Gym Tips For People Who Don't
/For the last year or so, I’ve been going to the gym. (Don’t worry, nobody was more surprised than me.) My initial approach is best described as “hesitant at best, but also aware that I am only getting older and larger” but now I… secretly love it.
I have learnt many things (number one: check the fabric of your gym pants doesn’t go see through when you bend over) and here, for your learning-from-my-mistakes pleasure, they are.
Gym Tips For Unenthusiastic Gym Goers
Pick your time, pick your place
Let us for a minute think of the gym like the supermarket, except instead of buying dog treats and wine* you’re buying sick, sick gainz**. As everyone knows, it is ideal to go to the fancy supermarket at 11pm when there is nobody there and you can dither over unnecessary $11 relishes in peace.
Nobody enjoys going to the shitty supermarket - the one closest to your house, but the ceilings are too low and it’s always out of the good flavour of Fruju*** -on a Friday afternoon when the kids have just gotten out of school, and every man and his dog is in there stocking up on whatever bizarre shit people can live without during the week but inexplicably absolutely cannot survive without on the weekend.
The gym is the same. Try a few. Find one you like. Don’t settle for the crappy supermarket of overpriced store-brand gainz.
Example: I tried a big inner-city gym and while I’m sure many people very much enjoy it, I did not. There were so many PEOPLE and it was so LOUD and a lady was doing yoga in the middle of the weights bit, which I’m pretty sure was only because there was a very enthusiastic jumping-based group exercise class going on in the middle of the yoga bit. Also I am not the most ‘body-confident’ person, and everyone was very Fit and Exercisey, and I dislike doing things I’m not very good at in front of other people, and it was intimidating and I became scared and left without so much as looking at an exercise.and basically this gym was not my spiritual home.
IF THIS IS YOUR SPIRITUAL HOME I DO NOT WISH TO POP ROUND FOR A SPIRITUAL CUP OF TEA.
But now I go to a gym which is smaller and close to my house and hardly ever busy and it is so, so much nicer.
Don’t let the gym that doesn’t suit you put you off. Try a few. If you hate them all then this is where my advice to you ends, perhaps take up a sport? I don’t know.
Also, if you don’t like a busy gym, which you don’t because WHEN WILL THAT MAN BE FINISHED WITH THE ROWING MACHINE, SWEET JESUS HE HAS BEEN THERE SINCE BEFORE RECORDED HISTORY, then avoid peak times (directly before work, lunch, directly after work). Roll up at 2pm on a Saturday and you will be golden.
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*this is the most recent shop I did. don’t judge! those duck tenders are delicious. did you know they’re made with bits of real duck?
**see, when you go to the gym, you can start saying cool shit like gainz. What are gainz? Great question, not sure. I think it’s either when you can lift heavier weights or when your muscles become visibly larger. Maybe both? You can also say “check out my guns” and then flex some part of yourself. No! Not that part.
***it’s orange and if you don’t agree you can get fucked
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Buy your gym clothes from Kmart
Three reasons:
they are very inexpensive
they are perfectly suitable for whatever it is that you want to do, you do not need triple-thermo-breathe fabric with reinforced arse panels for the 15 minutes of dejected treadmilling you intend to embark on after your 4pm meeting
if your initial gym enthusiasm fizzles swiftly out, you’ll feel better for not having dropped hundreds of dollars on exercise clothes you’ll never wear again.
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE
Stock up on supplements
Just kidding! Don’t do that, you won’t use them. I started off with a “stack” (this is what the bros and I call our assorted gym supplements) of protein and pre-workout and several other things I have forgotten. I have forgotten because I never use them. The protein tasted boring and I had the pre-workout once and thought I might have a heart attack. (Preworkout is a thing you take before the gym to give you SUPER ENERGY for MAXIMUM GAINZ and it’s basically just a shitload of caffeine). I would offer to send them to you so you can try them for yourself, but I’m not sure where they are.
Find a thing you like
This is quite important because not all exercise is created equal, and it’s easy to start with something that you find horrific and write off the whole lot as a result. Below I have outlined the three most common types of gym exercise, and why you might like them:
Classes
This is where you gym together with many other people and an instructor. I hate it because I am an insecure type and still have flashbacks to the time I did kickboxing and we were all meant to jump rope for three minutes and after one minute I felt sick and had to sit down and everyone saw.
One variant of this is ‘spin class’ which is where you sit on a bicycle and pedal madly for 40 minutes while a demented woman in a headset and sweatband roars at you. My friend is a spin instructor (roaring lady) and she loves it. She is not right in the head. Also the bicycle is stuck to the ground so at the end of the 40 minutes you haven’t even gone anywhere.If you need or like to be constantly spurred on during your workout, and are motivated by being in a gym team of sorts, classes could be for you.
Cardio
Cardio is all the non-lifting-weights shit that happens in a gym. Running on treadmill, running on cross trainer, going on the bicycle that doesn’t go anywhere, going on the rowing machine that doesn’t go anywhere. Cardio is good for your HEART and has the added benefit that you can listen to a podcast while you’re doing it, but it is also very boring. I hear you can also do cardio outside the gym! Apparently you just go outside and start running.No thank you.
Cardio has some pros though; it’s uncomplicated and fairly relaxed and you can watch Coro.
IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS MAN MAKES THE ROWING MACHINE LOOK A LOT MORE FUN THAN IT IS. THE LADY BEHIND HIM IS LAUGHING AT HIS SOCKS AND TINY PANTS.
