Some Notes From the Fitness Dillentate Gym
There Are Gyms Out There Like This, I’m Sure
Well hello there! Welcome to the Fitness Dilletante Gym. You may have heard of us, the gym for people who have never really been that adept at fitness. We are so happy that you have agreed to visit, and we promise we’ll do everything to make you feel at home. There will be no entrance exam asking you one hundred health-related questions to which you do not know the answer. You will not be quizzed about macronutrients or bench--pressing basics. Rest assured, you will not need to complete a minimum number of crunches or pushups to maintain membership(though we recommend you leave the candy bars or ice cream snacks at home). We won’t ask you to take bathing suit photos you wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing with family members, and there will be no fitness endurance tests. However, before you enter our adobe for the not-so-athletic, we do have a few entry guidelines for you.
There will not be any cookie-cutter, one-size fitness models for you here.
We’re not going to prescribe any Ph.D. student-designed fitness or weightlifting regimens for you. You are not going to be forced to read a medical manual’s worth of dietary rules and regimens. Here, we just want to promote an authenticity similar to the soda many of you drink: “Be you, do what you do.”
Simplicity is essential(and there is unbounded complexity in simplicity). So, we’ll encourage you to examine many basic workout types and develop a routine that fits your goals and needs. Maybe you want to work on heart health, so cardio is your main goal. Or perhaps you just want to burn extra belly fat, so there are good workouts for that also. Once you have a custom workout plan, the focus will be on your personal development rather than trying to compete with some Michelangelo chiseled sculpture or magazine advertisement for women’s perfume. It’s great if your end goal is to bench press several hundred pounds like those puffed-up bodybuilders(I’m sure we have the equipment for that here, somewhere). But first, why not work to get from lifting 50 pounds to 70 pounds or push to shed ten seconds off of your treadmill mile? First and foremost, we will remember that every step of the journey is a milestone rather than the simple end of journey mark.
You can take other’s points and tips with a grain of salt.
So now that you’ve come this far to visit our gym, you probably are hearing those critical voices humming in the back of your head. You know, the ones that constantly tried to tell you how unfit you were and how you ought to get yourself in shape? There was the doctor who told you losing fifty pounds would probably diminish your risk of cardiovascular diseases by so and so or the friends who suggested a full weightlifting spread to deliver you a six-pack for your over-45 frame.
You might be so intimidated by those voices that you are tempted to run out the door. Soon, you’ll be back in your chair munching on that crunch bar. Instead of doing that, why not show those voices to the door? Yes, their points and tips have relational value(and they probably mean well). But you are here for you. But if you are going to get yourself in better shape, you have to find your reasons to do so plus set your own goals. Do you want to commit to fitness just for fun (hey, maybe you got tired of the horse track) or do you find attaining better physical, mental, and spiritual health a pressing matter? Once you have determined your main reasons and set your personal goals, your voice will likely echo in your mind.
This goes for all of those machines as well.
We get it, it is the day and age of fitness devices that process data thousands of times faster than the greatest Apollo mission computers. However, greater technological feats can correlate with greater disparities and errors. Why, for instance, do those bulky machines at the gym seem to underreport while our Fitbit watches overreport? You know, the Stairmaster machine said I only burnt 30 calories in 20 minutes of level 9 sweat-breaking while my Fitbit says I topped 200 calories from a quick 15-minute run?
Yes, take these machines with a grain of salt. We recommend you use simple tools like a calorie-burned calculator. If you walk 1.5 miles at a medium pace. Well, you get the idea. And one other thing, what systems do you trust the most? Is a 4GB Fitbit watch as super smart as say your marvelous natural cardiovascular and muscular systems? Don’t you want to listen to those systems first, then those tech-savvy things second? Some fancy-schmancy fitness app might tell you that you’ve burnt 100 calories, great! But your arms and legs will let you know firsthand the long-term impacts of your regimen. And what is it with some watch telling you your pulse? Remember the analog method of actually putting your fingers to your wrist or neck to feel your pulse in real time?
We actually might just turn off some of those machines for a while.
Hey, we certainly understand why you didn’t get yourself to the gym sooner. So much of the gym is simply. .well. .quite overwhelming. All of those weight machines clanking loudly. Those people squatting with dumbbells and double-weights over their heads. Yeah, we get why you stayed at home munching on those cupcakes. At least on the couch, you didn’t risk pulling muscles or getting stuck in a huge mess of weights.
Here, we understand times may call for us to turn off all of our fitness machines. Countless exercises and pastimes take place outside. In fact, how many countless sports and fitness activities started in the great outdoors? So at our gym, you can take part in numerous programs that get you back outside and in Nature. Some current courses include mushroom hunting and geocaching. You won’t need a treadmill to get your miles in!
We understand if our gym is not for you (except for today).
One final thing about our gym is that we understand if you don’t feel at home here. After a few times of trying us out, you may find yourself drawn to other pastures(pray they are not the pastures of couch warming and Netflix binging with two pints of Ben and Jerry’s at your side). If that is the case, we will always keep the door open for you to return. In fact, we will only charge patrons a fee per visit to use our amazing facilities. Here, we don’t believe in charging those hefty monthly fees even after you haven’t made it in for months. Nor do we charge exorbitant penalties for canceling your monthly membership. However, we do make our revenues from pushing alluring healthy snacks when you walk in our door(though no Crunch or Butterfinger bars).
Although we do understand our gym may not be the place for you, we will do everything we can to make you feel welcome and to keep coming back. One final message we always hope to keep shining your way — you are already amazing and have unlimited worth. Any gains in fitness and health you make are all about helping you bring out even more of the immeasurably wondrous light you already shine.
