TL;DR: Gained too much weight after I fell and broke my arm + couldn’t really move for a while. I have a lot of trauma related to sports, like I was forced to play football like any other Hungarian kid, and I was awful at it, which made others be angry at me for it, which made me reluctant to do it. Even if I manage to do it, I often get brutal, crippling muscle pain, which makes me fo it even less.
Since I"m Hungarian, I cannot rely on health care at all, especially mental health, as it was the very first thing that got cut, amd I cannot afford private care.
Did you ever watch Dragonball Z? All the scenes where Goku or Gohan are training to get stronger, building their bodies to be powerful? Piccolo wearing insanely heavy gear to improve his speed?
You don’t need to do sports to train your body. You are giving your body the opportunity to learn how to be strong, to learn endurance. You can’t do that without practicing those things, using your strength, pushing your endurance.
That said, I have found working with kids to be very helpful. I work with a particular young kid who absolutely loves being lifted and thrown about. I use him as my weight training and it is a whole lot of fun, not to mention rewarding making his day more fun. Maybe there is something you can find that is similar?
I hear you, i do hate team based and competitive sports as well. Though those are not only type of sports you can do. There are sports you can do on your own on your own conditions and pace.
Now the main bodyweight changes come primarily from diet. Yes exercise can help with burning extra calories, but that should never be the main goal of it. “You can’t outrun a bad diet” does hold true, especially in moder world with calorie dense foods.
Now for dieting, don’t take it as a diet, because that gives an impression that it’s going to be done for a limited time. It’s more of a lifestyle change and shouldn’t be done in a one big change. It consist of baby steps spread out over months to years.
Already showing interest into it is the first step. Reducing portion sizes of some junk foods or switching out a single component can be the next step for the next few weeks.
Weight management and calorie intake should be taken as avarages on a scale of weeks to months.As for training. The muscle pain you describe i assume is DOMs(delayed onset muscle soreness). Yes that will happen every time you put your body through a novel activity that exerts it. That can be reduced, mostly by starting slowly. For example slow pace walking instead of running and slowly over the course of a month or two slowly increasing the tempo until by the end you are running, but minimized the novel stimulus part so that the DOMs would be minimal.
Walking, cycling, elliptical, low impact is good for overall cardio. Personally I’d recommend elliptical machine, mostly because it spreads out the overall load between the whole body and i can watch movies during it making it more interesting.
Other aspect would be resistance training. The most basic training, covering 6 movment types, spread out over 2-3 days is more than enough for overwhelming majority of people. No point to go nuts, with 5-6 days of training to complete failure and then be crippled for the next week and give up/burn out. Slow and steady wins the game. Start slow and ramp up over the course of months to years. Like it took me almost 10 months to go from training barely once a week to 5 times a week and then few more months to solidify the habit and fit it into ny overall life. Nowadays, nearly 4½ years later it’s a rock solid habit.
6 movment types, with examples would be.
- horizontal push(ex, bench press, push-ups, machine press)
- vertical push(ex shoulder press or even lateral raise)
- horizontal pull(ex any rowing variation)
- vertical pull(any lat pulldown variation or pull-up)
- squat pattern(bodyweight squat or any leg press variation)
- hip hinge (deadlift or any variation of it like RDL or SLDL or even good morning and/or hip thrust)
Those can be spread out over the course of 2-3 days, doing just 2-3 movments per day. One movment taking somewhere around 15-30 minutes. Staring out doing each movement once per workout to slowly increasing it to 3 times per workout. With repetitions, anything between 5-30 is good enough and has the same results, though preferably staying between 8-12 is better. Mostly because doing deadlifts or squats for 30 reps will exhaust your cardio first rather than target muscles, but doing 5 reps of lat raise can be rather uncomfortable if doing with free weights(dumbbell, barbell)
If you want let me know and i can help you figure out exact movements or alternatives for even doing those at home. No I’m not selling a training plan or am a trainer, just someone with autistic levels of interest in it.
Walking can get you a really long way.
