If you didn't play sports as a kid, is it too late to start?

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If this was the 90's you could go to a local park and play softball with a bunch of balding drunk guys in their late 20's 30's and 40's. If they lived in a relatively decent neighborhood.

You kind of missed it. There aren't many ways to get into sports as an adult. Most people start out in high school.

This just hit me. You can play milsims on PC. It's like playing a sport. Milsims are basically for retired military people but mostly just dorks who were too chicken shit to actually join the military and want to LARP as a soldier. You haven't had fun till you get some control freak asshole yelling at you over a mic about not following his orders.

You can at least get joy out of ruining it for others.
 
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Trump's Chosen said:
Just take a lesson for like 5 different sports and see what you like. If you find something you like, you'll stick with it easier. If you stick with it, it will pay more dividends. It doesn't really matter what sport you do now, the most important thing is that you get fucking moving, don't try to overdo it immediately and just get used to what it's like being active without injuring yourself.
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Good advice. Depends where you're from, but lots of grade schools don't teach sports very well anyway. They just babysit and yell at the kids. Sometimes you need someone to yell at you if you're slacking or doing it wrong, sure, but if they don't teach you what they expect and how to do it right first, there's not much point. Trainers and clubs have an incentive to keep you motivated and coming back, so they teach you how to get good at the sport and take time to help you with your form or whatever you're having difficulty with.
hothead said:
I'm going to learn wrestling to take down people giving me trash can emojis.
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Do it! I'm an awkward clumsy fucker and it's helped me improve my coordination a lot. Plus it's not as difficult to pick up as something like, say, gymnastics would be, because if I screw up and fall over, I can put the other guy on the ground. And it's fun!
I've even given you a trash can too, to inspire you. Hope that we can spar one day.

Hiking, or even just brisk walking more, is a good way to start building up your fitness if that's the issue. Swimming too, helps use a lot of different muscle groups and isn't too strenuous. I've seen deathfats at my local pool start out doing lengths by just walking on the bottom of the pool and pushing through the water, and then slowly they get better and stronger, until they're swimming and they're not deathfats any more. If they can do it, you can too!
 
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Idiotron said:
I know crossfit has a bad reputation but for an all round fitness, I think it's really good.
Just make sure you study the proper technique, there's plenty of material online and some of it isn't that good.
Look for people who have been doing it for a long time and haven't injured themselves into oblivion.

If you're not a fan of that, those Ninja Warrior obstacle courses are great as well.
If you live in a city, try looking for a venue.

I also recommend martial arts, one of the ones that actually work like kickboxing.
You get fit and you get the added bonus of being able to defend yourself against assholes.

Last thing, you can also try dancing.
Dumb people will laugh at it but you get fit, you learn cool shit and you meet really hot women.
What's not to love?
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Your recommendations are good, but your talking to a zoomer on KF of all places. They need specific instructions that are easy to follow and won't chase them off.

@hothead First things first, you need a gym membership, a little notebook, and workout plan, if your skinny use this one, if your skinny-fat follow this one, if your fat just use the first one and add daily cardio. From there write down all the things you are reliably willing to eat on a daily basis, give them to chatGPT along with your personal goals and body statistics, ask it to write you a meal plan to meet your goals and just fuck with it until it spits out something you know your willing to do. Now that you've got everything you need, take a before picture, start working out, follow the workout and meal plans, and track your workouts/weight, i.e. "dumbell curls 12x3 - 10lbs", "bench press 10x3 - 65lbs", "Jan 21 - 144lbs 20.5% bodyfat", Jan 28 - 143lbs 20.3% bodyfat". If the weights feel to light, go up and track it. If your not lose/gaining weight increase/decrease daily calories by 100-200.
Follow these instructions and in 3 months you won't recognize yourself, in 6 months nobody you know will recognize you either. Everyone you know will think you went through a Patrick Bateman style transformation when in reality you just had the barest amount of discipline and half assed your way into losing 5-10% body fat and gaining 8-10 pounds of muscle. It's really that simple.

Your not gunna do any ninja warrior shit so you can just forget about that, just watch youtube shorts of it and pretend like you "totally would do it if it was a thing around here" and just never find out if it is.

