Really? Even if you just do calisthenics in your home, you still need the space, the free time, and the lack of distractions, not to mention being blessed with the focus to do something so boring.
I'm a pretty hardcore runner (but also hate buying unnecessary things) and spend thousands of dollars a year on shoes and shorts. I weigh 200 pounds and run 300km per month, shoes do not last, and good ones make a difference. And again, I'm only able to have the time to do it due to life circumstances that haven't burdened me with other responsibilities.
Most other sports have gear or memberships that make them more expensive. Many people can't stick to a regular workout regimen and a lot of people I know only were able to when they paid big bucks for a personal trainer.
Yeah, it's possible to work out without money, but I wouldn't pretend it's free, and it only gets easier with money.
I don’t think you’re making much of a case here. Money doesn’t generally buy you free time, lack of distractions and focus. The space needed can be pretty minimal.
I do think running is probably easier for middle-class people to get into, not because of the equipment (it’s fine if it works for you, but I have no idea how you could spend that much — few will need to). I think middle-class people just are a lot more likely to be living in places that are nice to run around in.
But there are many forms of exercise and various options for limited space and budgets. Bodyweight/calisthenics, e.g., and basic weight-lifting.
> Money doesn’t generally buy you free time, lack of distractions and focus. The space needed can be pretty minimal.
I don't agree. Money buys a nanny, a housekeeper, uber eats, shorter commute or work from home... all of these can be a major factor in having the time and focus to exercise regularly.
It is the difference between buying expensive healthy food and going to a trainer who will tell you the most effective way to get in shape, and eating cheap unhealthy food that makes you feel bad and the trying to figure out how to exercise on your own.
Wealthy people certainly have an easier path to getting in shape
Get raw grains, get basic non-fancy non-organic veggies. Frozen or canned is fine.
If you eat meat, don't be shy about using cheaper cuts. Trimming meat is easy.
Trainers are great, but most people get trainers to help with motivation. You can also usually snag a free or very cheap single lesson with a trainer if you need particular things (nutrition, form) spot checked.
> most people get trainers to help with motivation.
Assuming poor and rich people have exact same level of motivation, this alone is guaranteed to lead to poor people exercising less.
From own experience, exercising by myself do tend to lead to repetitive routine that plateau pretty fast and gets demotivating due to no progress. But I used app rather then trainer.
It gets super demotivating and boring then. It turns into something like washing dishes, except less interesting and takes more time. At which point, you start to think that you might have to do something useful with that time - like cleaning, spending time with kids or reading/relaxing.
And from what I observed, I am not special snowflake in that regard.
Body-weight fitness, walking, jogging, running, hiking, swimming are all "free" to perform, but gear can be super expensive - take skiing, biking, water sports for example.
I recently went to a local bike shop (two in fact) and the average cost of a new modern bike is around ~$5,000.
There was one bike that I was looking at that was $15,000
I don’t even know how you’d spend 15k on a bike. Maybe top of the line tt/tri with super expensive wheels. But even then. Id rather go full custom at that point.
5k should get you a super nice bike, stylish, modern and all that. Diminishing returns probably start well under half that.
Edit— I do know of a 14k bike, the Rene Hearse 80th anniversary edition. Handbuilt custom, and there are going to be 8 of them. I’d love to ride one, but … that’s a lot of money.
In Folsom there is a guy named mark who has a full custom bike shop - mostly artisan style super roadsters (think LA Chopper style low rider bikes) -- the guy who makes them is a guy named Mark.
He charges typically around $16,000 for his creations. They are AMAZING looking bikes - but not my style at all.
The one I mentioned that was at Mikes Bikes in Folsom, was $15K - I cant recall the brand of that one, but it was a massive full suspension plus electric.
The Specialized there that was ~$12K was also full suspension electric..
The other high end store which is in downtown RoseVille...
Both places with lots of money... rich weekend warriors.
I think you're looking in the wrong places. I recently bought a nice bike for $600 that worked great on a 100 mile ride. If I hadn't gone to the fancy, trendy bike co-op, it probably would've been cheaper.
Cheap Walmart bikes can be fine for fitness. The problem with them is the components are fragile and they tend to break quickly when used for intense training. A broken bike sitting in your garage isn't going to get your heart rate up.
Totally! Wonder if people realize that the person who wrote a lot of these libraries (hooks) as part of the core React team wrote Redux before joining the team? Dan Abramov. Everyone soured on an older (worse) abstraction because the same engineer who build the abstraction thought about it longer and built better abstractions that were also easy to adopt. I think that’s super cool, and doesn’t quite fit the narrative that people are trying to paint here of “fad chasing.”
It compresses the whole history of the blockchain into a proof of less than 21KB using recursive zero knowledge proofs (each block has a proof that the previous proof is valid).
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I quit coffee almost a year ago and can never see myself going back. I basically have noticed improvements on all the dimensions that people typically drink coffee to "solve."
Some of the effects I have noticed:
- Less anxiety throughout the day.
- Fewer "highs" and "lows" throughout the day. My energy level is pretty constant.
- Easier to wake up. I rarely snooze my alarm more than once.
- Easier to focus. My level of focus (over time) is more consistent.
- Better hydration. This means less headaches, etc.
- More energy. I generally have the energy I need to do what I want basically up until I go to sleep.
- I can burn sleep. It's very easy for me now to go 2-3 days with very limited sleep, and then sleep 12 hours to recover.
- Coffee "works." The one or two times I needed coffee, it actually worked to keep me awake and energized.
The reason for this is pretty obvious. Coffee stresses your adrenals and sends your body an "awake" signal. Caffeine's half life is 6 hours, which means even if you have it "before noon" you'll still have a substantial amount in your system while you sleep. This impacts sleep quality, which means you are accumulating micro amounts of sleep debt every night which you never pay off. Eventually, you struggle to get up in the mornings until you have had some coffee in your system. The "I can't function without coffee" effect. This is a pretty much ubiquitous 21st century experience, as far as I can tell.
Furthermore, coffee impacts your body's natural processes that it uses to wake up. Your body produces cortisol in order to wake up in the morning, which is a "stress" hormone, which is also induced by drinking coffee (which overall impacts the endocrine system). Hacking this system to overproduce hormones everyday isn't great for when your body actually needs this system to wake you up.
For people considering quitting coffee I have the following advice:
- You will get a headache 24-36 hours after you quit. Take ibuprofen. (By the way, this should give you a hint to how long coffee actually meaningfully stays in your system.)
- You will feel weird for probably 2 weeks.
- You will have coffee cravings. (I found these hit when I was tired. I felt like I needed to drink coffee to fix my tiredness. I tried to replace this impulse with drinking water or herbal tea a lot of tiredness is caused by dehydration.)
- You will be tired sometimes. You'll just have to deal with that, but it's really not that bad of a sensation, and the solution: sleep :)
People often think cutting coffee out is "impossible" but many people also haven't gone a day or two without drinking coffee since they were 18, so, I would say it's worth a try at least.
I quit recently, and had all of the withdrawal, and positive experiences that you mention.
I got the 24 hour headache and it was horrific. But more importantly I have been getting a headache, once a week at least, for years. I haven’t had a single headache in the two months since I quit coffee. This is remarkable!
The craziest part is waking up and going to sleep are like switches now. On:off. So crisp.
One thing I had to relearn was how to drink enough water to stay hydrated. As I was drinking a lot of my daily water in my tea and coffee cups.
