alt text
First panel: [blank white space with black text] Jogging from the perspective of animals
Second panel: Wolf by a tree looking at a man jogging. "What are you running from, apex predator"
Third panel: Wolf: "Are you chasing prey?" "You need to conserve energy"
Last panel: [second wolf peeking in] "The hell is that guy doing" [first wolf] "I don't know. I don't understand"
(alt text by @cypnk@mastodon.social)
We've become so successful at getting food, we don't have to move much to do it any more. So we have to go out of our way to be active to stay healthy since evolution takes so long to catch up.
I used to refer to going to the gym as the "farm work simulator". It always amazed me that society progressed to the point where physical labor isn't necessary, but we chose to pay money, so that we can pretend to do it, in order to live longer
Ngl, if they make gym work as some kind of "heavy work" simulator games like Farming or Mining, with tracking progress, achievements, and competitive ranking, I would be at the gym way more.
VR games already make me work out way more than I thought I would.
Add a leveling system in there and make it an mmo
LOL What would you do with your Skill Points?
Dunno it just adds a progression system which gets me going
Leaderboards
Pretty sure this is super common on some equipment. The ellipticals at the gym I used (before it moved) had them , but I never bothered.
I had a room mate who would drive a 5 mile round trip to the gym and back to walk five miles on the treadmill. I didn't have a car at the time and was always pointing out the nonsense of it. She said she just preferred the atmosphere of the gym to the side of the road or any of the many beautiful nature trails near by. 🤷♀️
To be fair, I can close my eyes and just sort of flail on an elliptical in a way that would absolutely hurt me if I tried it on the ground. It's also a lot lower impact and when I'm done I can just stop.
CrossFit might be what you're looking for.
Because the risk of injury is similar to farm work?
It's kinda like burning dollar bills in the fireplace to make the place look cozy.
It's kind of the ultimate symbol of excess evolutionary wealth to be able to go for a run just because we want to burn off excess energy.
A step further even, a lot of us need to burn off excess energy, because we're so well off (evolutionarily speaking) that we practically can't help but take in more energy than we burn naturally
Hell, food comes to us now.
I've got my money on that not happening until after an apocalyptic event sends us back to the iron age. And the adaptations we're gonna get aren't gonna be pretty.