MikeyGMin

Or gonorrhea or syphilis or Giardia or crabs or a host of other STIs. Having sex with another gay man (who is unlikely to be pure and virginal) is a risk-reward calculation. However, the calculation has changed significantly over the last few years for a LOT of people. For others it has not and that is fine. Why do something that is over you're comfortable risk level if it's going to take the enjoyment out of the whole thing? At the same time, the finger-wagging at those who HAVE changed is worthless noise.

Lol. The change of attitude has NOTHING to do with you "pioneers" and EVERYTHING to do with the development of PrEP. I'm glad you survived and hope you didn't infect too many people along the way.

Or gonorrhea or syphilis or Giardia or crabs or a host of other STIs. Having sex with another gay man (who is unlikely to be pure and virginal) is a risk-reward calculation. However, the calculation has changed significantly over the last few years for a LOT of people. For others it has not and that is fine. Why do something that is over you're comfortable risk level if it's going to take the enjoyment out of the whole thing? At the same time, the finger-wagging at those who HAVE changed is worthless noise.

No one ever knows what's really going on in anyone's head, but I sure don't get that feeling from Nick Jonas. Like he is in any way disdainful out of the attraction by gay men. All I see is an extremely hot and talented young man who seems very comfortable in his skin and his sexiness. Even though he's the youngest, he was the driving force behind the success of the Jonas Brothers. And have you seen his sex scene in 'Kingdom?' Damn! If that's gay -baiting I want a whole lot more of it! :D

Yes. I was knocked off track for many years for basically the same reasons you mention. A few thoughts:
 
Habits take time to form. You will probably need to experiment to find what works for you, but you will need sheer willpower to keep experimenting until you find the right time of day, the right motivator, etc., and then let that become habit.
 
I don't think your reluctance to use the gym at work is unusual. Even if there were no changing of clothing required, I have no desire to workout with my coworkers. I'm not that social and don't want to see and chat with people I work with all day. I want to listen to music and surreptitiously check out hot guys.
 
For years I was a "first thing in the morning" guy. If I didn't get up, grab a cup of coffee and get out the door, it just wasn't going to happen. The excuses build up as the work day wore me down. I have several friends who enjoy going to the gym in the evening and couldn't imagine getting out of bed early to go work out. You'll need to figure out what works best for you.
 
Make sure the gym you choose is conveniently located to either your work or home depending upon when you think you'll be going. Convenience is paramount for most people. It can be the coolest gym in world with the hottest guys around, but if it takes you 30 extra minutes to get there, you are setting yourself up for excuses and failure.
 
Find tricks that can become patterns that get you out the door. This may seem trivial to most people, but something that works really well for me, is simply getting into my gym clothes. If I get into those clothes...I always go. So on the days where I am wavering all I really need to do is find the willpower to change into those gym clothes. It's a small thing but it really works for me.
 
Finally. Unless you are extremely athletic, you can't exercise yourself out of a poor diet. I have found that going to the gym is very motivating in keeping my diet healthy, but it's the diet doing all the real work, not the exercise. After a good morning of cardio, I am less inclined to ruin it by eating garbage, but it's very easy to eat away the benefits. I do the calorie math all the time with my food choices. How many minutes of rowing is it going to take me to burn away that donut? It works wonders for me.
 
Good luck. Getting started is the hardest part!

Nice summary on the positive aspects of CrossFit. It's never going to work for me because it is too structured. I'm fortunate that I have a job where I can slip out for a couple hours mid-morning and get in a workout, but I have to be flexible, so having to be at a specific place at a specific time is never going to work for me. I also enjoy the solitary aspect of working out, but if camaraderie is a motivator for someone, I don't think anyone does it better than CrossFit.

Cant predict what responses will be from rentguys.... but Im pretty confident it wont be Nevada.

I was an on-again/off-again gym goer in my 20s but would always stop after a few weeks because of boredom. Eventually, I quit doing any exercise. By the time I turned 50, my body showed the ill effects of inactivity.
 
It wasn't pretty plus I had to take pills for high cholesterol.
 
