I wanted to hit the gym all my life, but I never really made it until this year. Granted, I do have a sports background and have been active most of my life, but going to the gym was never really for me, until I decided to really do it this year. After years of shoulder and knee problems, I thought adding some muscle to my frame was definitely needed if I didn't want to be in pain all my life.

Since I had thought about going to the gym for years now, I feel like I gathered a good bit of information that REALLY helped me to go now. Here they are:

• The routine is more important than the results; regardless of any information I give you about macros, weights, sets, proteins, whatever all that, going to the gym one more time is going to be better than not going. Results take a LONG time. You will not see progress after a month. You may not see progress after 2 months. You may start to see some progress after 3 months. Real progress takes many months, years. That's why your number one priority should simply be to go to the gym, even if your workout is the worst ever and you use two machines in 30 minutes. Going to the gym 4 times a week is better than 3, going 3 times a week is better than 2 and so on. It takes about 3 months to a year to have the routine set in your life. After that and during that, you'll have all the time in the world to think about how to optimize your training, but just going and sticking to the routine of going is more important than anything else.

• Choose the easiest, most accessible gym option; the goal is to go. You should make this the easiest for you. Choose a gym that is easily accessible, before or after work. The closer, the better. Heck, your gym can even be your own home! Make some place for you to workout if you want to. You can easily do very good home workouts with maybe 100-150$ worth of equipment.

• Stick to a simple workout plan; There are some easy plans: target 2 muscle groups per workout, or alternate upper lower body; try to hit the muscles two times a week (2x biceps, 2x triceps, etc.). 3-5 exercises per workout is fine. 1-2min rest, take more if you feel like it, take less if you feel like it.

• Listen to your body for reps/weight; Going for 5 reps or going for 15 reps, it doesn't matter that much at the start, as long as you can do 2-3 series of that. Try to aim for anything from 6 to 12 reps, if you feel you can do more, do it, if you feel like you cannot, then don't. Some times I do 6, sometimes I do 12, but I try to aim for 8. The routine is more important than the results, all you need to do is go to the gym, the perfect workout can come in later.

• The movement is more important than the weight; building muscle is simply your muscles tearing and healing. As long as your muscles tear, you've done a good job. But that tear must come from a movement done well, or else you'll tear something that was not supposed to. Go for slower reps if needed, less explosion in your movements. Watch a video on how to do specific exercises if needed, some are mandatory to make sure you don't injure yourself (squats, deadlifts).

• Don't overdo it, progressive overload is the key; getting injured is EASY, the goal is to go to the gym, not be hurt. Go lower on the weights at first, it's not a competition. I started my dumbell press with like 10 pounds, shaking like crazy, it's normal. We've all been there. Don't ego lift. The routine is more important than the results. The big weights will take a while to reach, but it'll happen progressively.

• Have some kind of goal that is not tied to a number; I guess this one is more personal, but I feel like it's way easier to stick to the routine when you don't "care" about the results as much. The true goal is to be fit or to be lean or to be muscular or to be healthy, no? I feel like those are achievable long term and are guaranteed to come from the routine. I think if you're a beginner and set some kind of arbitrary number, you're not an expert to know if that goal is realistic or not and it makes the whole working out thing to be dependent on a result that you don't have the slightest idea how difficult it is or how long it takes to reach it. I think goals with a number should come after the routine is set in, not before going to the gym, but hey, that's just my two cents.

• Eat enough, drink water, get more protein; protein shakes are easy and not that costly, just having a protein shake is fine. Not having it is fine too. If you want to build muscle, you should aim for 100-150g of protein per day. Make sure you eat enough and well, but in the end, the routine is more important. Remember, getting fit happens at the gym, getting lean happens in the kitchen. Weight loss and weight gains both happen in the kitchen. Realistically, a normal genetic male will gain AT BEST 10-12 pounds of muscle the first year of working out (assuming optimal results), so you can aim for that, but just know that your weight gains might not be muscle.

• Use ChatGPT to help if needed; When I started going at the gym, I followed all these tips, but I didn't really know that to do. So I asked ChatGPT to make me a 4 days a week workout plan, 5 exercises: pull, push, legs, full body. I tried what it gave me for about a month, but I used that month to just replace exercises I didn't like and I slowly started making my own program to fit what I wanted. But I was super happy that I at least had a starting program. I realize that's what's stopping a lot of people and you can use AI to help you out with that, especially if you don't have money to buy a program or pay a trainer to make one for you.

