Enemies To Your Fitness Goals.

If you work your biscuits off and take your workouts seriously (which you can’t do while watching a cable show on the tread mill) you will work your biscuits off, or build muscle, or build strength, or increase endurance, or whatever your goal happens to be.

You don’t need technology, or to be made to feel comfortable, or safe, or put at ease. In fact those are some things that are the exact opposite of what you need.

You do need:

1. Focus (the goal itself)
2. Structure (the right plan and information)
3. Hard work (equipment that facilitates the exertion of effort).

So, with that in mind:

Avoid gyms with a lot of technology.

What is the reason for putting a cable TV on each and every piece of cardio? To distract you from the fact that you are doing cardio of course. That would be a great idea if your goal could be reached by not paying attention to what you’re doing. Unfortunately it can not - AND I MEAN CAN NOT - be reached by distracting yourself. It can only be reached by PAYING ATTENTION to what you’re doing.

Avoid gyms that want to make working out easier for you.

Working out requires hard work and a time commitment and any one who tells you other wise is lying to you. Classes are OK, but you actually don’t need them. If it’s there and you want to do it and even enjoy it, that’s OK, but remember YOU DON’T NEED IT. What you need is equipment or classes that will require you to put out effort. That sounds like the definition of the opposite of easy.

Avoid gyms that want to make it safe for you.

“Safe” is the word used for marketing in the fitness industry to reinforce one illusion and to create another:

1. It reinforces the illusion that you are in some kind of danger to begin with in “those other gyms.” and
2. It creates the illusion that you’ll be “safer” in their gym.

Now you might ask what’s wrong with:

1. Feeling safe, and
2. Technology making workouts more comfortable and
3. Doing a workout if there is an easier way to do it?

The answer to each is as follows:

1. Besides the fact that YOU ARE NEUROTIC IF YOU DON’T FEEL SAFE WHERE NO REAL THREAT EXISTS, feeling safe is not a prerequisite to achieving your goal. You can achieve your goal in the presence of dangers, real or imagined.

I’m going to shoot straight. In my 23 years of spending a lot of time in a lot of gyms I have never heard of one case of a gym that was truly unsafe in any real way to any man or woman. 99% of the people who feel unsafe in this or that gym ARE NEUROTIC. Those grunting guys are probably nice guys working out hard. Maybe working out hard just in their minds, but I’ll bet they are still not dangerous. Unless your gym has a legitimate obvious gang element in it, then the threat is ALL IN YOUR HEAD. So don’t let that be an excuse to not get to your goals.

2. THE BODY FOLLOWS THE MIND. Keeping your body in a “comfortable” state is what got it into the condition it is now. So it naturally follows that comfort is actually something you should run from. Avoid it in ALL of its forms ESPECIALLY mental. Mental comfort is the very thing, by the way, that many gyms close you on.

3. THE BODY FOLLOWS THE MIND. You can go back and reread the answer to #2. This time, however, replace the word “comfortable” with “easy.”

Remember you don’t need technology, ease, or comfort. Those 3 things are the very things that got you into the condition you’re in today.

You do need focus, structure, and hard work.

Don’t peace out.

Work hard.

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