To wish I enjoyed exercise

[iwant2cats]

I genuinely wish I did. I don’t; I never have and never experienced the endorphin rush.

I haven't read the full thread but will say that exercise is important - especially as you age.

You might not love it - but find something that you don't mind doing and stick to that. You don't have to be a super athlete, but move your body most days per week.

Once you get past 30 it's harder to build new muscle, and with the gradual loss of natural oestrogen strength of existing muscle fibres decline, as does bone mass, tendon strengh, ligament flexiblity. All the stuff really.

So it's a good idea to get moving as soon as you can. Even if you don't really want to.

I work in a gym and see so many older people who come and work out as they don't be to be frail and falling over. Strength training and regular gentle cardio will be enough to keep moving into older age. Those who are not active - no exercise/gardening/walking etc usually decline at an earlier age.

So yes - it is important.

I don't particularly love exercise - I am inherently lazy but am just setting off now.

Crochet helps hand mobility though so all is not lost :-)
Osteo arthritis is a bitch though. I have it in my wrists now and can mostly ignore it except when doing exercises like yoga/Pilates then it thoroughly pisses me off !

I was just thinking about this the other day. I have never much enjoyed physical exercise. Why do some people enjoy it when others don’t? Why do we criticise people as "lazy" if that’s just the way they were born?

I can understand why people good at sports enjoy those more than I do (I am very unco-ordinated) but I don’t even enjoy walking particularly. I don’t find it painful or get out of breath or anything like that, but anything more than a mile or so is just a chore. I don’t really know if this is a mental or a physical issue.

It’s never too late though. I didn’t start reformer Pilates until I hit 50 and I’m stronger now than I was in my 20’s, 30’s and 40’s.

my mum had never exercised in her life and drive everywhere but started doing weights in the rehab hospital after her brain bleed 3 years ago The difference has been remarkable. That said, her heart is shit and will ultimately be the thing that carries her off, but at 89 she can lift pots in the garden and more importantly when she fell out of bed the other day she had the arm strength to get up off the floor.
my dad can’t get up if he falls unless there is something fixed to hold on to. He was fit all his life then just stopped (cognitive decline). So the key takeaway is it’s never too late and you can increase muscle strength at any age.

The more you do it, the more you will enjoy it. You just need to start somewhere, have low expectations, accept that it might be uncomfortable or tedious. Stick with it and you’ll get to a point where it’s genuinely enjoyable.

The alternative is having to be lifted on and off the toilet for the last 10 years of your life… or left to shit in nappies.

Same here. I view it in the same way I do brushing my teeth, I don’t enjoy it but I don’t want to have horrible teeth / depression so I do it.

The whole point of this thread is that this isn't actually true for a lot of people. I've had periods in my life where I have done lots of exercise for years at a time and I NEVER got to a point where I enjoyed it.

"Enjoy" might be too strong a word then. You don't "enjoy" brushing your teeth but it becomes a habit that you neither like nor dislike.

Exercise doesn't need to be a standalone activity, plenty of people get enough exercise through daily life - physical jobs, housework, gardening, active commutes etc. But if you are otherwise sedentary it will preserve your ability to live independently for longer.

I hate it and I've never understood how people enjoy it. I also find exercise a really strange concept. The fact that people just go for a run makes no sense to me and I think it looks really bizarre.

It might be because my parents never exercised, and now I think about it I've never seen or heard of a relative of mine exercising. We're all an average size (or on the slim side), very few health issues, etc. So that's the norm for me and exercise seems more like a hobby some people do. I am well aware that I need to exercise but I have a big mental block for some reason.

I'm about to go for a half hour cycle ride to do my shopping - i look like I'm making some sort of effort when in reality I'm shopping for my elderly mum buying her vodka . A day doesn't go by without someone commenting on how fit I must be , when it's literally my only mode of getting around without having to pay for buses.

Your body needs exercise. You may not always feel like it but when you've done it you will be glad you did.

@Honeypizza I know just what you mean. Exercising for the sake of it, rather than cycling to work or running for a bus, just seems... self-indulgent? Or something? Probably connected to my parents not doing exercise either, so I never saw it as part of life.

Being in a gym in close proximity to other people working on their bodies feels unpleasantly intimate too. Everyone on their own but together. Just so awkward.

I have done the couch-to-5k a few times. Once, during Covid, I actually finished it, and could 'run' (stagger) for half an hour. Great, I thought. Now I'll start to enjoy it. Kept going for another three months, but it was always purest torment. That repetitive 'whump' as my sack of potatoes body hit the pavement each time. Just ugh.

On the plus side, it did make me realise that the feeling of imminent death - chest pain, burning legs - that comes on about five minutes in doesn't get any worse. And at about minute 12 or 13 I didn't actually hate it so much I wanted to throw myself in the adjacent river.

To add, I think I have a lot of hyper mobility in feet and pelvis, so a lot of energy has to be expended just holding my body together, let alone propelling it along.