Do they get actually get less sore after consistent exercise? Or do you just blunt your nervous system into not detecting chemical signatures of the damage? I'm guessing it's the second case because people here are commenting that after exercising long enough you can still have gains but no pain of muscle soreness.
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-5753318/v1 (pre-print) seems to provide a strong argument for strength training being beneficial. My search was not thorough so likely more studies out there.
My personal thoughts and anecdote, assuming you're not talking about the kind of "bro I got in a killer workout yesterday, my biceps are still sore" Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness humblebragging:
I have a controlled autoimmune disorder like arthritis that causes me some joint pain. But it basically goes away if I do regular strength training. If you do strength training or any sport long enough you'll eventually hurt yourself. Usually that's just a pulled muscle because you woke up on the wrong side of the bed and it goes away after a few days. These micro-injuries actually seem to happen to me a lot, probably because of my condition I'm just prone to this stuff. But I prefer it to the pains of inactivity.
Even for people without arthritis, you have a question to answer: which would you rather suffer from? The pains from not working, out like having a weak core and bad posture and the discomfort of being unable to climb a few sets of stairs? Or the pains from working out, like pulling a back muscle because you didn't warm up or some shin or knee pain from too much running?
The answer is obvious to me. You're going to get hurt either way. I'll go with the path that makes me feel better, live longer, look hotter, and is a rewarding challenge.
You should feel the exercise and specific muscles afterwards, sometimes even a day after (like hamstrings and thighs from squats, those don't get much workout during normal life), but after initial beginner phase the continuous long term goal is to get enough workout that muscles are not sore, just notch below. Properly sore muscle needs few days rest, a well used one can be again fully loaded in 48h easily.
And overall definitely less pain or more like 0 pain, ie back from weak core is pretty typical. Another one are knees, but to train knees around some already-damaged tissues is more tricky, but definitely worth it.
After starting weightlifting (on top of some sports like ski touring, climbing, hiking etc) I can handle much more, heavier and longer. Need to move your/friend stuff to another apartment? All day carrying with them feels like mild stretch, compared to them complaining for back pain for another 3 days.
I’m often complaining about soreness here, a lightly pulled there, a big joint that needs to be left alone for a few days. It’s annoying but also even kinda satisfying, and I know how to avoid serious injury.
I’m not complaining about lower back pain because my fitness activity has rid me of it. That pain would have stopped me from being able to move easily, work on my cabin, play with children, and would have eventually made me overweight and chronically ill.
The tradeoff is really a no-brainer in my case, and I don’t think my case is so unique.
If you do nothing for 20 years and then go for a 20km walk - you'll be in pain. But it's the 20 years that caused it, not the 20 km.
Sore muscles -> good workout.
But I think running is higher impact on the body that a lot of of other exercise. You're putting your full body weight on a small area several times a second for many minutes every day.
How could it be so low? How could i not know this? How is anyone walking around ignorant (as i was) of this?