Martial arts are great, but most people are pussies and getting kicked in the head, even on accident, might make you bitch out and never try martial arts again. If that's not something that would happen, go for it, otherwise if you're still interested but don't wanna risk getting kicked in the head/hurt, just do BJJ. BJJ let's you put in a high amount of effort with a minimal risk of injury. You'll spend the first 3 months getting your ass handed to you by 15 y/o's, but eventually you'll learn how to do a triangle properly and some other new guy is gunna come in, and you'll kick his ass instead.
After about a year/once you hit blue belt you'll essentially know enough "self defense" to realistically defend yourself if the situation arises. You're not gunna be a good fighter or anything like that, so don't think just because you know what an O goshi is you'll suddenly be able to beat that mouthy nigger who has 50 pounds on you. He's still gunna sell you that 2 piece for free 99 whether you know what a flying armbar is or not. Trust me, I've seen it, and it's sad.
Best case scenario is a junky tries to press you and all your little Jackie Chan shit makes him think your Iphone 13 with a cracked screen ain't worth a pair of scuffed knees and a twisted ankle.

Lastly, dancing is for fags, and so are women. You're white, just learn to move your shoulders somewhat on beat and don't do any autistic shit with your hands.
I'm kidding, it's always beneficial to be a more complex and multi-faceted individual. If you want to learn how to dance, go for it. If you ever go to an actual party where people are dancing to music you'll be the one straight white guy who can jump in the middle of the circle and bust some shit down. If someone ever asks about you, and the person asked mentions "Oh yea, and he can dance too" most people will remember that and think it's cool.
 
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If you go to the gym avoid these two machines: the bench press and the seated leg press. Those are those only two ways I have ever seen or heard of someone getting hurt.

Also, many people like the “heavy weight low reps” method, but personally I like lower weight and higher reps. Also, it’s more important to be consistent than to hit goals. So to make sure that you exercise everyday, because that’s consistency, you don’t want to over stress and leave yourself to sore to do anything the next day.
 
BradeRunna said:
Yeah, sure. The only thing people do on social media is cringe shit.
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Personally, I set up several groups on social media where me and a bunch of others organize and engage is various physical activities.
Don't look at what others do, be the change you want to see in the world.
Irregardless said:
I'm kidding, it's always beneficial to be a more complex and multi-faceted individual. If you want to learn how to dance, go for it. If you ever go to an actual party where people are dancing to music you'll be the one straight guy who can jump in the middle of the circle and bust some shit down. If someone ever asks about you, and the person asked mentions "Oh yea, and he can dance too" most people will remember that and think it's cool.
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Learning how to dance was the best decision I have ever made in my life.
I'm an autistic anti-social weirdo, I had to spend years learning how to interpret body language and facial expressions, just to be able to talk to people.
Dancing not only allowed me to be confident in public, I would never ever get laid if I didn't know how to dance.
Powerlevel but I have been dancing for 25 years now and when I go to a club, I don't need to go up to women.
I just go to the middle of the dancefloor, move around for 10 minutes and suddenly, there are 3+ women dancing close to me.
I have already made a very positive 1st impression and I haven't said a word.
I encourage everyone dude to learn how to dance, it's a game changer.
 
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This is so much brilliant advice. Thank you guys very much. I have decided today I'm going to eat a healthier meal, like grilled chicken or something like that. On January 20th, the day Emperor Drumpf is inaugurated, I am going to go balls to the walls on healthy eating, but I have a question: I have gotten skinny doing both a strict diet of chicken and rice mixed with fasting and a keto diet with more eating, so would it be good to do keto to get skinny before trying to bulk up, or should I just start trying to bulk up? For reference, I am about 240 pounds, last I checked. I also have the H3H3 build if you see that picture in his OP, so should I try cutting or bulking first?

Also on the topic of sports, is it too late to play football? Last night I was beating myself up about the fact I was too much of a pussy to stand up to my mom over playing football in high school and how some accomplished players played later than my age. I would have been about 12, so is there some way I could learn all the fundamentals and try to walk on to my local junior college or something like that? I have pretty decent genetics. I'm about 6.2 with room to grow. If I got jacked and in shape, I think I could be a physical beast, but I just don't know if my lack of playing time would stop me from ever having a chance of playing for a team.
 
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hothead said:
This is so much brilliant advice. Thank you guys very much. I have decided today I'm going to eat a healthier meal, like grilled chicken or something like that. On January 20th, the day Emperor Drumpf is inaugurated, I am going to go balls to the walls on healthy eating, but I have a question: I have gotten skinny doing both a strict diet of chicken and rice mixed with fasting and a keto diet with more eating, so would it be good to do keto to get skinny before trying to bulk up, or should I just start trying to bulk up? For reference, I am about 240 pounds, last I checked. I also have the H3H3 build if you see that picture in his OP, so should I try cutting or bulking first?

