@Jeruba, @Judi: I had (and have) horrible depth perception, which makes me hopeless at any game that involves tracking a moving ball. I’m also not motivated at all by team dynamics, which means not only am I not terribly good at tracking that moving ball, but the scorn and derision of my teammates, even when it’s playful and friendly, doesn’t do a damned thing to motivate me to improve. So my sport was wrestling.
And then I graduated from high school, and my college didn’t have a team, and that was that. And in high school all the team workouts were miserable, because the coach turned them into competitions; see above, re: team mentality meets cwilbur. So it wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I set foot in a gym again and realized just how good working out feels.
As far as music goes – I find that almost anything works, and that meter and percussion aren’t that critical, although I did fall off a treadmill once when my iPod shuffled in one of Shostakovich’s waltzes, from one of the suites for jazz band….
I’d suggest something like this: in consultation with the trainer, figure out how to set a machine for 20 minutes of “fat burn.” That will give you 20 minutes where the machine will adapt to keep your heart rate at a certain point, and then something like another 5 minutes of cooling down. If you do that three days a week, you’ll see an improvement. And then, when that doesn’t seem like enough—especially if you start to enjoy it—you can increase the time, or go more often, or try different machines. There was a while where I was doing 45 minutes of cardiovascular exercise every day of the week, and it was amazing.
Also, if that kind of shutting your brain off while your body exercises doesn’t work for you, you can always put on your iPod and go for a good brisk walk. If you’re walking at a pace where it’s not entirely easy to carry on a conversation, you’re getting good exercise.