• Be disciplined, but be kind to yourself; There will be days when you will not be able to workout. There will be days when you will not want to workout. There will be days when you will feel bad about working out. It's ok to miss a day, it's ok to miss a week. Remember, the routine is more important. Just make sure to go back to your routine as soon as possible. Missing one workout after going 20 times in a row feels a lot less bad than missing 2-3 every week.

Finally, if you have any questions about starting the gym, feel free to ask. I'll gladly help.

this past summer, I started biking quite a bit and part of my route involves lots of hills and so forth. It was painful af the first few months, not gonna lie.

although, now, my legs muscles have grown quite a bit (didn't expect that) and I am quite happy with my muscular endurance, although there is still room for improvement obviously.

However, oddly as it sounds, my breathing is still off. As I bike up the hill, I feel heartbeat go up quite a bit and my breathing becomes quite laborious and I wind up taking quick breaths with my mouth aka panting. If I try to do it through my nose, I quickly feel like I am suffocating like I can't get enough air.

In the beginning, this made sense. I was out of shape and all that.

But summer is over, my legs have adapted but I feel like my breathing hasn't. when I am going up a hill, I still feel the need to pant and breathe through my mouth and take short breaths.

Is this normal? that I would have to pant even after 3-4 months of this kind of exercise everyday. I figured my lungs or whatever would get used to the biking route I am taking by this time.

Not quite sure if this is a ~tech question, or a ~sport question, or a ~health question. But at least it's a question!

I have a Garmin watch, and so does my wife. They track our activities. We would like to compete in challenges, but Garmin's challenge options are quite limited. Through Garmin, you can compete for the number of steps, or distances ran or swam and such, but those don't really work very well for us.

I was wondering, are there any apps that work on both iOS and Android, sync with Garmin Connect (either directly or through Apple Health / Google Health Connect), have a sensible privacy policy, and offer some or all of the following types of challenges, which I think would be more interesting:

• Total time exercised (either any exercise type, or specific sports)
• Time spent in "vigorous" exercise
• Time spent in "zone 2" exercise (or another zone)
• Active calories burned (either total, or percentage of your resting calories)
• Number of exercise sessions
• Number of consecutive exercise days, i.e who can maintain the longest streak (allowing rest days)

Does anything like that exist?

I also have a bonus question:

Garmin has Expeditions, which track the distance you have walked or run, and once you reach your Expedition goal (say, "walk the distance of the Appalachian Trail"), it tells you that you have reached your goal and gives you a badge. I like the basic idea, but the implementation is quite bland.

Are there any Expedition type apps where the app not only tracks the number of steps against the total needed, but actually shows on a map where you'd be currently going if you actually were walking the Appalachian Trail or something, and gives you notifications when you reach some interesting points along the way, with pictures and a little bit of information about the place? Now, that would be something!

The plan only costs $1 a month. Apple can almost certainly eat that cost, and anyone who cannot complete their monthly exercise challenge because of illness or injury can probably still afford the $1 to keep the plan going.

The monthly challenge in the Fitness app is tailored to each user based on their exercise habits, right?

So I've had hypothyroidism since at least 2020, maybe longer. I've been gaining weight and losing both mobility and stamina since then. It got to the point where I couldn't put on my shoes without an extra-long shoe iron and would get too winded to continue after depressingly short walks.

I was diagnosed earlier this year and put on levothyroxine, and I already feel a lot better. Managing that medication is obviously something to work with my doctor on, but I haven't gotten much advice on how to address getting my body back to where it was prior to the illness really getting into gear. I wasn't crazy active back then either, but it's like night and day to compare me now to me in 2019.

I attempted to start some low-level at-home strength training and to start taking more regular walks back before I was diagnosed, but I struggled with even extremely mild beginner-level stuff absolutely wiping me out and my endurance never increasing. Now that I'm being treated, I suspect I will be able to build up strength/stamina/etc. more easily, but emotionally I'm still pretty vulnerable to feeling like exercise is something insurmountably difficult, which obviously makes it hard to start a more regular routine.

Losing weight is something I should do, but it's not my #1 priority here -- I mostly want to improve my mobility and stamina so that I can increase my activity level at all without feeling like shit. Most beginner-level exercise recommendations, be they strength or cardio, start at a level that is above what I can currently physically accomplish. So any recommendations for ways to get started more gradually so that I can make some amount of this exercise part of my routine would be really appreciated.

