The Journey Begins

Thank you for sharing the journey with me!

“Training gives us an outlet for suppressed energies created by stress and thus tones the spirit, just as exercise conditions the body.” – Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Fitness, exercise and it’s place within our lives is widely underestimated. As the quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger above suggests, exercise is multi-faceted and has a profound effect on us in a number of ways. This is despite the main reason 1 in 7 UK citizens are a member of a gym-for the apparent physical benefits. The reason I started using the gym was the same. As a skinny 17 year old boy, the obvious motivation (like many of my friends and peers) was to gain muscle, get stronger and inflate my ego. I am now 23 and although I still have performance and physique-related goals, I attribute a great deal of my intrinsic motivation and rigid routine to the feeling I have when I finish a gym session, rather than how it makes me look. It’s a cycle of mental persuasion, planning, execution and satisfaction which I go through 5/6 days a week.

It’s not easy. In fact, recently it’s become a great deal harder. I graduated university a year ago and then spent another year as Vice President of the Student Union in the same social bubble. So since the age of 19 when I became a ‘fresher’, it allowed me to get a pretty flexible routine whereby I could enjoy all the benefits of being a student studying a sports degree-the aforementioned social events, the regularity of being able to play football with those closest to me, and learning more about a degree which I largely enjoyed-accompanied by regular gym sessions. Gym sessions and usage came easy as the university was small and I could walk from one end of the main campus to the other (where the gym was) in 5 minutes. I spent 45-60 minutes in the gym a day and maintained my decent physique, sandwiched between lectures, football training and perhaps pre-drinks. All with my friends and those closest to me. I researched what and how to eat to gain weight, but coupled with nights out and unpredictable game schedules, I didn’t add a lot of muscle. My last year working full time at the university added structure to this schedule, and I went every day after work. Because I went out less and played less football, I could make a little more progress. It was fun and easy.

No longer. After my 4 years in the same gym, similar circles and slightly varying schedules which I always adapted to, its all gone. I moved 20 minutes along the coast to Portsmouth, and am renting a flat with a friend I lived with in my first year in halls, and my final year as VP. I got a demanding job as a manager of a tuition centre, with 9 hour days operating in an environment which has little-to-no relation to my core personal interests and passion. I work until 8pm most days meaning the chance for kickstarting any sort of social life has been a challenge. Not only do I know no-one locally, I wouldn’t be able to do anything with them. My housemate works late shifts in a theatre bar. Gym sessions are no longer motivated by people when I can’t be bothered or am too swamped to go-it’s now entirely intrinsic. I’ve convinced myself this is a good thing as it means less chatting and uploading embarrassing videos of my friends final-rep facials, and more time to squeeze in another set of dumbbell flies (why won’t my shoulders grow?!).

It has its benefits, but I also have a lot of time to think about my isolation. The gym is very different too. My university gym was small and if I hazarded a guess, my new gym’s weights area is roughly 20 times bigger. I counted 32 people in there the other day-if there was 32 people in my old gym, I think about 20 would be waiting to use equipment. The personnel is far different. I could go in my previous gym in any given day and not only would it be me and maybe 3/4 others (usually my friends who I arranged to meet there), but I would feel as though we owned the place. It was like our private gym. Now, there are hulking, posturing, staring mountains clad in Lycra, grunting and offering out unwanted advice to those around them. There are countless people wandering around, jumping on any vacant machine and nervously sipping from their bottles of water whilst a well-attended cardio fitness class is being instructed by personal trainers with incredibly loud music pumping out, violating my eardrums. This is a different set up in every way I could’ve imagined.

Adapting mentally has been the toughest part of my new lifestyle, and I have to adopt a different mindset. I don’t have sport science Masters students as not only my friends, but personal advisors next to me as I squeeze out another rep while they remind me to engage my core. I can’t nip to the gym for a quick session before a lecture. I don’t get to pop to the gym after a day at work to be greeted by a few teammates from the football team. There are no sloppy post night-out sessions, sweating out the cider black from the night before and laughing with my best friend as we recall the antics. I’m hoping that this is a more mature step to fine-tuning my attitude towards training. I can focus more, plan my sessions more efficiently and fit more in. I look forward to the gym for different reasons now-it’s an escape from the world of full-time management and responsibility where I get to focus on me for an hour or so. I get to use far better equipment so I can finally hit that rear-delt movement properly. I can row until my stressful sales targets reach the back of my mind.

Gym no longer supplements my life. It has become a necessity. Walking home after 9 hours of non-stop work followed by a tough leg day is far more satisfying now than when I popped in for a chest pump and a chat with my friends. Is it as fun? No. It’s a different kind of fun, but it now keeps me sane, focussed and gets me through the mundanity of work. I’m hoping to become more goal-orientated and generally fitter as time progresses, as I have had no choice but to make it a safe haven.

Let’s see how long that lasts.