> Has anyone had success with particular workouts or strategies to keep motivated?

Not to knock you, but this sentence is where I think the issue is - at some point motivation drops off and you need what I like to label as "discipline" to progress further.

The best piece of advice I heard was from someone getting awarded their 5th degree black belt in Aikido, something that takes decades to earn [I'm paraphrasing here]: Training is like a marriage. It is great in the beginning because you are learning all these new things and improving, like the honeymoon phase, everything seems to be great. But over time, that feeling will decrease a bit. Sometimes you wonder if its worth it at all. But, like a marriage, training takes effort and even years down the road you still have to work on it. Not just maintaining it, but actually working on it.

I also like a book by George Leonard called "Mastery" [1] that I think I've linked on HN before. In the book, he's taking the position of the instructor to explain types of "student behaviors" he's seen over the years - Dabblers, Obsessives, and Hackers (people who just "show up"). As learners, people will behave like one of these types on their way to becoming masters in an domain. Each student type stressed the same topic - dealing with when improvement "gets hard" and what steps can be done to help curb some of those issues.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Mastery-Keys-Success-Long-Term-Fulfil...

I found BJJ (Brazilian Jujitsu, aka "pajama wrestling") to be the thing I enjoyed and could integrate into my life. This isn't going to be for everybody - hardly anyone (statistically speaking) steps onto the mat to begin with and the drop-out rate is savage. However, it's been the thing that keeps me fitter and saner than I would be otherwise - and it's a brutal reality check when you start getting fat and/or lazy.

I don't think the specific thing I do is likely to work for you - or most people - but I think having a real sport to work on that's a sane distance from your house (my gym is a 12 minute drive) is a good chance. Ideally take a look at the profile of the sport and see if (a) you like the idea and (b) there are actually people your age and fitness level doing it in any substantial numbers (i.e. at 47, I'm not going to take up gymnastics). My wife likes tennis, which is about a 5 minute walk away and there are plenty of middle-aged weekend warriors doing that too.

TBH if everything out of the house is that inconvenient you should be rethinking where you live, but that's just my prejudice - one of the major factors in selecting city/neighborhood was proximity to a wide variety of activities in easy walk/drive distance. Obviously you may have a lot of other factors keeping you where you are that are more important.

I personally find bodyweight fitness (aka calisthenics) incredibly challenging and satisfying. Good routines are based on progression from easier forms to more difficult forms, emphasis on form over quantity, and at the end of the day, you'll learn some very impressive skills that require tremendous, functional strength. Equipment is minimal - a bar to hang from, a floor to resist you. There is enough complexity, challenge, and progression to last a lifetime. I gave up climbing for it. Reddit's bodyweightfitness subreddit is excellent. Head there for more info. The community's recommended routine is a perfect place to begin.

If you want to throw money at it, try hiring a personal trainer for 2 or 3 days a week.

(I had a personal trainer for a while who trained me and a friend, just having the commitment to trainer at least made me show up, and it was his job to keep things fresh. Having a friend there also helped make it less boring).

Totally agree. I did this after a few years off being a competitive track athlete, and trying different sports. I got a personal trainer to come to my house 3 times a week at 6am. It works because you don't have to think about what to do, you're just told to do it. You can't get out of it because they're coming knocking on your door at 6am, and you end up having some fun and interesting conversations. That got me back in to track athletics with a coach and it's something I look forward to every day.

Could you comment on the cost of this?

Depending on your location and the experience level of the trainer for someone to come to your house and use equipment at your house plus/minus some small stuff they carry in, I think it could be anywhere from $60-$200 an hour.

For me it was $60 a session

This doesn't really work for a lot of people because now on top of still being inconvenient and not changing the willpower aspect, there's also the constant knowledge that you're spending money on something you don't really need. The only exception I can think of is if the gym could literally go to you, as in good fitness equipment in a large van or small truck that drives to your house with the trainer.

Yes, in my case the personal trainer would come to us, with all the equipment needed for that day in the trunk of his car.

Usually we'd train in a nearby park.

Try team sports. Playing the sport is exercise that's fun, but also your team practice sessions are largely exercise as well. You're doing it alongside your buddies so there's lots of joking around and whatnot so its fun.

What's more is it makes the practical effects more immediate. Delayed gratification is hard. Results that are going to be realised soon are much more motivating.

So when you're doing something like running by yourself, it's still easier because you're not running out of some vague sense of being more attractive in a year, or avoiding a heart attack that you may or may not have in 10, you're running so that next weekend it's ever so harder for the opposing teams front rowers to flatten you.

I second this, though I had to find the right sport - not just anything will work. For me that’s ultimate frisbee.

But once I’m playing I always forget it’s exercise until I’m exhausted and ready to stop.

I've had the same experience with exercise as you, but instead of rock climbing I really started to enjoy group yoga for a while. I used to attend a free class given by a friend and his wife in their home. The only reason I stopped was because it was a half hour drive each way on Monday, Wednesday and sometimes Friday night. It ran from 7:30pm to 9pm.

