What about starting at once per week? You don't have start at the optimal point. Once per week is already going to create the habit, give you some health and energy benefits and you can scale up from there.

Also, gym or equipment are not necessary. I do everything at home, and my only "equipment" is composed of a mat and a pull-up bar attached to a door. You can get each item for around 10$.

You can do HIIT cardio exercises that last only 10-20 minutes and have been shown to be much more beneficial than long cardio sessions like running for one hour.

You can also increase muscle mass doing calisthenics exercises with as little as 10 minutes of exercise no more than twice per week (total weekly time: 20 minutes).

I recommend reading the 4 Hour Body from Tim Ferris for this.

There are a lot of options that don't need to include going to the gym or long exercises.

You don't need to go to the Gym. What you need to do, is to take ownership of your body and your health regimen. You don't need any complex mechanical stuff to do that. Bodyweight exercises are more than enough for regular folks and you can do them at home. Research. See what works for you. These guys have a terrific supportive attitude and great do-at-home courses to get you started https://gmb.io/

Aerobic: Do a run per week and walks on other days around your house. If you want to compress that time and are ready for some pain, do interval runs (research Tabata exercise).

You don't need the gym. Gym is marketing bullshit by an industry that attempts to monetize basic human functions. The only reason gyms are packed with exercise machines is because it's the cheapest way to offer some sort of structured conditioning without expert guidance. I.e it's the most profitable model for gym owners. It's not as good as free weight exercises (unless you are after some specific athletic goal, I think) for any sort of thing.

I found buying an activity bracelet with onboard pulse meter motivated me considerably. Polar A360 was good enough for me, but I'm sure there are better alternatives.

I totally disagree. While you can absolutely get fit without a gym, it's difficult to serious build muscle mass without lifting weights.

The context of the discussion was the claim that one needs to go to a gym to maintain a healthy regimen of exercise, which I vehemently oppose.

In this context the main goal of exercise is longevity and staying healthy as possible through senescence.

I don't think there is any conclusive evidence of how much muscle mass is needed for better longevity. My long bet is that regular farmers walks with enough weights are enough for that (combined with some body weight exercises like pull ups).

I don't need the gym for my farmers walks. I have a few rubbery bikes handles strapped to 40 kg weights which I lug around outside my house. I have a pull up bar at home. Done. No need to go to gym.

This is partly a lifestyle choice - I don't enjoy exercise, but I've seen relatives go in a bad way after they forgot to take care of themselves for a couple of decades. I want a regimen that provides sufficient benefits, with as few excuses not to do them as possible.

Who said anything about building serious mass? There are many, say, professional fighters who do very little weight training and they look exceptional (literally).

You want to get in shape, you don't need a gym. Do hard work for 30 minutes a day. Work that makes you sweaty and tired. Run, sprint, pushups, burpees, anything. You will get in shape. If you don't believe it, try it for a couple months.

That said, you only need a rack, a bar, a bench, and some plates to get the best possible workout with weights. Doing squats, deadlifts, bench press, rows, and olympic lifts is all it takes to become extremely strong and hardened against injuries. Machines are totally unnecessary.

And I'm not even so sure about fighters. Which fighters do you have in mind that explicitly don't do weight training?

The fighters at my gym.

I guess I can't say for certain what the pros do or do not, but I assume some of the competition amateurs I see are doing the best they can. And they look like it. And I know that guys like Conor McGregor have made statements about doing purely "functional exercise". I'm sure some pro fighters weight-train, because it has obvious benefits. It's also hard to sustain muscle in a cardio-focussed sport.

I'm definitely a weight-training advocate, as well. I'm a believer that in order to "get stronger" you have lift heavier and heavier things. That's only really feasible at the gym. I try to get there a couple times a week.

On the other hand, so many people who are starting out try to get some heavy duty "system" in place before they feel they can begin. I see these people at the gym; there for 2 hours, putting everything in their phone, not even working up a sweat. It's not that complicated; just do work.