The most important thing is to find something that you actually enjoy doing, because that’s the only way it’ll stick, and it sticking is the only way you get any long-term benefits.
In my journey, it was approximately these things in this order:
- I tried running, but didn’t enjoy it one bit. I didn’t understand how to do it properly so it just hurt constantly and gave me lackluster results, so naturally I stopped after a while
- I then picked up walking during the pandemic. I found that if I put on a podcast or audiobook I could do it for multiple hours at a time, just walking around in the forest where I lived back then
- Then I picked up cycling for transport, first to buy groceries and other things, and later also to commute to work. A pair of appropriate headphones for this also helps immensely, being able to listen to podcasts while riding is excellent
- Then I got back into weight lifting, which I had done maybe 10 years back but dropped after I lost easy access to a gym when moving. I always enjoyed this so there’s no real friction here, but the podcasts also keep me mentally stimulated here
- Finally, I got back into running, which was now fun all of a sudden because of everything I had learned about how to do it properly. I started joining a running club with which I run once a week, and learned that it’s quite fun to run with others, and started joining races, which was also great fun
Your journey is probably not going to look like mine, but the first step may look similar at least. After that, it’s all about trying different things to see whether they could be for you, or not.
Exercising isn’t a sport.
No, but sport can be a form of exercise.
- Get really into walking. No matter what sport you take up, or any at all, this will still be the most important element as it lets you “warm up” and keep your body in a ‘ready to be active’ state as well as passively burning energy.
So be exploring parks around you, maybe get into photography to help have a reason to take walks.
People can lose all the weight they need to just from walking. It is also considered by some people to be essential for recovering your body from pain after a day where you worked out.
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However, also get into calisthenics. This is solo exeercise designed to not need equioment or only lightweight equipment, therefore you can circumvent going to a gym for it. You’ll want enough space at home or in a park to do it, and this is why many people do choose to do it at gyms anyway.
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Pickleball or table tennis might be good sports to get into if you don’t like team sports.
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Swimming. I need to do more of that. It’s acessible and “hidden away” from prying eyes.
Some useful channels: Yellow Guy Calisthenics. this guy’s advice is valuable to me because it comes across as unconventional and says things i would not have thought of.
But god forbid if you do feel a need to do something more community based, maybe look on Reddit (i know, we alll hate reddit) for people in your local community who might have supportive workout groups. One thing you should know is that gyms are actually quite supportive environments - they need your money and they need nee customers in the community!
One near me actually has an outdoor bootcamp it does in the park’s basketball court, and lots of guided exercises. Something like thst might be good? It’s a smaller and more independent gym which considers itself a family run business.
I have had multiple doctors tell me that limiting my intake is much more important than exercising.
As far as exercise goes, walking is great exercise. The difference between walking a mile and running it is mostly time. Do what you can and worry about building cardio endurance later.
Right now my big cardio workout is six flights of stairs I go up daily. It took me months to be able to do the whole thing without feeling like I was going to pass out. I’m still run down if I need to run them several times in a day.
As far as exercise trauma goes find something and make it yours. Little steps, but push yourself. I can somewhat relate as I find handwriting things difficult due to other childhood trauma. I can do it, but I find myself avoiding tasks that would require it still. My trick is to recognize that I’m avoiding it and set a time to actually do it.
Don’t worry so much about sports, as finding something you enjoy which gets you moving. The important thing is to try stuff and find something that works for you. Really, the best exercise you can do, is one you will actually do. It sounds like you have issues with team sports, so maybe try some stuff which doesn’t involve other people. Also, accept that you will likely suck as whatever you do, if you keep practicing, you might find you suck less over time.
I’m not a “sports person”. In fact, I suck as most sports I have tried. But, I discovered that I enjoy indoor sport climbing. I sucked amazingly bad at it when I first started. I mostly climb top rope and was struggling to finish a 5.9 climb. But, I kept at it and now I can finish most 5.10a climbs on my first attempt. I’m not some super climber by any means, but I have become kinda competent. I enjoy the challenge and have met some great people along the way. I also get excited when I walk into the gym and see a new set of routes. It’s like being handed a new set of puzzles to solve.
