I imagine myself getting back to my Viking roots, stroking across the North Sea, merrily rowing ready to maraude. Lately I've been thinking about buying back my rower from my dad. He never uses it, even though his body has turned to mushy stiffness. The rower can also provoke mental anguish if used for any length of time, but it's really good for a 5/10-minute pre-ST warm-up, or post-ST HIIT burn.Amen. Doing exercises I don't like reminds me of how we can live in a world of people who hate to exercise and don't do it.
They don't find anything they like, but they force it once in a while, causing mental anguish, and so the association with negative feelings is set. No immediate rewards, only the vague future fitness ones if they stick with it when we all know it won't happen.
That's just how I do.
Well, I am definitely over the elliptical. It is something to do for my legs when I don't/can't run. Being that bored couldn't possibly be worth it, though. The bike machines feel ridiculous (why am I not just riding a bike?), and the rowers intimidate me a bit because I have heard that bad form is, well, bad, on a rower. On the other hand, oddly enough, I like imagining I'm an indentured servant on a ship. I know, not on the Olympic rowing team, not rowing across a huge glossy lake at sunrise, but on a big ship getting yelled at by the master, surrounded by hundreds of unhappy fellow rowers. Somehow that gets me going, and I usually hate being told what to do. Go figure.
On the whole "only do an exercise if it's a natural motion" idea, it's appealing, but that would eliminate bicycling, skiing, skating, swimming, diving, some ball sports, skate boarding, and a slew of other activities that burn calories but that humans invented for recreation and movement. People seem to get great workouts from all kinds of unnatural activity, not the least of which is a rowing machine in a heated gym in a developed nation after a shower and before the next when the rest of the day is planned for desk work, or, say, doing careful, repeated lifting using specific muscle groups at a time, with weights at high density and specific shape. Hard labor that would be more "natural" would not have a set number of reps, and not isolate muscle groups regularly.
So I go with the philosophy that if it bores me to tears and stabbiness, then I will avoid it.
I agree about the silliness of the MovNat concept. The whole idea behind free weights is to break things down into their component parts, isolate, and then reintegrate, like practicing scales or inversions in music. I don't normally lift much of anything in the course of a day, besides my kids and grocery bags, but I'm pretty sure my deadlifts promote good posture and prevent backaches.
I think a naturalistic conception of exercise only has validity to the extent that we use it as a guideline for keeping our movements within the planes and ranges the body was designed for.
So there's two kinds of nature/natural in health/fitness: the "what would a caveman do?" kind (to paraphrase the Jesus bumper sticker), and the proper form/technique/physiology kind, right?
(And yes, I realize most hunter gatherers didn't/don't live in caves.)
Even then, a movement like back pull-downs, which is unnatural on both counts, can still yield benefits if done with caution. I've never hurt myself doing them, but I'm stopping them as a preventive measure, plus the aforementioned displeasure they provoke. I already got a somewhat gimpy left shoulder, don't need to risk adding anything more to the list of age-related lame.