How I Get Myself to the Gym After a Lifetime of Never Getting Myself to the Gym

A few months ago I hired a personal trainer.

After not consistently exercising for twenty years I decided it was time to raise the white flag. Wait, raising a flag sounds like physical exercise and I just explained that I… Anyway, you get the idea.

Spending hundreds a month to pay someone to tell me to do push-ups was not an appealing option. I’d have to admit something embarrassing and what the Buddha might have titled his Fifth Noble Truth had we been roommates in college.

When it comes to getting his fanny to the gym, D.J. rarely gets his fanny to the gym.

Smash-cut to me at the free personal training session offered by my gym. When the sales-guy asked me my goals I said, “I want to lose fat and gain muscle.” He asked how much fat and muscle. “Hmm, well I guess if I could get to 12% body fat that would be ideal.” (I read that number in a book ten years back.) He nodded, because that’s what gym sales-guys do. “We can do that!” he said. He hadn’t measured my height, weight, or whether I was suffering from consumption, but if he was confident, who am I to argue? He asked more questions about my “fitness goals.”

I realized at that moment that I had no desire to set fitness goals. Not in the traditional sense of pounds lost or areas of the body to tone. Instead of giving him more numbers I read in fitness books, I came clean.

“Look, forget everything I said. I don’t care about my body fat percentage.”

I paused, because honesty is a pain in the ass. “The truth is that I can’t get myself to the gym. If I pay for training, I believe I will show up.”

He smiled in response but didn’t speak. His eyes moved up to the ceiling as he searched for reassuring phrases that wouldn’t emasculate me further. I was embarrassed and he knew it. My eyes moved down to the desk and I stared at his fingers. A few seconds later he spoke. “Hey bro, that’s why everyone gets a trainer. If you could get to the gym you wouldn’t need us.”

I returned my gaze up to his eyes. He was still smiling. We shared a short laugh. It was nice to know that there were other bozos like me.

He started to talk, but I cut him off because I hadn’t yet said the full truth.

“I need a trainer that is going to push me beyond my limits. I am not to be trusted and I will wimp out if given that opportunity.”

He assured me that would not be a problem. “But first, let’s get that free session in, bro.”

For the next hour we worked every part of my upper body performing each exercise to failure. This means that you do as many sets and reps until your muscles give out and you cannot continue. It was the single hardest physical hour of my life. After a final shoulder exercise that was so hard I hallucinated, he ushered me back to the sales desk. I collapsed in the cloth chair which instantly absorbed my back sweat. I didn’t move an inch even though I’m sure seventeen people with simplex herpes had sweat into that same chair that month.

Ten minutes later I had signed a contract for a year of personal training, three sessions a week. It wasn’t cheap. They paired me up with the “best trainer in the gym” (how lucky for me!) and set up a schedule.

It’s now two months later and it turns out that the pay-for-something-I-can’t-do-myself-strategy works. I show up three times a week and he kills me. I hate it because it’s hard.

What I realized is that what I’m really paying for is the opportunity to struggle. I struggle the minutes before I have to leave the office to make it to the gym on time. I struggle on the walk over where my brain tries to convince me to skip. I struggle when I fear he’s going to say, “Today’s a leg-day.” I struggle through the final set of each exercise where I have to dig deep to keep going.

But yet, when it’s over, a sense of pride often emerges. It’s brief, but fulfilling. I suspect that’s because I struggled but kept going.

I also struggle when I see the elderly naked dude shaving in the locker room. That is not fulfilling.