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Cycle commuting to work and running. Nothing else has stuck
Same here. Exercise being a means to an end such as transportation works much better for me than regimented exercise for the sake of fitness.
I did this tricking myself by telling me “Im not exercising, I’m just commuting.” went from a 10 minute daily ride to 1+hrs.
Same here. I’m cheating though because I’m Dutch, so cycling is really accessible here. I don’t even have a car, so I pretty much have to go by bike.
Running works for me because it’s so easy to start with. For most other sports I have to go somewhere to do it or prepare all kinds of gear. For running I just change clothes, put on my running shoes, and I’m ready to go. The low threshold before I can start, and the low complexity thereafter is what made running stick and what doesn’t make most other things stick.
Cycling - saves me gas, often as quick as driving would be (we have epic all day congestion here). And its fun except when the weather is really bad. Only drive if I have a heavy load to go somewhere, or if I’m picking someone up or it is pouring
Also swimming - can be done year round indoors, and I dont sweat! Having a waterproof MP3 player helps me with motivation too
I choose to not own a car, making it so I have to cycle to work daily. That’s my exercise
Buying stuff at shops further home.
For example, there’s a bakery a block far from home, but I don’t buy my bread there unless I’m in a hurry; instead I buy it from a bakery 2km away - by doing that I’m walking 40min already (and their bread is better anyway). Same deal with cat food and some groceries.
What’s worked for me personally is just walking to/from my car at work, it just fits so naturally into my schedule that I don’t have to put any thought into it or have any struggles with willpower, I just do it. I park as far as possible away from the building, so there’s no conflict with just walking in the door, then take a few laps around the building. I work on the 4th floor, so I take the stairs and also do a few laps up and down the stairs before getting to my desk. I do that twice a day (when I get in, again for lunch), then at the end of the day I take one more lap before I get back to my car. I get in +10k steps on a daily basis when I’m in the office consistently and without even really thinking about it or putting in “extra effort”.
My problem is actually keeping it up when I’m not at the office, because then my routine sort of falls apart. I’ve tried building up routines for when I’m at home or on the weekends, but one thing or another seems to come up consistently and I haven’t been able to get them to stick.
Exercise is kind of personal / varies depending on what you like to do. For me there was actually 2 pieces to improving my exercise routine:
1. Starting a habit of exercise.
This was a necessary first step if you don’t already have exercise as a part of your regular life. For me, my goal was just to just arrive at the gym every day. I didn’t workout every day; sometimes I straight up walked in, walked out, and went home (or used the sauna haha). But inevitably, I ended up working out a good amount, and start making it a part of my routine. Basically, my recommendation is not to try and optimize anything at first; just try to make it as easy as possible to succeed at habit-building. Find some kind of activity that is fun and make it a regular part of your schedule. Social sports activities are also great if you can get peer-pressured :P
2. Making exercise more effective
Once I was training regularly, I found things I wanted to improve, and so I started to create goals. I’m a rock-climber, so there are certain things that I want to do to improve that. Once I started working on those goals, I wanted to improve the effectiveness of my gym time. At a certain point, I made an actual daily schedule of what exercises I do. If you want to improve the quality of your exercise, putting in the effort to make an actual workout schedule is the biggest thing you can do imo. It doesn’t even matter if it is a “good” plan. Just actually following the plan, you will find the areas you can fix/improve that plan.
With my current routine, I have a 10 minute warmup mobility routine every morning, climb 3 days a week, workout 3 days a week (sometimes at the gym, sometimes at a nearby calisthenics park), and avoid the gym for 1 day a week.
But it started by just trying to arrive at the gym every day.
I play Switch games while on my treadmill. The split controller works perfectly for that and makes it easy to forget I’m walking.
I started swimming once a week, last December. That really works for me bc I love the build in cooling system. Sure it has its annoyances but overall it’s my favorite sport, plus almost daily cycling cause I don’t own a car and live in a very cyclable city.
Swimming is the one routine I’ve been able to maintain long-term. For many reasons, but built-in cooling is really up there
Taking walks. May last three hours at a time, though I never bothered to measure the distance physically. I also check on my neighbors sometimes along the way and/or stop at the library or church temporarily. Did you know walking is better for you than jogging/running?
I’ve destroyed my ankles and feet from running, which sucks because I really enjoyed it! Now I just walk up hills and it still gets my heart rate up pretty good.
Powerlifting, hiking and walking/playing with my dog
Beat Saber on high difficulty. Fun, mild cardio.
Another VR game Thrill of the Fight is fun also. Its a boxing game that burns as many calories as rowing! https://vrhealth.institute/portfolio/thrill-of-the-fight/
Honestly the best workouts I’ve had were from CrossFit.
5km low soeed running at lunch when I work at home.
PPL did great until I realized my back was by faaaar the most overdeveloped part of my body and so I went on a chest/tricep, tricep/ shoulder, shoulder/chest, back/bicep, leg split (thats 5 days not in that order) With some hamstring work with every workout since they were incredibly weak.
I had trouble sticking to exercise for years, only thing that worked was setting my alarm an hour earlier and doing 30 minutes of exercise every morning.