Machines are actually worse than free weights; you don't get a full body workout, especially all those stabilizer muscles that help prevent injury.

> hardened against injuries.

I can second this; while I've not become extremely strong, I credit strength training for my lack of broken bones after taking a 600ft tumble down a hard pack snow slope. Strength training in recovery also helped me heal faster.

Yes and no. Free weights are the better of the two choices, but machines are head and shoulders better than free weights for solo trainer safety, which is a problem for us guys and gals trying to "fit it in" to our schedules, as well as beginners.

So, I don't discourage people from machines simply because they aren't optimal. They have their place. I generally use the rack to bench. I love the AirDyne and Concept 2, if those count!

Any exercise is better than no exercise. And yeah, things like bench press you should ideally have a spotter for. Myself, I stick to the five lifts from Rippetoe's "Starting Strength" (a recommendation I got from HN of all places!), so squats I use a power rack with pins, and overhead press, deadlift and power clean need no spotters. Bench you can do without a spotter if you leave the collars off (just dump the plates on one side, then the other), but most gyms frown on that.

Personally, I strongly recommend getting a door frame pull up bar and a set of gymnast rings to go with it. This should provide all the equipment you need for a reasonably good body weight resistance training routine.

For cardio, there are many options. Running? You just need shoes and 30 minutes. And you only need cardio once or twice a week.

A little exercise is like a drug. It makes me feel stronger, smarter, more alert. You don't have to go to a gym and bulk up, you just need to start somewhere. Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

If you follow a bodyweight fitness routine, for instance /r/bodyweightfitness' recommended routine[1], you'll only need a few pieces of equipment to get a good workout regimen going.

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness/wiki/kb/recommend...

You don't have to go to the gym to exercise. You could exercise at home, using bodyweight exercise and isometrics.[1][2] For aerobic exercise, you can (for example) run or jump rope. Neither of those requires a commute or gym membership.

One good way to get started is the r/bodyweightfitness Recommended Routine.[3]

[1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness/

[2] - https://www.reddit.com/r/Isometrics/

[3] - https://www.reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness/wiki/kb/recommend...

Also, find friends who want to be active, not just to go the pub and drink and watch sports (instead of taking part). Get your GF interested in (doing) sports too, and it's a win-win situation.

Please don't take this to be insulting, just trying to explain that once you find a compelling factor, you'll be able to make it work. And once you make it a lifestyle, you will find it uncomfortable to NOT be active.

You'd also be surprised at some of the people from varied walks of life you'll meet; rock climbing in the 90s was festooned with mathematicians and engineers as a progression from mental to physical chess; today it's the domain of the teens, but I'm fine with that as a natural evolution of the consumerism and commodization of most sports. And triathlons, adventure races and ultras have a lot of high-wealth folks participating nowadays, in the current culture of shifting from collecting assets to collecting experiences.

No, your problem with exercise is prioritising.

You could spend less time at the gym. You could (probably) go running around your work or your home. You could work out or do yoga at home. You could even work out or stretch in the office during breaks!

Commuting 20-30 minutes to a gym sounds completely absurd [0]. You can use that time for exercising. Just walk or run around your home or office, or climb stairs, or do calisthenics in your living room, or whatever.

What I do is cycle to work, which takes about 1 hour per day plus showering both ways (driving the same distance would take about 40 minutes two ways.)

[0] https://chimaeraspeaks.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/america-f...

> Staying 30 minutes longer happens easily so it's 7:30

Set an alarm to 6:50. Get out on time.

> Commuting to the gym would take another 20-30

You don't need a gym.

> Go to supermarket, maybe cook something up

Shop once a week. Cook ahead & freeze.

>Now spinning up the brain to focus on something creative also needs a bit of time.

Move that to the morning, if you need the evening for social activities.

> Do I work on other hobbies that I've been putting off too long?

