9 Fun Exercises You Can Do With a Hernia

Last Updated on August 20, 2025 by Michael

Disclaimer: This is satire. Don’t actually do any of these. See a real doctor. Seriously. Your intestines poking through your abdominal wall is not a DIY situation.

Look, nobody plans to get a hernia. One day you’re lifting a couch like a normal person, the next day your insides are staging a prison break through your abdominal wall.

Congratulations.

Now you’re stuck in that special hell where sneezing feels like Russian roulette and every laugh comes with a side of regret. But here’s the thing—you still need to stay active, right? Wrong. You need to stay creatively inactive, which is basically an art form.

1. Competitive Remote Control Reaching

This is where athletic dreams go to die, and it’s beautiful.

You dropped the remote. It’s three feet away. In your previous life, you’d just lean over and grab it. But that was before your organs decided to go rogue. Now? Now you’re an engineer. You’re calculating angles, using your toes like chopsticks, fashioning crude tools from whatever’s within arm’s reach. That back scratcher? It’s a remote retrieval device. That magazine? It’s a remote-sliding apparatus.

Your family thinks you’re lazy. The truth is you’re conducting a master class in physics while keeping your core more still than a corpse at a wake. You’ll develop toe dexterity that would make a chimp jealous. And when someone suggests you “just get up and get it”?

That’s cute. Real cute.

Equipment needed:

• Remote control (obviously)
• Snacks positioned just outside the danger zone
• The ability to ignore judgmental stares
• A complete abandonment of dignity

2. The Standing Ovation Fake-Out

You know what’s fun? (Nothing. Nothing about this is fun.) Trying to participate in social situations where standing is expected. Your kid’s school play. A wedding. That moment when everyone stands for the national anthem and you’re sitting there looking like you hate America.

You don’t hate America. You hate hernias.

The key is selling the fake-out. Make it look intentional. Like you’re so moved by the performance that you need to resettle yourself to take it all in. Or you’re adjusting for a better view. Whatever. Just don’t let them see you sweat. Even though you’re definitely sweating.

3. Extreme Coughing Suppression

Here’s a fun fact nobody tells you about hernias: every involuntary bodily function becomes your enemy.

That tickle in your throat during the quarterly meeting? That’s not a tickle—that’s your body trying to sabotage you. You’ll hold that cough with the determination of someone defusing a bomb. Your face will turn purple. Your eyes will water. Karen from accounting will ask if you’re having a stroke, and you’ll just give her a thumbs up while internally screaming.

Training progression:

• Week 1: Master the silent throat clear
• Week 2: Sneeze suppression (advanced level: during allergy season)
• Week 3: Learn to laugh without actually laughing
• Week 4: Achieve transcendence through suffering

The worst part? When you finally get somewhere safe to cough, it won’t come. Your body’s a comedian with terrible timing.

4. The Grocery Bag Delegation Dance

You used to carry all the groceries in one trip. It was a point of pride. Multiple trips were for quitters.

Now? Now you’re a delegation expert.

• Identify the strongest person in a 50-foot radius
• Perfect your “wounded gazelle” expression
• Master phrases like “Oh, you look strong!” (flattery works)
• Develop selective helplessness
• Point at things like you’re conducting an orchestra

That teenage grocery bagger who offers to help carry bags to your car? They’re not a grocery bagger. They’re an angel. A sweaty, acne-covered angel who doesn’t know they’re saving you from explaining to your doctor why you thought carrying a 24-pack of water bottles was a good idea.

5. Bathroom Acrobatics (The Porcelain Predicament)

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Or rather, the hernia in the bathroom.

Nobody prepares you for this.

You’ll install so many grab bars, your bathroom will look like it belongs in a nursing home. You’ll develop quad strength that would make a Tour de France cyclist weep. You’ll seriously consider just living in the bathroom to avoid the commute.

And fiber? Fiber becomes your religion. You’ll know more about digestive health than a gastroenterologist. Your medicine cabinet will look like a pharmacy’s constipation aisle exploded. This is your life now.

