Holy crap! Our trainers are people too!

It’s the last weekend in January. Do you know what that means? It means a large percentage of the people who joined a gym, re-joined a gym, hired a personal trainer, or started a diet program, are just days away from slipping back into their old ways. Gyms are packed with people in January and just like that the gym rats get their gym back in February. Why? I know why!

So here’s the chain of events: someone or something motivated you to walk into that gym. The sales consultants were encouraging, friendly, made you feel comfortable and showed you just how much of a community the gym can be. You find a class you like or a trainer to work with and you suddenly feel like you belong – like people are happy to see you there. All of a sudden you feel like you’ve found your place. Then a couple of weeks go by and it’s getting harder and harder to drag yourself in there. People aren’t as smiley as they were at the beginning of the year. The fit people, the people who workout all the time, just come in, do their work and go home. The trainers’ attention has balanced out. In fact, everyone who works at the gym seems like they’re doing just that – working – it’s a job. The feelings of insecurity and being uncomfortable start to settle in again. You feel just as alone in this journey as you did before the new-year. Your attendance starts to slip. Suddenly you have to work late or you’re tired or you have a cold or it’s too cold outside – finding excuses becomes easier than sticking to the commitment you made to change your life. In your discomfort with your new lifestyle you begin to find comfort in your old lifestyle and the cycle begins again.

Despite my change in lifestyle, my positive attitude, my kick-butt TNT workouts, my 15-pound weight loss, my inspiring blog entries, I too have experienced this yet again. I joined Sport & Health in January so I could take it up a notch. I wanted to be able to eliminate the excuses of weather, my commute, boredom with my exercise, etc. I now have access to any Sport & Health – that’s 20-some locations in the tri-state area. I can take amazing classes, have access to top-of-the-line equipment, pools, basketball, volleyball, indoor tracks, clean locker-rooms with all amenities, tennis, racquetball, Pilates, even Serenity Day Spas. I have no excuse not to find a gym near me and an activity I’ll love. I can switch it up when I get bored and on top of all of that I still have TNT two to three times a week. I even know a lot of the Sport & Health team. So what’s the problem? Instead of giving in to it, I decided to observe.

I saw new people who seemed a little disoriented, unsure of themselves and kind of like fish out of water. Then I looked around at the regulars – the faces that are now familiar to me after months of working out. They are often in their own world. They often do what they need to do and get out – hellos and smiles as you pass them by are few and far between. I started looking around at all the people working there and noticed that many of them looked like me after a long day of work – you know like the last place you want to be anymore is at work. And then it hit me. Holy crap, they are all people too! The people at the front desk who often do say hi and bye, may slip from time to time. The trainers get tired too. And really I couldn’t begin to imagine what it would be like to motivate someone like me. I admit on a regular basis that the last place I want to be is working out. I want it to be over with. I just said to one of my TNT trainers the other day, “I went to TNT on Saturday. It was a miracle that I went but I did it.” What do I want a cookie? I’m telling my trainer, who HAS to be there because it’s his JOB to be there, that I’m oh so proud of myself for dragging my butt into the gym for ONE HOUR on a Saturday morning. He does this every day. He puts a smile on his face, pushes me and others, when most of his clients have a desperate dependency on him to do just that. It’s like going to the dentist for me. I truly hate it sometimes. It feels great after but man I can’t wait until it’s over. DUDE! I’m just now realizing that it would truly be hard to be “ON” every day trying to get someone like me to stop complaining and just do it.

Overweight people tend to depend on or blame outside sources for their condition or whatever put them in their condition. I’m no exception. In the past, I have put the blame everywhere but where it should have been. I know now, in a very different way than before, that I have to be responsible for my actions. I have to motivate myself to go to the gym. I have to stop myself from eating poorly or over-indulging. ME. Every time Bryan, the program director at Worldgate smiles and says how you doing – every time Carlton at Worldgate says nice to see you Nikki as I’m coming or going – every time Steve or Chris, my TNT trainers, say you can do it or push yourself just when I take an “unplanned” break in my workout (how do they always know LOL) – all serve as an extra push but I have to do it. There’s no way to get out of the work. No one else can do my homework for this – if they do they benefit not me! I have all the tools at my fingertips and then some but until I realized this fact I had hit a roadblock of sorts. Yeah I work hard when I go to TNT and I put in about 2 or 3 hard core cardio sessions a week but I’m still dialing it in. I really am. I know this. I know I can do better. I can eat better. I CAN write down what I eat everyday. I’m accountable to no one but myself and in this moment I get it… I felt alone in this journey before because I am alone. I am the only one who can do this and for the first time in my life that’s ok.

For years I made myself the victim of this. I told myself all these lies like I can’t do it because I’ve tried before or I don’t have the time because my life is too hectic or I can’t afford the tools I need or my big butt is in my family genes! All of it not true and certainly not excuse enough to give up. I’ve given up on myself so many times – putting myself in a weak state. I am strong! I’m strong physically and more and more everyday I’m strong emotionally. I just need to make this my new truth. We all need to create a new, more positive truth for ourselves. Our trainers, the people who work at our gyms, our significant others, our parents can be our extended support system but they can not do this for us. I will do this because the most important thing I can teach my son by example is that he can do anything because I can do anything.

After all of these epiphanies I thought to myself, how can I help some of the newbies in the gym. I remembered one of my experiences at Burke Lake. After the 3-Day Walk for Susan G. Komen, I committed to run my first 5K to benefit Boys & Girls Clubs. So instead of walking the five-mile loop at the lake I started to jog it. So one day I’m jogging and I’m going up a little hill and feeling it – probably looking beat down – and this total stranger who was fit as a fiddle, one of those people I envy when I’m out there working out, smiled at me and said keep going girl, you’re doing it. He didn’t say you can do it he said you ARE doing it. It made me feel like yeah look at me I AM doing it but more importantly someone I didn’t even know was rooting for me. That felt awesome. So, I’m going to do the same. I’m going to smile at people at the gym. I’m going to commiserate with people who look like they may be having a tough go at it and I’m going to say you go girl or you got this to people who are working hard and look beat down like I did that day. I’m going to reach out and be the community in the gym that I want my gym to be. I’m going to invest in myself and my environment. Because there is one more moral to this story… the more invested and tangled up I am in something the harder it is to get out! By golly I think I’ve got it! At least for today! Cya at the gym!

Nik