You asked for thoughts, Joe, and we all have our own, that’s the beauty of it. I liked your wise thoughts and observations. You are doing what you enjoy, what you believe in and exercise is foundational to your pursuit of health and longevity.
I too do what I believe in, and even though our beliefs might differ on some points, we all pursue health and longevity in our own way.
I’m with the original pre-slapped Joe. The heck with doing more at the gym. Like the original Joe, I say “I’m doing enough, and if it’s not enough it will have to do anyway”.
Because we all have our beliefs based on our interpretation of evidence. My belief is that if you do moderate amount of exercise you have extracted all the health and longevity benefits, based on all those graphs. Any additional exercise barely separates the curves, and even then only in further tiny asymptotic miniscule decrements in premature mortality. And so, doing “enough”, is enough, where enough is not that much at all. That’s what the evidence tells me. But the heck with that, because we live life to enjoy it, not just for the sake of living itself - a life filled with pain and misery is not worth it. I don’t enjoy exercise, so I only do enough to get the benefits as I understand them. You enjoy exercise, so you are happy to do more. And that’s as it should be, life is to be enjoyed.
Exercise is not foundational to my conception of health and longevity. Sure, exercising more might allow me to move furniture for two hours more (here insert: any physical challenge), but so what? It won’t make me healthier or live longer, I’d rather trade that extra gym time for time with my wife at the movies, ballet, walking in nature or at the museum or simply at home - but surely not at the gym sh|tting myself (I stole that “sh|tting yourself” from a moderate-exercise-only advocate on yt, whose motto is DSY - Don’t Sh|t Yourself).
And you know what? Health and longevity is enough for me. I don’t need to move stuff easily for 12 hours instead of just eight or two. That’s not my goal. Because guess what, you will never be prepared for all of life’s challenges. As soon as you beat your brains out to easily do the 12 hour move, along will come some 14 hour challenge and you’ll have to deal with that by hiring people anyway. So why sweat it, (or sh|t it, lol)? My motto is not “be prepared for absolutely everything”, but “be prepared enough”. Exercise, meh, I don’t obsess, I do “enough” and look to pharmaceuticals for the “more than enough”, and to whatever comes next, maybe genetic engineering.
And so, I do my sets and leave the gym asap, walking past the guy sh|tting himself on some exotic machine exercising a muscle he didn’t even know he had a week ago. While he develops a bulge in an odd part of the body, I limit myself to keeping fit the functional muscles I use in everyday life, and have zero ambition to develop a muscle that’s really useful if you want to make that weird lift on that weird machine over there, twisted into a pretzel. I leave the gym and join my wife for coffee at that place where musicians play their new stuff - that way I cannot hear the guy groaning heroically at the gym five miles away as he sh|ts himself. To each his own. But truth be told, I don’t see the guys who live at the gym much anymore these days. That’s because I have all the exercise equipment (not much) I need at home, and spare myself wasting time travelling to the gym and back. I don’t miss the gym, seeing the permanent furniture - I mean gym bros who live at that address - which changes only when one of them moves residence to the morgue on account of a heart attack, where they can perform an autopsy and admire the overdeveloped muscles in strange places.
My thoughts, as requested, Joe! I’m happy when you’re happy regardless of whether my happy is the same as your happy😁.
