What's your "favorite" exercise?

Yes, "favorite" is in quotes because I am one of those people who's not so much a fan of it, but I do recognize it's a necessary evil, so I drag my ass out of bed every morning at 4am to do it before work.

The elliptical trainer is my go-to, has been for the past 15 or so years, but I'm curious what else works for those of you who aren't huge fans, but do it anyway? I've got a pretty good system down where I keep challenging myself and don't get bored with it (if you're curious, it involves playlists catered to increasing stride speeds... happy to explain further if you'd like), but I'm interested to hear what else works.

So, what's your "favorite" and why?

When I was allowed to exercise again after surgery, I tried everything that seemed remotely interesting, forced myself to give it four attempts, and hoped something would stick.

I had been walking post-op, and continued that. Over time I started adding running intervals. Three years post-op I ran a half marathon. o_O I used Zombies Run for motivation and it works super well for me.

Then I joined the group fitness program at my local community college since it's a) cheap and b) robust. I tried a lot of things and fell in love with mat pilates, yoga, and tai chi. I take other random things when I can, but those are the regulars. (I also love Les Mils classes, but those aren't offered locally for me.)

So, basically, I tried everything and a few things stuck. Now I find that I just enjoy doing active stuff period. Trip to SkyZone? Sign me up. Indoor climbing place? I'm the first one in line. Traveling to Denmark? I'll start researching how to deal with bike helmets since the idea of renting a bike there is super appealing. It's really neat to be this person I've become :)

*Giggles at the use of "favorite" and "exercise" in the same sentence...

Me too.

I hated exercise when I was fat. I sweat more than everyone else, huffed and puffed more, had to stop earlier. It just highlighted how out of shape and unwell I was.

Now I love to hike. Love it. Do it 2-3 times a week in the wilderness areas around when I live. And several months ago I started mat Pilates and I love that too!

I love my bike. But do you know what (who) I love even more? Mrs. LittleBillJr. I'll let you figure out what my favorite exercise is, even after 35 years.

I will add this too, for the playlists comment. Last year Radar Love was the song in my head EVERY TIME I was out on my bike. This year I am planning on Tom Petty's Running Down a Dream. The cadence is enough to keep me moving at maximum speed and burning 700 calories or more in an hour.

Great song.

So here's what I do... being a music geek, it really helps me with staying on track and motivated.

Grab a bunch of songs that I think would be at a cadence that would make a good warm up, mid-section, peak and cool down and put them into a playlist, "Workout Audition." I shoot for a total of roughly 35 mins because that's how much time I have to workout in the AM, but you can obviously adjust that for however long you want your work out to be.

Hop on the elliptical with that playlist and play it *in order*, not on shuffle (this is important, you'll see why in a minute). When I start, I have my text window open and start a text to myself. I set the elliptical to show strides per minute. For each song, enter the number of strides per minute (SPM) for that song. I don't actually listen to the whole song... only long enough to get the SPM and then I move on to the next one. This isn't actually the work out, it's just the set up.

After I have everything logged with its associated SPM, each number in the text you started to yourself corresponds to the song in that same order in your playlist (why you can't us shuffle). I rearrange the playlist from slow to fast SPM, then add one more slow one at the end for the cool down.

I then start a new playlist, "Workout Master" where I put all these songs, in order. Every time I "audition" new songs, I add them to the master list, in their correct order, in relation to the songs that are already there. Over time, I have a pretty decent list of songs to choose from whenever I need a more challenging playlist. I just went through and put them all into an Excel doc and color coded them by difficulty so it's easy for me to grab new songs each month. Oh, I make a new playlist every month -- that seems to be how long it takes my body to adjust. It's hard at first, easy by the end of the month.

I don't exercise. I do stay very active, and make sure I get 10,000 steps in every day.