# solomove: doing the same exercise throghout the day over and over again

i'm quite the passive person. i pretty much sit all day long in front of my computer at home. but then there's everybody saying that some exercising is important.

a while ago i thought about how could i trick myself into some exercising. my goal was not to develop proper exercise routine just to avoid the absolutely zero exercise living. i found a way that worked for a while. i wrote about this in @/enacc. skim that, otherwise some of the things here won't make sense.

i eventually stopped caring about decrementing the enacc energy because i stopped procrastinating much. enacc wasn't the thing that stopped me from procrastinating. what stopped my bad habits was rather the improved daily routine.

nevertheless i tried working on incrementing the energy levels via exercising. i tried to keep it level across all exercise dimensions. which means i eventually started doing the exercises in a round robin fashion. i always pretty much knew which exercise to do at any given moment.

i usually stayed on a single exercise until i hit a switch point at which i started focusing on the next exercise. the switch point was at every 50 points. e.g. if all exercises are at 250 points then i start doing the first one until 300 points, and then switch to the next exercise. i don't do this in a single set. i usually accumulate 50 points over many sets over several days. i mostly focused on them in the morning, since exercise can be a part of the morning routine.

# problem

eventually i started dreading the system a little bit. my problem was the same what i've had previously when i tried going to a gym. i felt it requires too much time investment from me and i don't particularly enjoy myself during the exercise.

and as i was doing the exercises themselves, i felt that i focus too much solely on counting the repetitions. i counted so that i knew my strength and in order to enter the progress into enacc. but in the end i felt i did it for the numbers rather than for myself. i felt the "tyranny of metrics". the whole thing felt pointless.

# requirements

i really liked one part: enacc always told me what to do. it's almost like as if a personal trainer takes care of the "thinking". but then i thought, maybe a personal trainer could take of the counting too? or furthermore: what if i don't care about counting at all? do i lose anything?

basically here's what i want:

• i don't need to think or track things during the exercise or in general.
• it requires very little time investment from me.
• something that tells me what to do.
• the exercises should be simple and varied.
• but within a day the exercise pretty much stays the same.

i added the static exercise requirement because i started liking the simplicity of doing only a single exercise per day from my enacc experience.

# solution

i think i managed to come up with a new system that seems to work for me. i write up the list of exercises to do: pushups, pullups, squats, dips, bench presses, etc. then each day i pick a single exercise and only do that through many small sets throughout the day.

i order the exercises into a least recently used list. then every day i just pop the least recently used exercise and that will be my exercise for the day. i then put that exercise to the end of the list. i also track the date i last used an exercise for reference but that is not really important.

this system tells me what to do for each day. whenever i decide to do a set, i just do however much i feel like doing. i don't track the rep count or the length the exercise because i no longer care. i don't particularly feel dread anymore because if i feel i did too little then i promise to myself that the next set will be harder. and sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. the point is not to have a proper exercise routine just to avoid the absolutely zero exercise days.

# amount

i try to do the exercises in a way that they are hard and i can't really do more than, say, 10 reps. this doesn't always work because one gets stronger over time. one learns to do more reps and then needs longer time to get to the amount that hits the limits of the muscles. but e.g. i try to do squats while holding weights to make it harder.

an ideal set is where i do the exercise until my muscles give up. and even then a couple more negative versions of the exercise (e.g. in pullups a negative is when you slowly lower yourself). iiuc negative exercises are the new hotness, just search for it. but unfortunately i often give up sooner than i reach this part.

in exchange one should do sets all the time throughout the day. i try to do a few sets in the morning already. if i don't forget i do try to do them throughout the day too but i don't obsess about it. if i forget then so be it. at least i did some in the morning.

another thing i find helpful is to do the exercises very slowly. i find this uses more muscle power and is actually more closer to the negative exercises. but i don't obsess about this either. sometimes i do things faster, sometimes slower, depending on my mood.

# soreness

muscle soreness is my feedback about whether i did something good or not. if i don't get sore muscles then it means i did either too little or the exercise had a way too weak form. i actually quite enjoy the pain that comes from this because i learned to associate it with the fact that i did good. now i actually miss it when i don't get sore. so my actual goal is to be sore all the time.

i watched a lot of dragon ball z as i was a kid. and the most important thing i learned from it: no pain no gain. the heroes got powerful through a lot of pain. so that show educated me that pain is fine.

but i do give myself a free pass for the day if i feel soreness. iiuc your muscles have to heal, so it's better to avoid training. my conscience is still in the clear when i avoid exercise such days. though if it's only my legs sore then i might still pick some upper body exercises to do.

# review

i'm using this system for the past few days and i really like it. it really makes the exercise easy: i don't really have to think about it. whenever i'm between things, i stand up and try to do a set if i remember it.

and i don't set any expectations for myself about the sets. if it's small, then it's small. it really helps me to actually start the exercise if i know it won't take too long. sometimes i still count during it because counting can make me push harder those last few reps. sometimes i don't, and i'll try to think about something during it. or sometimes i do it to clear my head: like in meditation, i try to focus on simply feeling the pain. and there's lot to feel once you are at your limits.

sometimes (usually?) i don't get sore muscles the next day. but that's fine, i'll remember that and maybe i'll do the same exercise harder or differently next time.

i like the least recently used list thing too. i even added other things to it to remember doing regularly, e.g. cold showers. i started to end my showers with turning the water to as cold as possible and have a totally cold shower for a few seconds. i can't really last longer than a few seconds. cold water is painful too but i very much like the feeling right after. maybe with some exposure i can increase my tolerance over time. it's like a form of mental training to learn to endure pain. but in order to not forget about this habit, i put it into my lru list to make sure i'm regularly reminded to do it. i can totally imagine that i might put other things into it over time.

one downside of this system is that it really only works from home. once i need to go back to the office, it's likely i might stop. but since i wake up quite early in the morning (i now aim at 5am), i might still be able to do enough sets in the morning so that i won't need to do them at work. we'll see.

in any case, i'll keep experimenting with this system and see how it goes.

published on 2021-02-19

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