The Bar the bench and the box are the bulk of the basics of what i need

I had somehow managed to avoid almost all weight or strength training for 30+ years. It wasn’t until I was more scared of a race than I was of the gym that I would walk into one without immediately turning to go to the pool, a treadmill or a group class.

I mean! HAVE YOU SEEN THIS THING! ↑

The truth is: I find the gym intimidating. Still, as a fairly secure adult, its intimidating. There seems to be a forest of machines. Each of which looks more confusing than that other one over there. Everyone says you will injure yourself if you do it wrong. And then there are the “free weights”… they look more simple and would possibly be less daunting except… that is where all of the people who really look like they know what they are doing are. Most of them look so confident and so intense, none look approachable or even remotely friendly. Somehow RBF face is part of the required uniform for being good at the gym. (Aaaand for some unknown reason, MASSIVE headphones!)

Katie (my twin) and I were training for our first 100 mile ultra. The end race was flat but 100 miles. My lead up race was the Bel Monte 50 miler and it had 8,600’ of elevation gain and loss. I happened to live just west of Indianapolis, Indiana at the time. Which is about as flat as you can get. I could go for a 20 mile run and have an elevation gain of 13 feet. I knew that if I didn’t focus on building those climbing and descending muscles that there was no way I would be able to finish those races before the cut offs. Thus, the need for the gym. I knew I needed to brave the forest of machines and its grumpy looking (albeit well muscled) denizens.

With this goal in mind I had good news and bad news for myself. The good news was that Katie was getting gym workouts from her coach who knew what he was doing. The bad news was that she lived in a different state and I was going to have to go to the gym by myself. So I took (several) deep breaths, picked a day to start and made that my first “gym day”.

Once I had a day set, it was research time. Even knowing why I needed to go to the gym and being armed with a set workout wasn’t enough to make me go. I knew that there was no way I was going to go if I didn’t have a clue as to how to do the exercises on the list. My solution was to look up every single exercise of every single workout on YouTube, some even multiple times. That way I knew what each exercise was, how it was supposed to look, what muscles it was targeting and what the machine (if any) looked like. While I was at it I looked up standard gym etiquette to try to avoid stumbling onto some of those “obvious” unwritten rules by shear ignorance. Because even if “breaking” those rules won’t get you kicked out, it can make people less willing to help you or just make you look either like a jerk who doesn’t care or an idiot.

Then the day came for me to actually GO TO THE GYM. Aaaaand even despite all of my newfound knowledge, I still had to overcome that moment of hesitancy. The one that makes you question “if it really is that important” or tells you “you could always start tomorrow”. When what it really is is a fear of the unknown. I had to make myself walk in and put my jacket/ keys in the cubbyhole just like everyone else and start the set I had researched.

Turns out it is just as hard as you would expect. And I was sore! I didn’t even go all out! I really had tried to put my pride up on a shelf and be smart. My goal for the first 2-3 weeks was to just get comfortable walking into the gym, doing the movements, and really trying to do them with correct form. I got to use muscles that I didn’t know were there in ways I didn’t know were “good for you”. Then I slowly added some weight. Can I say, step ups are infinitely harder when you do! (And I was not adding huge weight! I’m talking 5-8 lbs here!) This was a major learning curve for me and just like in any other new thing, it took real time for me to feel comfortable.

One of the most important things I learned was about those denizens of the gym. They are people. As I went more consistently I realized they weren’t so intimidating. I learned names and faces. Even of some of the truly grumpy looking ones! And I now believe some of the most dedicated/ serious people are at the gym at 4 and 5 in the morning. This is part of what makes them so intimidating. I loved that they weren’t there to waste time or go through the motions. They also have a million other things they need to do that day but have made their own health a priority. They were focused, they didn’t care what I did, they were doing their own reps and their own sets.

And eventually I even started looking forward to my “gym time”. It kind of felt like time stood still. Like as long as I was doing my own thing there all the other things plaguing my brain or the rest of my to-do list faded. I was in my own bubble, focused on doing my own sets, around other people that all had the same goal. PSA, later in the day isn’t like that, you get your chatty Kathy’s and conversation Karl’s and they are content to hang out and talk as long as you so much as look at them!

This is what happens in my "home gym"...

Then we moved…and now I get to do it all over

again. Except different. Because now I don’t have anyone else giving me my workouts. Now I have to/ want to learn those big scary powerlifting type moves and I find that I am back to square one. In a sense, it would be so easy to just get that bar, bench and box for myself. Then I could do most of those workouts here in the “safety” of my own home. And there is definitely a place for that. (Especially when time is hard to come by!!) For one though, good workout equipment isn’t cheap! But two, I think there is some real accountability and value that comes from being with a group of like minded people. Because over time you create your own village. And for two…I don’t think it is good to avoid doing things that are hard. That is where the real growth happens.

I discovered that once again, overcoming my fear of the gym is just like everything else, you actually have to do it in order to conquer it. But if you consistently show up, to the gym, to your kids, to your partner, to your friends, to your own life, you will create your own village of people that will then show up for you. If you avoid going out and showing up, if you just buy that bar, bench and box every time, then you will have gained fitness but you will have missed an opportunity to connect and to grow in the ways that make life truly meaningful.