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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

“hella crazy exercise… doing this horse stuff”

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.

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'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

Unfortunately it's not that simple. :(

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.

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.

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'm 44 now, and last year I did a 5K every day for 28 days in a row. It was overdoing it, but I was trying to get in my best shape ever and it helped.

The Kurzgesagt video is fine, but the NIH exercise guidelines are actually better for deciding how much and what exercise to do.

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.

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.

That sounds like a disability and definitely is not normal. Far from a "counter-example", especially when the overwhelming evidence is that being sedentary IS harmful

It differs per person.

I can walk rather long distances even if sick, but that's because I've been doing that a lot in my childhood. Not so often today - but the parts about correct posture and movements and breathing rhythm are still very useful.

Try with something so small that you don't even get tired, just feel heated up a bit. Do it every day. When that effect stops being notable, increase the load so you feel it again. Keep doing that, and in 3 months your life should be better.

Of course, I've never been able to keep doing something regularly, so this is just repeating advice often heard (and correct in terms of your body, but not in terms of executive dysfunction and what it does to one's ability to exercise regularly).

I'm sorry that your experience has been crappy. And yes, not all strong exercises are great for everyone.

Still, there are advantages for not being sedentary and being active, as in light exercises does not have to disable you for days. You should look into that as it is not necessarily common.