6. Professional Speed Walking (Away From Heavy Things)

You’ve developed a superpower, but it’s the lamest superpower ever: detecting situations where someone might ask you to help lift something.

That person struggling with a dresser? You suddenly remember an urgent phone call. Your neighbor needs help with their lawnmower? Wow, look at the time, you have that… thing. That very important thing. What thing? Doesn’t matter, you’re already power-walking away at the breakneck speed of 0.5 mph.

Skills you’ll involuntarily develop:

• X-ray vision for spotting moving trucks from three blocks away
• The ability to look incredibly busy while doing literally nothing
• Creative excuse generation (“Sorry, just remembered my goldfish needs medication”)
• Strategic bathroom breaks that last exactly as long as manual labor tasks

The guilt is real. But you know what’s more real? The shooting pain when you try to be helpful. Your hernia doesn’t care about your conscience.

7. Sock Wrestling Championships

Putting on socks shouldn’t be an extreme sport, yet here we are.

The sitting leg cross? Requires core rotation. The standing flamingo? That’s a balance act with stakes. The “throw the sock on the floor and try to step into it” technique? You’ll miss. You’ll always miss. The sock will mock you from the floor, just out of toe-reach, and you’ll seriously consider just going barefoot forever.

Some mornings you’ll spend 15 minutes on one sock.

One. Sock.

You’ll own 47 pairs of socks but only wear the same three pairs because they’re the stretchiest. Those compression socks your doctor recommended? They’re basically sitting in sock prison, serving a life sentence for being too difficult. Your feet will be cold, but your hernia will be stable, and apparently that’s the trade-off you’ve made with the universe.

8. The Sneeze Defensive Stance

A sneeze is coming. You have 1.2 seconds to assume the position. What’s it gonna be?

Your options (all terrible):

• The Public Panic Hug: Grab the nearest pillow/jacket/small child and press it against your stomach like you’re stopping internal bleeding (which, technically…)
• The Wall Slam: Find a wall. Any wall. Throw yourself against it like you’re in a police procedural
• The Full Fetal: Just drop. Right there. Grocery store, wedding, doesn’t matter
• The Clench and Pray: Every muscle tenses. You’re basically having a full-body cramp. People think you’re having a seizure

The best part? (There is no best part.) Trying to explain to strangers why you just rugby-tackled a decorative pillow in HomeGoods. “You see, there’s this thing where your intestines can—” Nope. They’re already backing away slowly.

9. Passive Aggressive Yoga

Your yoga instructor says “engage your core” and you laugh. Then you immediately regret laughing because laughing engages your core and now you’re in pain and the whole class is staring.

Every class, someone chirps about “breathing through the discomfort.” You want to tell them there’s a difference between discomfort and “your intestines are literally trying to escape.” But you don’t. You just lie there in child’s pose for 45 minutes while everyone else does actual yoga.

Savasana though? Corpse pose? You’re the undisputed champion. You’ve been training for corpse pose since the day you got this hernia. Nobody lies still like you lie still. It’s your Olympics.

The Bottom Line (Don’t Bend to Read It)

Here’s what nobody tells you about living with a hernia: you become a bizarre combination of an engineer, a contortionist, and a con artist. Every daily task requires a strategy. Every movement is calculated. You’re playing 4D chess while everyone else is playing checkers, except the chess board is your body and you’re losing.

But hey, at least you have a legitimate medical excuse to skip helping anyone move, ever again. Your friend needs help moving a piano? Sorry, internal organs on the loose. Your family wants you to help reorganize the garage? Can’t do it, guts are staging a mutiny.

Silver lining: you’re developing problem-solving skills NASA would envy. You just happen to be using them to avoid sneezing.

The real exercise here? Getting to that surgeon’s office. Until then, welcome to the wonderful world of creative incompetence, where doing nothing requires everything you’ve got.

This is satire. Please see an actual doctor. Don’t attempt any of these “exercises.” Your hernia isn’t funny, but coping with dark humor might be the only ab workout you can safely do.