{"id":40,"date":"2011-04-18T21:42:23","date_gmt":"2011-04-19T04:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/parker-mark.com\/blog\/?p=40"},"modified":"2011-04-18T21:43:46","modified_gmt":"2011-04-19T04:43:46","slug":"the-idiocy-of-excercise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parker-mark.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/18\/the-idiocy-of-excercise\/","title":{"rendered":"The Idiocy of Excercise"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Excercise is Boring.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I am overweight. There is no way of avoiding it. As I have gotten older, the beer and burgers have caught up with me. There is a really good reason for this. I hate exercise, period.\u00a0 I own, or have owned treadmills, ellipticals, weight machines, punching bags, excercise video games, store bought workout videos, and workout videos purchased online due to infomercials. I have enjoyed none of them. Cardio, no thanks. Weightlifting, meh. Muscle confusion, why bother? Running, I just can’t shut my brain off for that long.<\/p>\n

I can do the exercise, I just can’t do it for a long period of time and find any enjoyment out of it. It is a form of torture for me.<\/p>\n

I enjoy refereeing and playing soccer both activities that require a lot of running. But the key thing is, I enjoy these activities, immensely. According to GPS data I cover over 5 miles while center refereeing, and over 2 miles while being an assistant referee. Neither distance is anything to sneeze at. On a Saturday I will referee 2 to 4 matches. When possible I will play soccer anytime that I can find a pickup match to play in, usually with friends or co-workers, which usually ends up being 2 to 3 times per month. The point is, not enough to constitute a workout program.<\/p>\n

I enjoy hiking a lot as well. Getting outside and getting away from people, cars, cellphones, and the rat race to enjoy nature. There is very little that is more enjoyable. A bike ride, another thing that is enjoyable, so long as it is on a bike trail away from traffic. Due to the amount of prep involved, the amount of time these activities take, and the amount of time spent commuting to and from work, work itself (a desk job), the amount of time spent on family activities (not complaining, but these activities take a lot of time), and\u00a0 the less than 8 hours of sleep I get a night, finding time for a hike or a bike ride is not easy to do, much less a daily soccer game.<\/p>\n

So why not go for a run? I enjoy soccer, and that is running, right? No! Running is putting one foot in front of the other until the pain sets in. Whether it is on the street, sidewalk or a treadmill, it just flat sucks. First it is boring as hell. Second my brain needs something to do, so it focuses on the pain, the discomfort and the absolute futility of the fact that I am just running for no other reason than to run. I will finish the time I set out for running, but I am miserably focused on the pain and discomfort the entire time. Conversely, when I am on the soccer field I can easily cover several miles without a second thought given to the pain that I am feeling. Later on that day after finishing several matches, I will feel the pain. But during the match I feel nothing because my mind is so steadfastly focused on the match. So running is torture, largely due to the fact that I just cannot run without being constantly focused on the futility of the pain I am putting myself through.<\/p>\n

Yard work, small construction or household projects, or moving a friend is something that requires lifting, pulling, hoisting and other activities that are simulated by lifting weights. These are all things that I don’t particularly enjoy, but that I can do for a day, or over an entire weekend if necessary. However, put me in a gym lifting weights and I am miserable. Once again I am fighting my brain. While lifting weights I focus, once again, on the idiocy of performing this act and the pain it causes. So I can do 200 reps of lifting a heavy item up the stairs, but getting through 3-5 sets of lifting a weight, is a herculean effort for me. It is literally a fight between what I know is good for me and the logical part of my brain that is pointing out the idiocy of what I am doing.<\/p>\n

I hear about runners that have found a ‘high’ from running. I have never experienced this. I have felt the very mild euphoria after some activities, but it hardly outweighs the pain of the activity. Now with the activities I enjoy, the exercise is not the focus the focus is on the activity. Whether it is the game, or the scenery, that is what I am enjoying. The exercise level of activity is just means to an end, the end being the game or the scenery.<\/p>\n

This has been the crux of my problem. If I had friends for a pick-up basketball game, I would enjoy the activity. Doing runs from baseline to baseline, not so much. Refereeing a soccer match, hell yes. A 5 mile run, hell no!<\/p>\n

This is a fight that will wage within me for the rest of my life I presume. It’s 9:30PM, I have to go torture myself on the treadmill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am overweight. There is no way of avoiding it. As I have gotten older, the beer and burgers have caught up with me. There is a really good reason for this. I hate exercise, period.\u00a0 I own, or have owned treadmills, ellipticals, weight machines, punching bags, excercise video games, store bought workout videos, and … Continue reading The Idiocy of Excercise<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-rant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/parker-mark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/parker-mark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/parker-mark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parker-mark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parker-mark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/parker-mark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43,"href":"https:\/\/parker-mark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions\/43"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parker-mark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parker-mark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parker-mark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}