| what am I missing? Nothing really, I think it's just a personality trait. I have tried picking up pretty much every single form excercise the article mentions plus some more, and I just couldn't bring myself to keep on doing it. I even tried of really forcing myself and it made me feel more miserable. Now I essentially gave up and stopped trying to change myself in that area. Though I'm aware that it's not impossible that getting older might somehow put me mentally in a different state which doesn't make every repetitive excercise feel like an incredible chore. Instead I just keep on doing what I like, but since I'm getting older I do in a slightly different way than I used to, to mimimize risk: excercise which requires technique, skill, creativity. Be it frisbee, skating, bmx, bouldering, ... A good session of those keeps my spirits up for several days. And it keeps the body in shape. But I do think twice before attempting things above my level, and usually just don't, and will back off in case something starts to feel wrong. Recovering from injuries takes waaay longer when you're 40+ than when you're 20 and it's just not worth it anymore for me. To be clear: sure, strength training has some skill to it, but let's be realistic here: it's not exactly in the same ballpark as what one needs for bouldering for instance. Also nowadays bouldering is my main excercise and the thing is that unlike the OP I have a very good experience with it when it comes to health: I don't have pain, plus I have the impression that unlike typical strength training and basic yoga/pilates/... routines climbing at a somewhat decent level will make you use a ton of mostly upper body muscles you don't use otherwise (ok, you can do that with strength training but you're going to have to do quite a lot of different things to hit them all). And that seems to make the body more resilient against injuries. Anecdotal though. Anyway, and now to the point: I'm convinced that as far as your body goes it's possible to make climbing akin to the mentioned 'boring tech' but without actually being boring. Do it long enough and become super aware about the moves, and there's no unknown failure mode. |