How to Survive the Gym

The gym can be a daunting place, especially for beginners. Not knowing how to use the machines, being self-conscious about your strength/fitness, and the changing rooms are all possible factors in making us want to steer well clear of the gym. But being healthy is essential, so it’s time to suck it up and take the plunge; below are my tips to help your time at the gym be as embarrassment free and as beneficial as possible.

Leave Your Pride Outside:

There is no room for pride in the gym because it will only end in tears (probably your tears). So often you’ll see people in the gym lifting weights with ultimately the wrong technique (which can cause real damage) because it’s way too heavy for them, but they do it to try and impress their friend, or people that they think are looking at them. If you can only lift a certain weight, don’t try and exceed it; no one is going to care if your load is a lot lighter than theirs. You’ll see much better results if you are using the right pressure and the proper technique.

If you do get embarrassed or self-conscious, then an excellent way to shut everyone out and go into your world is to put your iPod on and turn it right up. The music will also help you get pumped up, which isn’t a bad thing when exercising.

Be Considerate:

If you plan on becoming a regular at your gym, then this is even more crucial because you’ll start to recognize other people and vice versa; so if you’re known for wrong reasons, it isn’t right. For starters, you have to wipe down the machines after you have used them; you wouldn’t want to sit in someone else’s sweat, so why should they have to sit in yours?

Secondly, you should try to keep the noises and grunts to a minimum. I know that sometimes they will escape and that they are often unavoidable due to the effort you are putting in. But no one wants to share the gym with someone who sounds like a hippo in labor!

Watch and Learn:

A key thing to do in the gym is to try and watch the people who have the fitness of muscles that you want and watch what they do. I’m not suggesting you follow them around with a notepad but take in what you see like what exercises they do and in what order. This is an especially good way to see how to use equipment that you haven’t yet figured out (although every gym I’ve been to does have instructions on how to use machines stuck on it).

If you’re not learning much from watching them, then you can ask them a question or two. The worst they can do is say tell you to go away, but more often than not, they will be happy to help. You never know you could end up with your very own free personal trainer/training partner, which is not something to say no too.

So there we have it my tips on how to survive, and get the most out of, the whole gym experience!