Find a non-team sport, or activity, you enjoy. Walking is incredibly healthy.
Concur. Maybe toss in a light bit of stretching or like 10 mins of beginner yoga.
Walking is like the only thing I can reliably do, everything else comes with a bunch of caveats.
Sounds like walking is for you then. If you want some extra challenge throw on a rucksack with some weight and you’ll get heaps of additional benefits too.
Walking is perfect, especially in green spaces.
Walking and dietary changes.
Even if it’s a diet you can’t stick to forever, sticking to it for a couple of months, or 10 weeks should make a big enough difference that you find many exercises easier to start, and then go from there. One step at a time instead of trying to achieve finished goal immediately, will probably work better for you.
This guy shows how to do modified mobility exercises that are meant to be more accessible to people with health issues. His very chill tone is relaxing to listen to and no special equipment needed.
Probably worth splitting your idea of “sports” up. Perhaps “full contact” sports are to be avoided, or maybe team sport. That leaves a lot of other options.
Also, what things can you do that involve exercise that aren’t sport? You could start with walking, perhaps? Then you can do as much as you’re capable of and build slowly, perhaps to long hikes or to jogging.
Obviously there’s plenty of ways to exercise without playing sports ball or any team based activities OP, don’t make me list them all 😅
I wouldn’t advise sports for health anyways, that’s usually how everyone involved in sports I know acquires significant injuries and permanent body damage!
Do whatever. I walk around my local green belt after work each day or night since I work rotating shifts. I get home and do a minimal equipment workout in my basement gym in the style of George Hackenschmidt, a classical (pre-steroids and targeted workouts requiring gobs of equipment) professional strong man, ride my bicycle around the city bike trails in summer months, use a rowing machine I bought used in the winter while watching Futurama or whatever I don’t have to pay much attention. Took up dancing and kick boxing. I don’t like those last two very much but it’s more about preventing my social skills from atrophying tbh, gotta exercise that too! Nothing I listed is what I’m saying you should do, it’s just examples. Find stuff you can do with your current body condition without risking injury. Doing a regular walk daily is a great start alone.
Well, when it’s not 40+ outside with 100 humidity at least. I’ve visited Hungary in a heat wave before, absolute fucking misery.
Since you’re Hungarian you can freely move in the EU. Find another state that has the health care that you need. Maybe, as others have said, first a therapist to get over your trauma. Then slowly build up to exercising again. Find something you love.
It doesn’t work like that, and also I have zero chance at getting a job at a different state. Maybe I’ll try to save up for a private neurologist, then get prescription for a better anti-eizure med, that allows me to skip meals without developing stomach ulcers, does not cause an increase in appetite, does not cause sleep issues, etc.
Your body and mind need food to heal properly. I don’t know what your budget is or what you can access. If you can get it, fatty fish like sardines, mackerel, tuna, salmon. If tinned, in olive oil if possible. Fermented foods. Added sugars are poison. Raw, unfiltered honey is ok sparingly (chewing honeycomb has the additional benefit of boosting your immunity of local pollen allergens).
Fresh vegetables, especially leafy greens, raw or cooked. Carrots. Pumpkin, squash, pumpkin seeds, walnut. Chicken. Apples. Milk and cheese, goat milk is excellent. Peanut butter is filling, but tree nut butters are better. Red meat protein sparingly. Stop eating before you feel full and wait ten or fifteen minutes, you’ll feel satisfied. Apples, pears. Cheeses, especially stinky ones. Onions, garlic. Dates, figs. Sweet potato, white potato, but cooled and eaten cold or reheated.
I don’t know if these foods are accessible to you, if I understand correctly, budgets can be very tight in Hungary. I wish you the best.
build/obtain a stationary bike.
i hate sports but ill sit on a bike forever… great for heart rate, burnin calories… not really a strength thing though.
you can even make one out of an old busted bicycle, if youre mechanical at all
I have even more trauma with bikes, due to falls and the whole “vehicular cycling” craze.
sounds like you need a therapist more than exercise
