Confidence interval(s): If the typical LWer knew the extent of all effects of {cardiovascular, weight-training, other} exercise, and they were able to commit to any amount of said exercise and stick to it, how much would they do?
Assume that any time they spend doing exercise would otherwise have been spent doing other work.
If you want to be more specific, what advice would you give to healthy 25-year-olds, to healthy 40-year-olds, etc.?
I would assume this varies greatly by individual, based on biological factors. My answer would be “enough to feel fit”, where moderate levels of physical play would be considered fun rather than dreaded. For me that’s about 40min/day, 4x per week, of weight training. I don’t know if that’s typical, but having lived on both sides of the line, the benefits of feeling fit are very easily worth that lost time. Everything else I do benefits, it’s akin to getting enough sleep.
Going on my own anecdotal experience, I think there is substantial marginal benefit to cardiovascular exercise even at the level of 4+ hours a day of said exercise.
For a while I’ve been doing 4 or 5 hours a day of cycling and it seems to have weird cognitive effects similar to those of caffeine. While exercising I seem to sometimes go into some sort of trance state where I’m pretty excited and can do lots of work (at the same time as the cycling) pretty quickly without it feeling like actual work. I can listen to the same dance track 30 times without becoming bored of it. I think this might be due to ‘runner’s high’, or due to increased blood flow to the brain.
Confidence interval(s): If the typical LWer knew the extent of all effects of {cardiovascular, weight-training, other} exercise, and they were able to commit to any amount of said exercise and stick to it, how much would they do?
Assume that any time they spend doing exercise would otherwise have been spent doing other work.
If you want to be more specific, what advice would you give to healthy 25-year-olds, to healthy 40-year-olds, etc.?
I would assume this varies greatly by individual, based on biological factors. My answer would be “enough to feel fit”, where moderate levels of physical play would be considered fun rather than dreaded. For me that’s about 40min/day, 4x per week, of weight training. I don’t know if that’s typical, but having lived on both sides of the line, the benefits of feeling fit are very easily worth that lost time. Everything else I do benefits, it’s akin to getting enough sleep.
Going on my own anecdotal experience, I think there is substantial marginal benefit to cardiovascular exercise even at the level of 4+ hours a day of said exercise.
For a while I’ve been doing 4 or 5 hours a day of cycling and it seems to have weird cognitive effects similar to those of caffeine. While exercising I seem to sometimes go into some sort of trance state where I’m pretty excited and can do lots of work (at the same time as the cycling) pretty quickly without it feeling like actual work. I can listen to the same dance track 30 times without becoming bored of it. I think this might be due to ‘runner’s high’, or due to increased blood flow to the brain.