So I started Crossfit at 50. Couldn't even finish the warmup, which was to run around an industrial building three times. Halfway through the second time, I stopped and felt like throwing up. Spent about half an hour by myself in the parking lot trying to recover, completely missing the training workout.
 
The coach came out to check on me a few times to be sure that I was okay. When I went home, I wrote the gym owner and said that Crossfit was too tough for me. She wrote me back twice that week and said that it's normal to have issues at first. But they would work with me and scale the workouts to my level. And I would get better. She wanted me to give them another try.
 
So after a week, I went back and they did what they said they would.
 
It was a long and exhausting road. But eight years later, I'm still doing Crossfit three days a week, only missing a session when I'm on vacation or sick. I lost 30 pounds in the first four months (with the Paleo diet -- no carbs) and after about a year, ditched the cholesterol pills. I can now run a mile without stopping, do Olympic lifts, and climb a rope (slowly).
 
Competed in my first Crossfit competition, a local one, many years ago -- came in close to last place for my age group. This year, I finished my second global Crossfit Open and moved up to the middle of the pack worldwide in my age group.
 
After decades of being an overweight nerd, I've turned into a jock in my fifties.
 
I've stuck with Crossfit because of the variety: every workout is different so I'm never bored. My entire body gets a workout. There's also a lot of camaraderie with the 20-somethings who finish the workout first encouraging people like me who usually finish last. Since each workout is a class, everybody knows everybody else's name, and tries to integrate newcomers as quickly as possible. The coaches are on our case if we try to do too much or too little.
 
At the highest levels, Crossfit is no harder than doing any sport. I'm never going to compete at the Crossfit Games on TV but fitness runners won't be running for the Olympics and weekend basketball players won't be playing for the NBA.
 
Critics usually forget to mention that, as someone here has already stated, all workouts are scalable. Which is how a senior citizen beginner who may be lifting with a plastic pipe works out at the same time as a college jock who is breaking personal barbell records. We've had pregnant women working out until 2-3 weeks before giving birth and then coming back four weeks after. No mom-bods for these ladies.
 
Our latest member is around 72 and in just a couple of months, he's gone from being barely able to move to lifting light weights, rowing, biking, and doing pushups. He'll probably be joining our mile runs in a few months.
 
To me the worst thing about Crossfit is not the difficulty -- everybody who sticks with it, no matter their physical shape when they started, eventually ends up doing the workouts. It's the cost: $150 a month is average for my area (SoCal). It's higher in other places.
 
If you want to try Crossfit -- checkout several boxes. Nearly all will let you do one beginner workout for free. Like anything else, some affiliates are better than others. I had to try out five gyms before settling on my current one.

Or gonorrhea or syphilis or Giardia or crabs or a host of other STIs. Having sex with another gay man (who is unlikely to be pure and virginal) is a risk-reward calculation. However, the calculation has changed significantly over the last few years for a LOT of people. For others it has not and that is fine. Why do something that is over you're comfortable risk level if it's going to take the enjoyment out of the whole thing? At the same time, the finger-wagging at those who HAVE changed is worthless noise.

Lol. The change of attitude has NOTHING to do with you "pioneers" and EVERYTHING to do with the development of PrEP. I'm glad you survived and hope you didn't infect too many people along the way.

Hand raised. But I do like it when you're drawn into a conversation -- just so I can look at your avatar.

Lol. The change of attitude has NOTHING to do with you "pioneers" and EVERYTHING to do with the development of PrEP. I'm glad you survived and hope you didn't infect too many people along the way.

Okay, I've been lurking on this forum for a bit, but this is the dumbest fucking post I've ever seen and I refuse to stay quiet about it.
 
Short version: Let people have sex the way they want to, and they'll let you have sex the way you want to. No need to shame anyone for what they do in bed in private.
 
Long version: Fuck all the way off.
 
You say you've been barebacking for thirty years, so you must remember when HIV was literally named Gay-Related Immune Deficiency? You've been around to see 35 million people killed by HIV since its discovery? You attended a new funeral every week in the 80s, because all your friends were dying? You've seen gonorrhea becoming borderline-untreatable? You've seen STD rates in America soar to the highest they've ever been?
 
