A young guy was mentoring his friend at my gym the other day. I overheard him say, “Look, dude, nobody WANTS to go to the gym. But you just have to do it if you want to get stronger.”
I asked a couple of friends of mine, who work out regularly like I do, and they admitted they often don’t really want to be up there. They told me they have to force themselves to go, which surprised me since I see them up there so much.
For me, going to the gym is often the highlight of my day. I genuinely love it, and sometimes have to talk myself into NOT going just to give my body the recovery time it needs. Weights, cardio, yoga – I really do enjoy all of it, and often.
Sure, I go so I can get stronger and healthier – but the workout itself, especially weightlifting, is honestly fun for me.
Is it the same for you guys? Or is going to the gym more of an unpleasant burden you just force yourself to do?
We’re all different but I think that’s flat-out a bad message, despite there being extremes on both ends.
I know some people who workout 4-6x a week talking about it like it’s genuine torture and preaching the David Goggins “callouses in your brain” mentality. That could be 40 hours a month dedicated to something you hate. I’m not sure that’s really that healthy over a long period of time. It might be what makes someone a champion though.
But then some people will avoid any hard work or discomfort and complain about not getting the results they want.
The right balance of those is something that will ebb and flow through your training years. Maybe half-hour twice a week is all you can get yourself psyched up for. Practice that discipline and then try a little more. Lost count of the quitters I’ve seen because they are sold messages like above or that they need to live in the gym from the word go.
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv FALLING IN LOVE WITH THE PROCESS
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That’s the ultimate cheatcode. What that looks like will be different for everyone. If you find out how to though, you’re golden.
I think I’ve gone through periods of both over the years, which is the same with work or anything else.
Sometimes I want to, other times I “have” to.
I’m more in line with you gents that, for the most part, going to the gym is a high point in my day. When my schedule doesn’t allow it, I’m cranky. I’d generally prefer to do too much and hurt progress than to progress “optimally” by doing less.
working out can be unpleasant, but not working out is more unpleasant. The expected value of working out is higher, even if both are negative in the short term when calculated
In the long term, there is no debate, working out >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> not working out
Here, too. Sometimes it’s the best part of my life, other times I resent its demands on me. Most of the time it’s just what I do, a part of the routine.
The only way this makes any sense to me is as a motivator to shame someone who wants to skip a workout.
But if this is actually how a person feels, there is little chance that they are going to the gym when adversities began to stack up against him. Those who don’t want to go to the gym will soon find too many things to do to have the time to go to the gym.
Sure, there have been days where I didn’t want to do the workout that was staring me in the face. I’d rather do something easier or a workout that I liked, instead of, in particular, a hard leg day. I never trusted my ability to train instinctively, so I trained by the schedule. The down side is that I had all day to wish that the hard leg day that was waiting for me at 4:30pm didn’t arrive. But after a few sets, I was all in.
One of my biggest challenges was dropping Tuesday and Thursday from my workout days when was focusing on not overtraining. I truly loved GOING to the gym and the euphoria of the pump.
^^ This. Yeah. I have to force myself to skip a couple of days each week, too. The upside is the day after a skip day, my workout is even better.
You mentioned hard leg days. I did one of those yesterday, and my legs feel like jelly today. I take that as a good sign.
(I asked somebody at the gym yesterday why so many guys seem to hate leg day so much. His reply? “Because you FEEL it the next day!”)
I’ve written extensively that rest days are important.
Most of my clients, even elite athletes, lift 4 days a week.
When I sell programs, most of them are 4 days a week.
But I personally can’t do it, even if I know that it would probably be better for me. I train every day if I can. And the days I don’t train, I feel like crap.
I don’t always look forward to training (especially if I’m juggling other responsibilities and have to just fit it in where i can) but usually once I start and get into it I’m glad I did.
Put another way, I don’t always look forward to training but I can’t recall a time I bit the bullet and worked out then regretted it.
First, I have the school psychologists, I work with, tell me I should try mindfulness. They tell me it changes brain chemistry. For the better. That may be. But I politely tell them mindfulness is found when I spend time in the gym. Or after workout time, I spend time in the dry sauna. It is my thing.
Second, I do not get strapped down to a program that I might find “tortuous” for too long. Normally I just adjust the sets/reps, or rep speed. I vary between volume and HIT, and even vary within HIT. Volume as well.
There have been times I spent 6 months riding the Airdyne. One year I swam. But, I always return to resistance training.
If a person spends time hating the gym but going, do something different. Read the Harvard Classics, join Amway, take up bridge, then add the gym back, just don’t do it to the point where it sucks.
I think this is often overlooked. It doesn’t mean you’re going to love every day, but there’s a range of programs/ training modalities for every goal - we’re going to be way more successful when we gel with it
