Don’t Give Up On That Gym Resolution, Your Future Self Is Counting On You!
For many years, January was a dreaded month for me. After a few months of lighter crowds due to holiday travel and weather, using the squat rack and bench presses as I please, and training at any hour of the day, the dream was over. A New Year meant an onslaught of “Resolutionists” (as I liked to call them) packing the gym with their renewed fitness fervor.
Don’t Give Up On That Gym Resolution, Your Future Self Is Counting On You!
“I’m gonna do it! Finally lose that weight and tone my body!”
“New Year! New Me!”
“I’m really gonna keep with it this time!”
New year, same statements, same eye-rolling and light chuckle by me. “I can’t wait until February”, I’d tell myself. “Then they’ll finally be gone. At the very latest, March. Then everything will be back to normal.”
I was pretty damn smug. I even used the hashtag #NowYearsResolution to poke fun at these “amateurs” wasting the time of an “expert” like me.
I was a child with boundless energy. My parents had me participating in sports ever since I could walk. During the summer, I was on the neighborhood pool swim team. In high school, I was a three-sport athlete and I played Rugby in college (though admittedly, I did find it fun drinking lots of beer…sometimes out of a shoe at parties).
I’ve never had a problem with motivation for athletic activity. A day without any is a day wracked with guilt. “How dare you waste this day!” I tell myself. “Our bodies were made to do work SO DO IT.”
I was smug about it for a long time, sneering at newcomers in the gym taking up my equipment with their novice ability. Puh! (that’s me spitting) “Who do they think they are?!?”
“Okay, Kyle. Time for the transition. What changed your mind about it?”
For the past two years, I’ve worked for my parents’ home care agency as the web administrator and marketing specialist. We send caregivers into the homes of seniors to help them with anything from simple companionship to the heavy duty stuff like bathing, clothing, feeding, transporting. Work long enough in this particular industry and you’ll find yourself thinking about the end of life a lot. You see how people either did or didn’t take care of themselves in life and the consequences of said choices.
While it’s funny now to joke on Facebook about you “Didn’t make it to the gym, Netflix and Chill alone“, add up enough of those days, and suddenly you’ll find yourself needing a walker or a wheelchair to get around by the time you’re 60. Or assistance with even the most basic of daily activities. And trust me, every senior I’ve worked with personally (including my own grandmother) HATES needing someone else to help them move.
Yes, in some cases, it’s beyond our control. Accidents, diseases, and other tragedies can cripple our ability to function normally later in life. But, you do have control now while you’re younger. It’s never too late to start.
So, if you need a New Year’s Resolution to get you going, DO IT. As long as you have the right purpose for being there, that’s all that matters.
Haha – I prefer the gym when it’s not full either, where you can move from one thing to the next without having to wait for someone to finish. However, I have yet to figure out how to stay on a consistant routine for more than a few weeks in a row. Sure enough I’ll be on a roll, hitting the gym 4 nights a week while my daughter is downstairs at swim team practice, then their 12 week session will be up and I have to rework my schedule. I had that “outsider” feeling this past week when I finally made it back to the gym on a regular basis this week after taking time off since, oh at least Thanksgiving. Here’s to liftime resolutions – ones we make over and over again.