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How Do Geeks Exercise?
An anonymous reader writes "I have always been thin but all the sitting in front of the PC is taking its toll now that I'm getting older. I have begun to get a little heavier around the waist. I don't eat a lot but the weight seems to stay on these days. Most of the time I don't have the luxury of just getting out of the house/office. And being an introvert, I'm not enamored of the idea of exercising in full view of *shudder* people. I regularly do press-ups (60 per night) and sit-ups (30 per night) and some fetching and carrying, but that is all and these days it isn't enough. I need a solid and effective routine that will tone all my muscle groups efficiently. Do any Slashdotters have a regular workout routine that can be performed in the privacy of the home to stave off those pounds?"
Bike to work. (Make living close enough to bike a priority.)
It's even more fun when you have an exercise partner.
You have to get out of the house, but to suit the introvert, you can go where most people can't. You also get to wear PFD as well as and a baggy dry suit to cover up the unsightlyness if you need it in your area.
If you voted for Nader, THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!!
You very much need aerobic exercise to supplement your muscular-oriented exercise. Aerobic exercise works the heart, lungs, and circulatory system--very critical subsystems.
I'd recommend a treadmill or a bike with a trainer hooked up to it. Have a TV in front of you. After reading a couple books about it, use a heart rate monitor to keep from pushing too hard or too easy.
Try to build up to one hour per day. Don't discontinue your calisthenics. Read about exercise.
This way my left leg/foot gets more exercise when driving an automatic, otherwise a heavy clutch does the trick.
They're cool enough to do in front of other people, no matter how bad you are, and you have something to show off to your friends.
You've never been beatten up by a twelve year old girl, have you? Say, while testing for my yellow belt. Err, your yellow belt.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
Unless you've got the luxury of a huge amount of space, the only way you're going to come close to exercising all groups is via free weights.
Multi exercise machines don't even come close (more on that later). Treadmills/stationary bikes are great for burning calories which'll do most of your weight loss goals but you're asking about all muscle groups. BOSU balls, steps, jump ropes are all more limited in application. The other great full body exercise, swimming, isn't really an option in the privacy of your own home unless you're rich enough to have a good sized pool.
The problem with free weights, and this comes from being married to a physical therapist who's also an ACE certified personal trainer, is: You're doing it wrong.
Don't feel bad. Just about everyone does. From the Navy guys I've watched prepping for their PRTs by holding a dumbell in one position and flapping their elbows like chickens to those who swing weights and let the momentum carry them through the weak spots to those who only really focus on a few core groups.
This is what a good personal trainer will do for you (and, yes, I hate the idea of paying the meathead ones too). A good one will slow you down and perfect your form: meaning you're actually building the weak points not just swinging past them. A good one will start you on machines (really good for isolating the exact form you need but lousy at exercising all of the supporting groups) and then slowly move you over to free weights (really good at exercising a lot of supporting groups, lousy at teaching you good form). A good one will also teach you a whole range of exercises so you're not just bulking your biceps with no work on your triceps, strengthening abs without matching your lats, working on your upper body with no attention to your chicken legs (yes, you, 95% of guys in gyms).
Look at it this way...
How good of a coder would you be if you never learned from other people's code and never had anyone review yours? Sure, you might be a prodigy and do some cool trick most people have never thought of. More likely, you'll write messy, inefficient code that seems like it works while leaving memory leaks everywhere.
In the same way, you might manage to learn everything about lifting from message boards and videos. More likely, you'll get a fair amount right but still be doing a few gastly things that it never occurs to you they're wrong.
This is why we suck it up, venture in to a gym, find a good trainer (being willing to fire the bad ones until we get that one we vibe with), and learn the technique first... so we can then get it right in our splendid isolation.
Tai Chi is essentially a form of Kung Fu slowed down to maximize the exercise potential and lessen the strain on your body.
Once you have learned the essential 108 movements (its all one long cycle that puts you back where you are started, but is learned as 108 or so individual moves), you have a routine that will exercise pretty much every muscle in your body, looks cool, and requires no equipment to perform in, any stretch of ground/grass/parkinglot with a roughly 15x15 ft area free would probably do.
Its been very popular in China for centuries and obviously works quite well, given the number of old people you see doing it in droves there.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
#3 - Find a local swimming pool, strap on a pair of rollerblades, get a bicycle.
I actually tried this and found I worked up a sweat very quickly. But a word of warning -- when cycling with rollerblades in a swimming pool, stay in the shallow end. The deep can be treacherous and the bike will weigh you down like you wouldn't believe.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
So you're an introvert. Big deal! Exercise in front of people anyway.
