The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Marxists and is narrated by Brock Armstrong.

Why exercise feels like a drag and what to do about it.

Sometimes while working out at home, I catch Buddha, my lab, just watching me doing squats or push-ups

or pull-ups or burpees with this look on his face that says, you feed me, walk me, scratch me,

and water me, and I love you for it, but what in dog's name are you doing?

He probably thinks I'm insane. You can't really blame the guy.

I mean, the stuff we do for exercise is pretty silly. You're walking on a treadmill, literally going

nowhere for miles at a time. You're pedaling like a madman, but instead of seeing the landscape

unfold in front of you, you're watching MSNBC with closed captioning

on. You're picking up a metal bar with weights on either end and putting it back down over and over

again. Hanging from an overhead bar, you pull yourself upward toward it until your chest touches,

then you go back down and repeat it several dozen times.

Is it any wonder that many people find modern exercise to be meaningless?

Now, not everyone finds it meaningless. I'm a man who prefers a rousing game of Ultimate or a hike through the canyons of Malibu, but I can also appreciate a good

strength training workout at the gym, or an intense sprint session on a stationary bike. But a lot of

people just aren't moved by conventional workouts. And I think a big reason is that physical movement

has become separated from immediate utility. We no longer have to

walk, lift things, run, climb, or carry heavy objects to make a living, procure food, or get from

here to there. Instead, we work out for promised, basically intangible benefits far off in the

distance. If you can't find immediate value in the

exercises, you're unlikely to do them. But we do need to exercise. I'd love it if we could simply

incorporate regular movement into our everyday life and mobile workstations, walking breaks,

...