Comment by throwaway2037
4 days ago
This is a good post. Low ego. Regarding strength relative to others, don't beat up yourself too much about that rating. It's probably mostly genetics. Just do the best that you can do. I checked myself. I am in the bottom quartile. Horrible really, but I don't care. I can see and feel the difference from regular weight training.
Two questions: (1) Why do you loathe weightlifting? Is it painful, boring, etc.?
(2) If you dislike it so much, how do you find the motivation to continue? Personally, if my motivation is low to do a particular exercise (lift or cardio), I burnout quickly.
1) Opportunity cost mostly. I suffer from a _debilitating_ case of zero-sum thinking. "If I'm doing X, I'm not doing Y." Weightlifting isn't (overly) boring/painful; I'd just much rather be programming, by far my favorite activity. It's uncomfortable, but my physical pain tolerance is fairly high. Boring is solved by having a podcast/audiobook going, but for the "big lifts" I prefer silence to focus.
2) I don't use motivation or discipline. I use habit. I'm fairly busy, so my mantra is "bias towards action". I could sit there and stew about how much I hate the upcoming workout... or I can wake up, do my morning routine to an audiobook/podcast, eat breakfast while happily programming, NOT thinking about the day's workout, then transition sharply into it. When it's time, I just fucking do it. It's like flossing. I don't even have it on a schedule, because I don't want to think about "gotta start at X time". It starts when I reach a natural stopping point shortly after breakfast, whenever that is. I have literally never missed a workout in years so _something's_ working. (To be clear, there are obvious exceptions for travel/holidays/etc, I'm talking missing a workout due to a lack of "character".)
It helps that my gym is literally in the same room as my devbox. I launch a Claude prompt/whatever, do a set, repeat. Instead of doomscrolling between sessions, I bias towards action. I keep myself too busy to think about how much I don't want to exercise. The only time I let myself think about "god I hate this" is when I'm seconds from psyching myself up for a big lift. I know that if I let myself, I'll just stew and stew and grumble and bitch and make excuses. So I don't give myself that mental space. There's virtually 0 time between my favorite activity, then context switching to "alright let's get this". No space for the "ulgh" emotion to creep in.
To use an MCU Avenger's analogy, I'm _always_ angry. I'm always hate exercise. But I box it with what I love (programming), so I switch back and forth with zero time for the emotion to permeate. For a moment I'm a normal happy programmer, then seconds later I stand up, take a breath, and go Hulk mode.
Is that discipline? IDK. It doesn't feel like I'm bare-knuckle-holding-on-perserevering-despite-all-odds. I just don't mentallay dwell on it, and when my non-vibed custom exercise tracker beeps (it predates LLMs), saying it's been 3-4 minutes and I need to do the next set, I happily ignore it, finish my thought/prompt, then do the damned lift.
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Negativity over, my favorite exercise is Zone 2 because the inclined treadmill is at my standing desk and I can happily work while being in The Zone (in both senses). Zone 2 is the best. A cheap $50 Craigslist treadmill + standing desk will burn an absolute fuckton of calories once you figure out how to walk (really its more a march) and type at the same time. Honestly I could (and have) Zone 2ed for up to 3hrs/day for weeks at a time. I reduced that because I got tired of eating so much food lol. Zone 2 is the best.
Then there's the weekly Nordic 4 by 4 which I apply the weightliftng mentality to.