3. Weights
Weights is all the lifting-weight shit, obviously; this can be on machines (you sit on the machine and grab the handles and pull or push the weight), or it can just be you hiffing dumbbells about and listening to the Rocky theme in your head. I like weights because they are interesting, and because I would rather be strong than thin. That’s not an instagram “strong is the new skinny” fitspo thing, I just enjoy saying “STRONG LIKE BEAR” and flexing unnecessarily, more than I enjoy fitting into my pants. You can always buy new pants. You can’t buy the unbridled joy of shouting STRONG LIKE BEAR and flexing unnecessarily.
With weights you do many different things to focus on different muscles, and you do “sets” - which is where you do the same exercise 12 times, and then you have a 30 second rest, then you do it 12 more times, then another rest, then another 12 times of the thing, and then you stop and you go and do another exercise in a similar fashion. And then eventually lifting 15kg of weight feels quite easy and so next time you do it you lift 18kg of weight and instantly think FUCK ME I SHOULD HAVE STUCK WITH THE 15KG and this is gainz.
You can combine the three things above if you like. My point is that if you start with cardio and you think it’s a bag of arse* perhaps try one of the other two before abandoning the whole project as an ill-conceived notion.
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*it is
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Use your imagination
If you’re doing classes, you will have the trainer to keep you entertained. There is also a thing that I forget the name of and can’t be bothered Googling (sorry team) but basically you ride The Bicycle To Nowhere and a nice video plays so you can imagine you’re riding through the Alps or down the Danube or through San Francisco during Pride Week and I made that last one up but it should be a thing.
SHE IS IMAGINING SHE IS A HORSE, PULLING MANY TONS OF LIFE-SAVING MEDICINE THROUGH THE SNOW
If you’re doing cardio you can listen to music or a podcast or an audio book, or if your gym is a flash gym they might have a small telly built into the treadmill and you can catch up on Coro. Satisfying. If the episode is particularly juicy you may even forget you’re exercising - this has never happened to me yet but I’m not ruling it out.
If you’re doing weights you can listen to music or podcasts but I find that distracts me and I accidentally sit still for 30 seconds and listen to things instead of doing, you know, the exercise so instead I pretend I am things. Here are some of the things I pretend I am:
I am a robot (usually for dumbbell exercises) that has been built for this specific function. Look at me! Look how well built I am! Advanced: particularly good for exercises where you’re isolating a muscle group (by which I mean: lifting the thing is a lot easier if you let your shoulder take some of the weight, but you aren’t supposed to, because this is an exercise for your chest and your shoulder has no business getting involved). Pretending to be a robot is good because BLEEP BLOOP MY SHOULDERS ARE FUSED IN PLACE, WHO MADE THIS ROBOT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
I am an Olympic competitor and I must not let the team down. You know you’re really getting good at imagining when you can hear the national anthem playing in the background as you gently rest your tiny 1kg dumbbells back on the rack.
I am saving a dog - this one is very specific, it is for exercises where you are pulling a weight towards you. If you imagine the weight is a REALLY GOOD DOG and you are saving him from some sort of doom (collapsing gravel pit? rushing river?) it makes the exercise go faster.
I am working in the mines of Isengard - this is also very specific, it is for an exercise where you hold a bar above your head (it is attached to a machine by ropes) and you pull the bar down to your knees, while the rest of your body stays still. If you recall the scene in Lord of the Rings where all the Orcs are working in the underground mine sort of thing, I’m pretty sure a couple of them are doing this, and I pretend I am them. Why is this motivating? I have no idea and on reflection I’m questioning whether it should in fact be motivating at all.
HE IS IMAGINING THAT SCENE IN TITANIC.
Mirrors: unavoidable, but quite good
The gym is initially very demoralising because you show up in your $10 Kmart pants and your $5 Kmart top and you have your hair in some sort of very exercise-lady hairdo and you grab the dumbbells and OH BOY YOU ARE MOTIVATED but then you glance up and in the mirror you see an overexerted, slightly chubby person who is lifting the tiniest weights in the world as if they were two giant wheels of cheese.
However. You can’t escape the mirrors. So I find the best trick is to look at the parts of your body that are actually working* and see if you can a) see the muscles going, because then you can temporarily feel STRONG LIKE BEAR or b) focus on getting both sides of you as symmetrical as possible, because this is a nice distraction from all the exercise, and also quite good for your technique.
On no account look yourself in the eye. Do not let your image of yourself as a cool, composed, fit woman be dispelled by the red-faced double-chinned creature looking back at you. Give her a break, she’s trying her hardest here.
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*except your core. Core is the fancy gym word for tummy and it is best not to look at it while one is working out. Once I was doing deadlifts (the one you see on the Olympics where they lift the barbell off the floor, except a much less impressive version) and I observed my core, and then I was very sad, because there was so very much core to observe.
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Nobody is looking at you
This is the biggest piece of gym advice I see for new gym-goers and it’s the best, but also kind of the worst because it is very hard to believe.
Hard to believe because as a new-ish gym person you will regularly peek at other gym people and think “how do they do THAT” and “why is that senior citizen lifting three times the weight I am” and “how come her ponytail flips nicely while she runs when mine keeps hitting me in the boob and/or face” and “holy shit that man’s arm muscles are the size of my head” and other related things.
But for the most part it is true - because although you might have the odd peek at other people, mostly while you’re at the gym you are thinking “I’m bored, which exercise will I do next” and “why does the machine say I’ve only been running for three minutes when it has clearly been half an hour” and “oop! that’s not how I thought this machine worked” and “oof fuck I should have gone back to 15kg” and “am I going to leave butt sweat on this weight bench and can I towel it off before anyone notices” and “I hope THIS pair of pants isn’t see through when I bend over” and other important gym thoughts.
And so is everyone else.
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Thus endeth the gym advice. Enjoy your sick gainz.
And please don’t stare at the lady who is chuffing away like a small train, trying to lift tiny weights in see-through pants, because she is trying her hardest.