Look, no one's going to make fun of you for going to the gym; in fact, they are more likely to make fun of someone who needs exercise and doesn't go to the gym.
The gym isn't Counter-Strike. No one cares if you're an exercise n00b. In fact, in my experience if you screw up at the gym, someone who knows what they're doing will show you the proper way to exercise so you don't injure yourself.
If you can afford it, and if you really care about your fitness and attractiveness, there is no reason not to go to the gym.
How come nobody has mentioned this one yet? I mean, come on! It has fitness tips as well as diet since you really need both to get the pounds off.
Hacker Diet
Tonights forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely-scattered light towards morning
#5 - Once you take care of the "introverted" problem... get a girlfriend and do a lot of the world's #1 calorie-burning exercise.
Your girlfriend makes you take her shopping too, eh? I don't care what she says -- the only thing getting thinner is my wallet.
Until the start of 2008 I was about 90 lbs overweight and morbidly obese. Throughout the year I have lost 70 lbs, and I am on my way to having a healthy BMI.
Here are my thoughts:
You don't have to go to a gym, but it really helps to have access to nice array of equipment. Get over your fear of going to the gym. No one gives a crap about you --except for when you may be using equipment they want to use. If you want to avoid socializing, wear headphones or go during off hours. If you are afraid of the locker room (that's normal it takes sometime to get used to), then don't use it.
Now on to to the technical stuff: You need to do a moderate to strenuous aerobic activity at least ~30 minutes a day 3 days a week (5 is better) for the rest of your life. I like to run, row, hike up mountains and occasionally use the elliptical machine. This is necessary for good cardiovascular health, and will help you in your later years. It will also as a side effect help you loose weight.
You need to do some basic weight training. You seem to favor body weight exercises, keep doing push ups, try increasing the reps, or difficulty by doing them on an incline. Learn to do pullups/dips also. Finally buy a few dumbbells, going up to 35-40 lbs in weight. Learn to do basic curls, and some presses. Later on read some fitness books, or go to a couple of fitness blogs to learn how to do lifts and presses that work your big muscle groups --think squats, and dead lifts. Doing this won't make you a huge muscle guy (believe me the gains are not that great) but you'll be happy with your increased strength. It will also help to keep you from looking flabby.
One more thing. The key to loosing weight is your diet. Good weight loss is slow, and steady. Cut 500-1000 calories from your diet, and you'll loose 2 lbs a week. However, you need to combine it with exercise or you'll have to keep "dieting" for the rest of your life to maintain your weight. That won't happen, so creating a nice caloric deficit through working out 3-5 times a day will help you maintain a healthy weight once you've reached it.
If you're in it for the calories, you might as well jog(which burns 286 calories per half hour) as opposed to sex(which burns 173 per half hour).
That's not very impressive sex.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
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#3 - Find a local swimming pool, strap on a pair of rollerblades, get a bicycle.
I don't know what sport you're describing there, but it sounds pretty sweet.
cosin() is more fun than sin()...
Self-resistence isometric and isotonic training. Costs nothing, builds muscle efficiently, surprises your friends and balances your life. Also, you can do it while posting to /. from your basement ;)
To specifically address the question posed (what do we, the Slashdot readers, do to stay in shape):
I eat vegetarian; low dairy, lots of beans, tempeh, and seasonal fruits/veggies. I bring my lunch to work every day which is cheaper and more nutritious than buying it.
I lift weights three times a week for an hour emphasizing multi-join and body-weight-resistance exercises like pull-ups, push-ups, dips, incline and hanging crunches, etc.
I bike to work whenever the weather permits.
I run 5 km at least once a week (though bad knees sometimes demand that I go for a long walk instead).
All of this combined yields a weekly time commitment of about 3.5 hours of exercise plus 90 minutes of biking to and from work (2 mi each way). I'm 185 lbs, 6'1", and I fill out my nerdy T-shirts in the shoulders, not the belly. I don't have six-pack, but I certainly don't have a gut. All around I feel very health even though the vast, vast, majority of my time is spent sitting on my ass in front of a computer at work.
I don't care whose biology teacher told them what about which calories are burned by how many muscles, but my whopping 3.5 hours a week of exercise entitles me to all the beer I can drink and stuffing my face with burritos to my heart's content without gaining a fraction of an inch around my waste line (which hasn't changed in 15 years). And no, I'm not one of those skinny nerds than can eat Taco Bell every day and still look like a bent coat hanger.
I think that the big trick to staying healthy is sticking with your routine, whatever it is. Don't just go on a diet and start running in response to feeling fat and out of shape. Biking to work is a great way to start and, depending on where you live, has the added benefit of being faster than driving.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.