Start your fitness journey with confidence and motivation!
Fact:
Sports, fitness, and exercise is murder. “The murder” of the old “me”, of boredom, hopelessness, and despair, and all the negativity and failure. Sports, fitness, and exercise, however, is yet at the same time “the birth” of the new “me”. Of energy, of new hope and purpose, as well as positivity and success story.
A brief, yet true story about this:
At the age of 17, a fairly athletic boy decided to go to the gym with his girlfriend at the time, 16 years old, to inquire about signing up. After a tour of the gym and a short-and-crisp conversation with the trainer, the boy and his girlfriend decided to join the gym. Registration was done normally through their parents and both were ready to start fitness training the very next day.
But how?
The boy had zero clue about equipment training and apparently, 5:30pm was not the best time to visit the gym. Because all hell broke loose. He wasn’t bothered that the gym was well attended, but that the figures around him were just “better” than his. AND…. well, that he still had no idea about equipment training!
The boy wasn’t told exactly what the gym and workout procedures were. Maybe he was just overwhelmed with all the information and just didn’t realize it. So, he didn’t know at the moment that he should contact the gym staff for a workout plan. A boy who “his whole life” was reluctant to ask for help from someone who was socially incompetent, not only did he have to ask for help from a stranger, but he also had to be open and specific about his goals and desires.
Disaster
After much deliberation, and after swallowing his social anxiety and pride, our fitness novice contacted the coaching staff at the counter and was even immediately assigned a trainer who would create his personal training plan.
After the first 10-15′ where he felt like he was being interrogated by the police, he started to feel more confident and even felt like this process wasn’t so bad after all. The trainer motivated him so much with the right questioning that our trainee even visualized of his dream body!
At the end of the instruction, the young man thanked his trainer and immediately started with his new plan, which he was to do consistently for the next 6 to 8 weeks.
However, around the third, maybe fourth, week he began to doubt the plan and the trainer. “I don’t feel anything anymore and the exercises he gave me are only done by the women and the old people here… Was he just trying to get rid of me because I’m so skinny and can’t do anything anyway? Surely that was. The ones with the awesome body are training for something else anyway! I feel so scammed!”
That was it for our newbie
Now he visited the gym sporadically and when he was there, he was so frustrated and unfocused that he didn’t even pay attention to the execution of the exercise. Fortunately for him, a trainer contacted him and asked “if everything was OK” and corrected him on the execution. Somehow our boy felt that the trainer would understand him without laughing at him. So he decided to tell the trainer the truth. The trainer seemed to have heard it all before and smiled while the young beginner spoke his mind.
The trainer’s response was, more or less, what our skinny, inexperienced, and confidence-deficient boy would preach to his own “newbies” 8 years later:
Fitness training is not “one size”, however, it is for everyone.
But just like starting with the basics when driving a car, before eating in the car on the highway at the same moments, talking to the passenger, adjusting the music on your phone, and driving alongside.
There must always be, among other things, a certain base and increase motor skills, as well as strength, body awareness must develop and the body must get used to the new training stimuli.
The fitness journey is not the same for everyone
Because we all don’t start from the same place and don’t want to get to the same destination. Maybe this results in one or another fellow traveler, or even a different arrival destination-and all this is completely normal.
It is important to know that there are people who have already made this fitness journey or are even still traveling. But they started before us and can open our eyes through their experiences, show us the right paths and fill us up with motivation when the gas station is empty.
If you doubt yourself, are unsure if fitness is even for you, or don’t know how it “works,” don’t hesitate. Find those who are where you want to be and ask them how they did it. I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to help you and answer your questions. You’ll find the confidence and motivation you need to start your fitness journey.
(PS: Yes, that 17-year-old boy in this text was me. It took me 4 years to overcome my complexes and “hit the road”).