We are where we are today because of tremendous advancements in technology and medicine. We have antibiotics, we have antiretroviral therapy, we have so much more knowledge on prevention. We are in a much better place than we were thirty years ago, but millions of people died and suffered along the way to get us here. To ignore all of this and say "I was right, you're all a bunch of pussies" shows that you don't have a goddamn clue what you're talking about.
 
Whatever you do in your bedroom in private is none of my business. But don't you for a fucking second tell me I am less than you because I choose to protect myself. Your right to get your rocks off ends exactly where my health begins.

The reddit thread is pretty comprehensive. I have found that filing after clipping -- especially the edges -- is very important. Clipping can leave a sharness to the nail and filing insures that all edges have been dulled and there are no tiny hangnails. I test against my skin and make sure that I have to angle my fingers before I can feel my nails at all.

Or gonorrhea or syphilis or Giardia or crabs or a host of other STIs. Having sex with another gay man (who is unlikely to be pure and virginal) is a risk-reward calculation. However, the calculation has changed significantly over the last few years for a LOT of people. For others it has not and that is fine. Why do something that is over you're comfortable risk level if it's going to take the enjoyment out of the whole thing? At the same time, the finger-wagging at those who HAVE changed is worthless noise.

Or gonorrhea or syphilis or Giardia or crabs or a host of other STIs. Having sex with another gay man (who is unlikely to be pure and virginal) is a risk-reward calculation. However, the calculation has changed significantly over the last few years for a LOT of people. For others it has not and that is fine. Why do something that is over you're comfortable risk level if it's going to take the enjoyment out of the whole thing? At the same time, the finger-wagging at those who HAVE changed is worthless noise.

Lol. The change of attitude has NOTHING to do with you "pioneers" and EVERYTHING to do with the development of PrEP. I'm glad you survived and hope you didn't infect too many people along the way.

Lol. The change of attitude has NOTHING to do with you "pioneers" and EVERYTHING to do with the development of PrEP. I'm glad you survived and hope you didn't infect too many people along the way.

The reddit thread is pretty comprehensive. I have found that filing after clipping -- especially the edges -- is very important. Clipping can leave a sharness to the nail and filing insures that all edges have been dulled and there are no tiny hangnails. I test against my skin and make sure that I have to angle my fingers before I can feel my nails at all.

Or gonorrhea or syphilis or Giardia or crabs or a host of other STIs. Having sex with another gay man (who is unlikely to be pure and virginal) is a risk-reward calculation. However, the calculation has changed significantly over the last few years for a LOT of people. For others it has not and that is fine. Why do something that is over you're comfortable risk level if it's going to take the enjoyment out of the whole thing? At the same time, the finger-wagging at those who HAVE changed is worthless noise.

Or gonorrhea or syphilis or Giardia or crabs or a host of other STIs. Having sex with another gay man (who is unlikely to be pure and virginal) is a risk-reward calculation. However, the calculation has changed significantly over the last few years for a LOT of people. For others it has not and that is fine. Why do something that is over you're comfortable risk level if it's going to take the enjoyment out of the whole thing? At the same time, the finger-wagging at those who HAVE changed is worthless noise.

Or gonorrhea or syphilis or Giardia or crabs or a host of other STIs. Having sex with another gay man (who is unlikely to be pure and virginal) is a risk-reward calculation. However, the calculation has changed significantly over the last few years for a LOT of people. For others it has not and that is fine. Why do something that is over you're comfortable risk level if it's going to take the enjoyment out of the whole thing? At the same time, the finger-wagging at those who HAVE changed is worthless noise.

Lol. The change of attitude has NOTHING to do with you "pioneers" and EVERYTHING to do with the development of PrEP. I'm glad you survived and hope you didn't infect too many people along the way.

Hand raised. But I do like it when you're drawn into a conversation -- just so I can look at your avatar.

The reddit thread is pretty comprehensive. I have found that filing after clipping -- especially the edges -- is very important. Clipping can leave a sharness to the nail and filing insures that all edges have been dulled and there are no tiny hangnails. I test against my skin and make sure that I have to angle my fingers before I can feel my nails at all.