It's a huge downside of the auto-dominated design of most American cities. Excercise becomes a lot easier when you can incorporate it by riding a bike to work, the park, or with friends, or walking to get groceries or do errands around your neighborhood.

When you combine bike and pedestrian hostile cities with the extreme fitness image many have, which requires drives to the gym, excercise becomes that much more difficult to achieve daily.

Of the people I know who stayed in good cardiovascular shape as they've aged, many are transportation cyclists, as I am. This is not a coincidence.

Some people I've talked to seem to think exercising as much as I do requires superhuman willpower. The opposite is true in this case. It's much easier to get exercise if it's an unavoidable part of your day. I don't own a car, so cycling just happens on its own. If I need a car or truck I can easily rent one. Even in the bike-hostile US one can plan to make this lifestyle possible.

I also cycle to work and in addition to being good exercise, you also get to experience some fun wizzy speed, wind in your hair, and fresh air. I arrive at work energized and cheerful, even if it's cold or rainy out. If I commute to work, packed into stuffy metal tubes with a bunch of cranky phone readers, I'm cranky and tired myself by the time I'm there.

The best about bike commuting is that you get a connection to the weather and and the air around you. I have to commute by car now and I feel like I am losing touch with my environment.

This is very true. My light day workouts consist of fun stuff that are mostly sports related (hockey) like stick-handling, passing the puck around and shooting on a net with real pucks (sets of 10-15 shots rapid-fire really burn your arms and it's super fun). I have a pretty elaborate off-ice workout area setup in my basement that doubles as a great VR space.

After that I play a few VR games that are full body/active type stuff (room-scale). For example, Space Pirate Trainer is my current jam; I currently hold the #3 spot on the world leader board and my games of late tend to take around 45m from level 1 to 70+. My heart-rate btw routinely hits around 130-140 toward the end of one of those game.

Extreme stuff is awesome too if you are trying to maintain a high level of fitness for specific needs but most people can get by with way less and have pretty excellent results in day-to-day wellness. Tabata, burpees, pull-ups all have their place but even those you can do much less frequently than most think and benefit hugely.

I find just going on a walk makes such a huge difference compared to nothing at all. Every little bit helps.

I was my most fit when I was in Chicago walking from train stop to train stop. Like you said, walking goes a long way.

Most people sit around and do nothing all day and they have to make up for it by exercising. It's much easier to do this when you are invested in it and have a routine, which in turn is easier to maintain if it is some sort of obsession.

Indeed. I felt into this trap as well. I had to run 2 marathons before I realized it was too much for me, and stepped down to only running for the exercice.

If you always overdo it, it will not stick. And continuity is the most important part.

And unfortunately that results in people pushing themselves too much, too suddenly, injuring themselves (many times permanently) which means now they cannot even do light exercise. I would ban all marketing around hard exercising, it's damaging and unhealthy but I know that won't necessarily fix the issue as it seems to be some kind of group pressure problem, where people already engaged in doing a lot of physical exercise push newcomers to do the same, completely irresponsible.