Trust me: You want to work out. There are always more hobbies than you have time for. There's only one healthy body. And you're not (easily) getting it back if you let it go.

I'm very pleased with that decision. It's produced great results for me, both physically and mentally.

I use for for podcasts and indoor cycling. I could only poscast when i cycled.

Worked really Well. Indoor cycling is mentally hard, but I looked forward to it so I could hear my podcasts.

A good one, with a good variety of (high) resistance and a quality rope would cost about 400/500$, double it if you want agonist-level equipment.

I'd also say, get a door-frame pull up bar and a set of adjustable dumb bells, and you can do an extremely effective workout in minimal time.

Like any exercise, you've got to work up a sweat to get benefit tho.

My new life changing discovery is that you don't need to spend an hour. I've long resisted going to the gym for exactly the reasons you describe, but I've recently joined a gym just round the corner from my office and realized that I can go either before work or on my lunch break, and more importantly that by having a plan before I go and being efficient about it I can be in and out in 30 minutes or less. For me the practical difference now between going and not going to the gym being at work at 8.30 and being at work at 9.00.

I find this bizarre, both in that every gym I've belonged to opened before 6:00AM and that these gyms must be excluding a significant market of potential members.

Check this out. I workout three times a week for 20ish minutes or less. I modify this method a bit. Curls instead of pull ups and kettle bell swings instead of squats. I bought everything so I've got it all at home. Kettle bell and two dumbbells take up very little space. If you actually want to exercise there is always a way. I'm not in the same shape I was in when I was working out at the gym 6 days a week but I don't need to be anymore.

I contrasted two semesters, one where I would tell myself "I don't have time to go to the gym, I need to stay at home and do this problem set" and another where I would tell myself basically the opposite, "I don't have time to NOT go to the gym." What I noticed was that the semesters where I made more of an effort (3-4 times a week) to go to the gym, my grades were better.

Over the years I've found that exercise sharpens the time you have left over. So sure, you spend an extra hour a day exercising but the other 23 hours are just better - you're more alert, you think better, you have more energy, you sleep better, you're less irritable.

You do you, but what I found works for me is working out in the morning. On good days, I get to the pool at 0630 and swim for 40 minutes, then go to work. As a bonus life hack, I've discovered that this combines your post-workout stupor with your early-morning-coffee stupor so you get all the stupor out of the way in the morning while you're checking e-mail and no one else is doing anything anyway.

Do this 3-4 times a week for a few months and see how you feel at the end of it.

Alternatively, do this with the gf. As long as you won't let each other off the hook, that is..

Something else that worked really well for me for a while was a small running/dinner club. We'd all get together one evening and go for a fairly social, chatty run, followed by dinner at one attendee's place. Burgers, pizza, whatever, something that's pretty quick and easy to toss together. Again, mixing socialising and exercise. The only reason this has stopped happening is because I've temporarily stopped running due to injury.

One more thing: I suspect anything less than 30 minutes a day of exercise is sort of "free" time. Many people report feeling more alert and getting better sleep with regular exercise. So you may regain that 30 minutes per day with increased productivity, or possibly even less time sleeping due to better sleep. (Citation needed!).

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzZ1Zb0p-FdCgop90uImXn...

You just need your bodyweight and a chair or something tall at home that you can step on to.

Try to fit a bunch of these in and eventually you'll have quite a lot more time. Prep food in advance, work out at home, you're saving well over an hour already.

I feel your pain regarding wanting to go part time so you have time for what you care about. I have many weeks where things pile up until the weekend, then it's all errands and chores all weekend. Such a drag.

Get some kettlebells and a pull up bar.

This is absolutely bizarre to me. The gyms in my area all open between 4am and 6am. The busiest times are the first hour or two after opening and early evening (after 5 or so).

Start with short sessions and lengthen them a little each week.

(A) He uses coupons. (B) He eats at McDonald's

Make of it what you will.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/17/warren-buffett-once-paid-for-...