As a result of my improving health, I am looking to finally start working on exercise. I have been through a class on exercise before but I was in very poor shape and wasn't really able to do much at the time so most of the practical stuff I had learned has escaped me, and now I only know enough to hurt me, it seems. I want to do some resistance exercises and even purchased a dumbell but I'm hesitant to do much with it because I'm worried about accidentally hurting myself.

There are tons of resources on the web, but there is so much that it's actually a problem. I don't know how to evaluate their quality, and far too often do I see bad health advice on the internet so it's hard to trust any of them.

With that being said, can anyone recommend me some trustworthy resources for physical fitness information? I'm looking for information on resistance training exercises particularly, but I'd like any information you'd like to share about fitness in general.

After years and years of sitting in front of a computer I have poor hamstring flexibility.

The thing is i've been lifting weights pretty regularly for at least 8 years now and have good numbers on squat, deadlift, bench. I do a lot of romanian deadlifts and kettlebell swings.

But these don't seem to help with sitting at 90º with my legs straight.

I can search for flexibility routine, but the internet these days are full of ad riddled and generic content that I'm having a hard time filtering through the bullshit and finding something that says "do this 3 times per week, progress like this, etc". They just throw some stretches at you and don't say exactly how to progress and what to look for.

It's not like lifting weights that you put more weight on the bar to quantify things easily.

"You haven't found your sport, yet."

That's it. That's the thing I wish someone… anyone, my friends, my parents, some stranger on the internet… had told me a long time ago.

I was not a very physically active kid. I wasn't fat, but did have above average BMI, didn't enjoy PE, didn't get picked in the football teams, the works. I grew up with this notion that I was just One Of Those People who Don't Like Sports. A complete lie.

My dad was into Rugby, so he put me to Rugby practice as an 8 year old. I was very good at it, mostly because of sheer force (I was really strong and bulky for my age), but I did not enjoy it. The other kids were gross and annoying, it wasn't fun. So a couple years later, I stopped, and my father told me: "Pick another sport."

It's a significant question, one you don't have the true answer to when you're a kid. I picked Fencing, though. I kinda liked it? As much as one can like a physical activity when you're "One Of Those People who Don't Like Sports", right? It was different, original. It wasn't particularly fun, but could I really expect to ever have fun doing physical exercise? After all, I hated going to the gym, and I didn't enjoy running, so surely, I'm just not that into sports.

So that was it. I thought I had found it, the one I happened to pick at the age of 12, after not much soul searching at all. I did it for a few years, picked it back up at 22 for a few more. I tolerated it. Loved my club and coach in one of the cities, something which fooled me into believing I was a fencer. I'm 30 now, and until the age of 27, I had zero doubts about that. I had the gear and years of experience. I would move somewhere new, look for a new fencing club, get demotivated because it's a 40 minute bike ride to get there, and just… not go.

In retrospect, it's obvious that I didn't particularly like fencing, any more than most people like ironing their clothes. Of all the things I'd tell Past Self, I would start with just how motivated I would be only a year later. I would tell them about the subscriptions to 4 different ice rinks across the country, the train subscription with the 1 hour commute to get there, how I'd go 4 days a week and feel sad when it's only 3, and how I'd always be taking my gear with me whenever I go to another country as trying out a new rink would be the most exciting part of an international trip.

I'd tell past self:

"You haven't found your sport, yet. It's just that you don't like the ones you tried. You're still thinking about motivation, but this is about necessity. When you find it, you will fall in love. It will become a core part of your life and identity. It will bring you joy and be your partner, like the piano to the pianist. You found a sport you can tolerate… one day, you'll find one that is truly You.

Keep looking."

I was feeling great in the gym yesterday and switched up my normal deadlift by using the hex bar. It requires a slightly different posture than the straight bar deadlift but felt so good that I kept adding on weight and, evidently, speeding up. What happens when you get a little too enthusiastic under load? Zzzlip! There went my back. So I’m home from work today, barely able to hobble around. Ibuprofen is not enough. I sneezed earlier and it felt like someone had inserted a power drill into my lower spinal column. Yep, I’m feeling stupid today.

Weightlifters, what are your stories of pain? I’m sure there are some good stories out there.