The people there were very serious about practicing yoga and I was completely out of my element. What I liked about it was that it was very challenging, fulfilling and I saw a great results within a month. My energy levels were way up, I felt balanced in more areas of my life and I was losing weight. Being part of a group really motivated me to do my best and to go the entire 1.5 hours without quitting. I also enjoyed the bit of socialization before and after class. The hour of driving started annoying me after a few months though and work got in the way at times, so I eventually stopped going.

Recently, I've been thinking I'm going to turn my 2-car garage into a gym to hold my own regular practice. I love the idea that people would come to me instead of me going to them. I'm still thinking about ways to attract the right kind of people to join in. I am no Yoga Guru. Perhaps I will see if I can find some newly certified yoga teachers and ask if they want a place to practice with a group. If I can't find a real teacher, I think I might just fake it. Sometimes if you can't find the Guru, you just have to be the Guru...

It depends. There are certain aspects that you can treat like you do grocery shopping. Weight training, for example. Three sets for three exercises three times a week, with five minutes rest between sets. Bring a book, set a timer. When the timer goes off, you spend less than a minute doing the set, and then go back to reading. Once you've done squats, deadlifts, and the like for a few months you can focus on your form without losing the context of the book.

For rock climbing, is there anything else you need to do in that direction so you can climb once a week?

You can also try to add loads back to your life elsewhere. Where can you replace sitting down with squatting, machines with lifting, and car trips with walking or cycling without compromising your time? Can you put rings or a bar by your workstation so when you pause to thing you can reach up and hang? Katie Bowman is a wonderful person to read on the topic of adaptation to loads.

You can probably get a rock climbing / bouldering setup built at home depending on how plenty your plenty of money is.

Then anything you do cardio and weight lifting wise could be in support of your climbing goals depending on where your weaknesses are once you reach a certain level.

I enjoy weightlifting because it makes me eat better, sleep better and thus feel better and I like how precisely you can measure progress (compared to team sports for example). A squat rack, bench and Olympic barbell at home is all you need for a simple program like StrongLifts 5x5 which takes very little time.

At the end of the day, you can be Jeff Bezos rich but Jeff still has to do the actual work, perhaps with a little steroid help though he seems jacked. Fitness is one of the things you can't just buy outright.

> Has anyone had success with particular workouts or strategies to keep motivated?

What worked for me was ballroom dance (social, then social + performance, then that + competitive formation team, then all that plus teacher training)—well, until I had kids, still trying to work back into something that works with that but frankly I don't see anything stabilizing in that area for me until they’re a little older.

Much of what a sibling comment says about team sports applies here (and competition is a team, or pair in the case of the more common couples rather than formation team format, sport.)

Essentially, if getting into shape isn't enough to motivate you to stay with exercise (and for lots of people, it's not), you need to find something that also serves other needs. Providing a social third place, competitive outlet, and some kind of feeling of achievement besides what you get from raw fitness measures (the scale, tape, etc.) all can help this.

But while I think those general concerns are broadly applicable, the specific activity that works for any given person is going to vary a lot, because everyone's reward function works a bit differently.

Same. I just find it boring, and all the 'find exercise you like' advice doesn't help as it would be something with even less return on time investment (e.g. group sports). I also wish I could just throw money at it, get augmented or something so I don't have to do it at all. I like doing things with my brain, and for me no sport seems like a novel experience worth spending time on.

That said I still exercise consistently. Basically, since it seems rational: you get more time in return that you spend doing exercise (presumably returns diminish at some point, but that seems to be true for 'reasonable' amount of exercise)?

I'm also treating this as a 'quantified self' project, and collecting/visualising data makes it a bit more enjoyable.

I write a bit more about it here: https://beepb00p.xyz/tags.html#exercise

Some people cannot find motivation to exercise alone. Did you enjoy rock climbing itself or the community aspect of it and socializing with people. May be you need a partner for your workouts to keep yourself motivated. I tried Peloton bike in the gym a few times. I am not a fan in general of stationary bikes and treadmills, but Peloton workouts are fun, and you a part of an online community. The bike is expensive though, but if it works for you it may be a great long term investment.

The Peloton wife would like a word with you...

But in all seriousness, it sounds like a Peloton bike might be a good fit for you. You don’t need to leave the house and the live classes should alleviate some boredom. It can probably even help with your desire to throw money at something. I’ve not used them myself, but have seen a neighbor who has one in her garage. She got into good shape impressively quickly after having her second child.

> the nearest gym is 45mim away in low traffic - it's a 3 hour commitment to get a good session.

> I work from home.

> There's not really a price I wouldn't pay for a more durable and comfortable body.

These three facts lead me to offer the likely over-simplified advice-as-a-question:

Why not move closer to the gym?

I haven't reached my goals, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

But I'm focusing on my environment and the habits. Doing the daily habit as best I can.