Things you didn't know were exercise until you did them....

Horseback riding = Ouches in places you did not even know you had before.

Waterslides! We call them exercise disguised as fun. *walk 6 flights of stairs* *slide* *walk 6 flights of stairs* *slide* *repeat ad nauseum*

Going to Florida and doing the parks every day. Now that's hard core!

Diy often comes into that bracket, such as stripping wallpaper, moving slabs, doing the hedges...

Spent all day shopping yesterday, walking for hours, carrying heavy bags, felt that!

Yes to horseriding - I can't ride, but many years ago I did one of those beginner treks where basically you just sit on top of the horse and don't have to do anything as the horse knows its own way round and just kind of ambles along. The next morning, walking and normal movements were ok until I went to an aerobics class. Sidestep, grapevine... OH MY GOD MY INNER THIGHS.

Wallpaper stripping and painting - yep, doing that at the moment and have had the shoulder DOMS to prove it this week.

I once went potholing in a local caving system. Again, nothing too taxing as a beginner, but all the crawling was exhausting after a while and the next morning OH MY GOD MY ABS. I guess that's a reason why some some fitness instructors like to make people do commando crawls, but try doing it all day and there's a killer ab workout!

yoga

Agreed. And not just astanga, holding poses in good old hatha and iyengar yoga can have you twitchy legged and pouring with sweat.

Yes to horseriding - I can't ride, but many years ago I did one of those beginner treks where basically you just sit on top of the horse and don't have to do anything as the horse knows its own way round and just kind of ambles along. The next morning, walking and normal movements were ok until I went to an aerobics class. Sidestep, grapevine... OH MY GOD MY INNER THIGHS.

Wallpaper stripping and painting - yep, doing that at the moment and have had the shoulder DOMS to prove it this week.

I once went potholing in a local caving system. Again, nothing too taxing as a beginner, but all the crawling was exhausting after a while and the next morning OH MY GOD MY ABS. I guess that's a reason why some some fitness instructors like to make people do commando crawls, but try doing it all day and there's a killer ab workout!

When you can ride, the place that gets sorest is your abs - it's a great core-building exericse! Before the Olympics, they showed a documentary about dressage riding in which they attached electrodes to the abs of one member of team GB to measure how much they were used. It turns out that at her level, every step of sitting (extended) trot is roughly equivalent to a full sit-up, and her horse trots at 150 bpm...

As for things you didn't realise were exercise: I've never eaten as much, slept as soundly, or been as fit as the summer I worked for a carpenter.

Interesting about the riding.

Yes to physical jobs - my other half is a tree surgeon and he never does any formal exercise other than occasional cycle rides and a bit of swimming, but his arm and leg muscles are rock solid. I have occasionally acted as his "groundsman" and all the dragging out and stacking of the branches is completely knackering.