I find exercising for the sake of exercising to be the most tedious and boring thing in the world. And because I do it rarely, it is also painful.

I don’t know if it’s the autism or adhd but I am pretty uncoordinated so stuff like hiking and climbing and such is no fun, and any team/ball sports are a nightmare. Every hobby I have is a sitting one—reading, writing, etc.

The only exercise I do semi consistently (and it’s still not great) is walking. But if it’s rainy, too hot, too cold, or too anything, I will skip it.

The best solution for me has always been videos I can do at home but most popular video exercises like aerobics, Zumba, etc are too fast and once they start putting routines together I lose it quickly only and give up.

So I would like to give a few suggestions I’ve found that work for me. Gentle exercises, brief exercises, exercises for the uncoordinated. You aren’t going to get a buff body from these but you will move enough to counteract a little of the sedentary damage, feel better, and not injure yourself.

One is the Lumowell series of videos on Amazon Prime. They are computer animations and are fairly simple routines. They used to stream free but left the free part. They are pretty inexpensive so I bought several that I used the most.

I particularly like their 7 and 15 minute stretching videos. They are boring AF to anyone else, my sister doesn’t know how I stand them, but I find the lack of perky instructor and kind of robotic voice soothing. I wake up and do one of the stretching ones every day.

Another is the yes2next channel on YouTube. It’s a middle aged woman and her elderly mom and they started during lockdown as a way to keep seniors at home moving. They have tons of 5 and 10 minute low key workouts with very simple moves and modifications up and down to make it more or less challenging. There are also lots of seated workouts for seniors.

I want to emphasize how much I HATE exercising and it’s one of my biggest procrastination things and also I have horrible coordination and I find these workouts easy to keep up with. If you need more challenge you can string a bunch together or do the things that make them harder like heavier hand weights or jumping instead of tiptoes that kind of thing. And I genuinely LIKE these routines. I can talk myself into doing a 5 minute one when I’m waiting for something to heat up for lunch or, when I’m really on a roll, mix it up with pomodoros when I’m working at a desk.

I just wanted to pass these along to help anyone in the same boat as me with this stuff.