Also on the topic of sports, is it too late to play football? Last night I was beating myself up about the fact I was too much of a pussy to stand up to my mom over playing football in high school and how some accomplished players played later than my age. I would have been about 12, so is there some way I could learn all the fundamentals and try to walk on to my local junior college or something like that? I have pretty decent genetics. I'm about 6.2 with room to grow. If I got jacked and in shape, I think I could be a physical beast, but I just don't know if my lack of playing time would stop me from ever having a chance of playing for a team.
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I'll try to go point by point to address everything
  • Eating healthier meals is great, but there are several factors you need to take into account
    • Healthy calories are important, but what's more important are the kinds and amount you are eating. You said you've done keto and lost weight so I'm assuming you generally know this already, but what you might not know is that eating less and/or starving yourself does not equal "ideal" weight loss. You might think "Well it's recommended that with my stats I should eat 2000-2200 calories a day to lose 1 pounds a week, so if I only eat 1000-1500 calories I should lose 2-3 pounds a week". That's not how it works. If you starve yourself your body will enter "starvation" mode and will attempt to hold onto fat. It'll also fuck up your metabolism, energy levels, and make the inevitable cheat meals infinitely worse. Just stick to the meal plan you get and make sure you're getting 1.0 - 1.2 grams of protein per pound of body mass, ideally more if you can. This is important because it's difficult to impossible to gain muscle while you're in a caloric deficit with the exceptions being nooby gains, so the goal is to MAINTAIN as much muscle as possible by keeping your protein intake high, as your body will pull from both fat and muscle stores while losing weight. The reason for this is a bit complex, but to simplify, not all tissues in your body use fat for energy, so instead your body metabolizes your muscles for those tissues.
    • You should strive to eat primarily healthy food, but you need to be able to stick with eating primarily healthy food, and if you hate doing it and have a hard time staying away from calorie dense trash, you will stifle your progress or fail all together. I follow 2 schools of thought on this, the first being, if you consistently eat bland food, your body will generally crave bland food and you'll will be tempted to slip up less. The second school of thought is, just because something is healthy doesn't mean it has to taste like shit/have no flavor. Go look in your mothers spice rack and read the backs of the spices. Most spices don't contain any calories, it's once you start adding sugars and oils that calories start packing on, along with a general addiction to the "flavor" of shit like sugar and corn syrup, etc. A whole rotisserie chicken is 1300 calories of straight protein and fats with basically 0 carbs, and shit tastes amazing. This normally wouldn't be ideal on a diet due to butter/oil adding more calories in the form of fats, but if you're on keto this is exactly what you're aiming for.
    • Going balls to the wall is cool, but fitness health is a marathon not a sprint. You don't need to go balls to the wall immediately going from sitting around eating shit all day to spending 2-3 hours working out, doing cardio, and meal prepping/eating every day just to end up taking too much onto your plate and failing. Make sure you give yourself the room and time you need to achieve your goals.
    • You mentioned keto, it sounded like it worked before, I've done it and it worked for me, so I'd suggest just doing that since in my opinion it simplifies the dieting process. My philosophy on diets/dieting is that the best diet is the one that works. So if that's keto, do keto.
  • Should you cut or should you bulk?
    • Buddy, you're 6'2 and were 240 last time you weighed yourself (weigh yourself again as you're likely even heavier now), and you're self admittedly H3H3 body type? Don't lie to yourself, you're fat. You're 6'2 so your fairly tall meaning you're likely not some morbidly obese tub of shit, but at that height and weight along with a likely sedentary lifestyle your body fat % is likely around 30% and if that's the case you are squarely in the "obese" BMI category. It's not even a question on whether you should cut or bulk, the only thing you should be doing is cutting. Bulking isn't an option because you already have so much fat on you that if you did bulk you'd have a hard time telling how much muscle your even putting on, and by the time you hit whatever goal you were after you would have an even harder time keeping the amount of muscle you were able to gain when you start losing all the fat gained, along with all the fat you already needed to lose pre-bulk. Not to mention having a high body fat suppresses testosterone making it harder to gain muscle the more fat you put on. Just cut.
    • Just follow a calorie deficit keto diet and ideally aim for 10,000 steps (roughly 5 miles) a day.
  • Should you play football?
    • This is an interview between 2 niggers, that might not seem related, but watch the part I linked it at, it's about 12 minutes. It sort of speaks to a situation similar to yours in that the dude wanted to get into sports late, didn't know how, but was willing to do whatever it took.
    • Do whatever you wanna do, but be realistic. If you just wanna play football and have some fun, go for it. If you actually wanna make something out of it though, you should really think about where you currently stand. You have no sports training, let alone training on the fundamentals of football, you're 20 years old so already an adult, and you're starting from a point of little to no athletic ability in a physically demanding, injury prone sport. I'm not really sure what your goals are for it, but if they are anything other than wanting to know how to play, you're probably cooked. I'm not really sure how football teams work, but I'd imagine if you're trying to join a community college team, maybe you could walk on? Other than that though, joining an actual college team would be difficult from your position even if you were in great shape, and you have about a years worth of working out before you'd be in that kind of shape. So honestly I don't know what to tell you about that.
 
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I didn't really give any shits at all about physical activity until around 17 when I started doing some stage stuff and DDR a year or two later, otherwise it was skating by with the barest minimum possible in gym class.
Then I started doing a lot of on-stage stuff which can get nearly NBA levels of "run from one side to the other and back OVER AND OVER AND OVER", playing Dance Dance Revolution, and rollerblading.
A few years after that I started bicycling.

it was always a matter of things that I wanted to do and then I did it until I caught up.
 
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Martial arts are really accessible to people who didn't do them as kids, and mine, which involves wearing football pads and hitting someone else wearing football pads with a giant stick, is largely played by people who didn't grow up doing it (with the exception of the Jap immigrants/first generation). It is a little humiliating to be coached by someone 10 years younger than you, but a lot of others are in the same boat.
 
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I got started my competitive sports "career" in my 30s. There's no reason you can't do stuff that you think is fun, as long as you're realistic about what you intend to accomplish. If you hope to get on the Olympic team you're out of luck.
 
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Recreationally? Of course not. Professionally? Don't quit your day job. It happens but it more unlikely than I can put into words
 
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VargReallyDidNothingWrong said:
I got started my competitive sports "career" in my 30s. There's no reason you can't do stuff that you think is fun, as long as you're realistic about what you intend to accomplish. If you hope to get on the Olympic team you're out of luck.
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I'm curious what sport you play. I think martial arts, like others mentioned, are a good idea. I also wonder what it takes to play overseas basketball.
Agreeably4263 said:
Recreationally? Of course not. Professionally? Don't quit your day job. It happens but it more unlikely than I can put into words
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My dream goal would be to get my college paid for playing sports.
 
Here? Way too late. Sports clubs are for two kinds of people specifically: Kids and pensioners. Anyone at the age of 18 to 50 doing sports in a club on their own are either life-long addicts of the sport or social outcasts. People are too busy doomscrolling to try out new things, so you won't find anyone but an autistic weirdo picking up archery at 34. But hell, I've seen those autists pick up sports and it takes over their life. One salsa dance session and bro had 3 women, 2 married, begging to be his dance partner going forward.

I started road biking some years ago and I love it, but that's because I can do it on my own terms and for fun. Had I joined a club, I would've had to keep pushing myself and doing it on a schedule. Sure I'd do it, if I loved biking enough, but it'd ruin the personal therapy aspect to just going biking.
 
hothead said:
Hello, Kiwifarms. I'm assuming health and fitness is the right subforum for this, but basically, as a kid, my mom wouldn't let me play sports at school for some unknown reason, and I was never allowed to, but now I'm 20, and I'm trying to get in shape. Am I too old to try out for, like, a community college or some kind of sports thing?
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Noooooooooooo!!! It's never too late. Look there is a amateur championship compromised of Senior basketball players (not old as in grandparents but old as in 18+ not qualified for juniors) and amateur friends of said basketball players. Ages range from 18 to 40+. Most of these people learned basketball from street basketball and the amateur tournament. Everybody chips in 5 dollars if the team has 10+ players to qualify for the competition.

It's all sportsmanship and getting in some physical exercise on weekends and sometimes work days. There are also less intensive sports like ping pong, bowling, darts, chess. Maybe it's too late to start competitive skiing or whatever, but there are hundreds of sports you can get into if gym is boring for you.
 
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