I’ve learned from my conversations with gym rats that we all have a unique reason to go to the gym. I’m interested in hearing why people choose to embark on a journey of physical improvement. In today’s post, I’ll talk briefly about why I go to the gym, and I hope it will give you some motivation or insight into your own fitness journey.
How it Started
While I went through short bursts of gym motivation in middle school and high school, I never stuck to it. Honestly, it got boring to me. I’m used to playing fast-paced sports like basketball and soccer, so the gym was never appealing to me. No ball? No buzzer to beat? Ugh.
It may sound cheesy, but I didn’t understand the beauty of lifting. I saw it more as a necessary evil, something that athletes reluctantly do with the sole purpose of gaining strength for their sport. I certainly didn’t view it as anything to enjoy. That is, until 2024.
In October of that year, my friends and I went to the North Carolina State Fair. It’s one of the biggest events of the year, and there are all kinds of carnival games, farm animals, and watermelon growing competitions. It was a blast. After several hours at the fair, we came across a U.S Army table. Two army representatives stood beside a pull-up bar, asking us if we wanted to do some pull-ups and win a prize. I should mention that these men were absolute beasts. They were built like beasts, at least.
We decided to try it. My friends started doing pull-ups, trying to do ten in a row to win a lanyard from the army table. Some of them got it, some of them didn’t. The ones who didn’t blame their bulk or high body weight for the failure. Unfortunately, I didn’t have that luxury. At the time, I was 5’11” and 155 pounds. That’s surely not the heaviest.
One of the army guys addressed me. “This guy looks like he’d be good at pull-ups!” He announced. “He sure doesn’t have to pull up much!”
At the time, I didn’t care enough about my fitness to take this as an insult. I just got on the bar to do some pull-ups. I started with one. Two. Three. Four…
I barely got five. To be honest, it wasn’t a full rep. I only got four GOOD pull-ups.
Some of you reading this may be unable to do a pull-up. That’s fine, and you shouldn’t be comparing yourself to others anyway. But for an 18-year-old boy to embarrass himself like that in front of his friends? That’s a disaster.
As soon as I got off the bar, the army guys immediately began to mock me. They told me to hit the gym and come back next year. They made fun of me for my weakness. While my friends weren’t as brash, you could tell they were confused as to why someone as light and seemingly fit as I struggled to do just a few pull-ups. Most male athletes at my school could easily crank out 10.
I got mad. I got really mad.
It wasn’t a scream at the top of your lungs mad. It was an inner sort of mad. I was pissed.
I talked a bit in my last blog post about the spark. This was my spark. Maybe it wasn’t how I drew it up, but it lit a fire in me nonetheless. That day, I swore I was going to hit the gym, come back next year, and get 10. No, not 10, 20.
This is the story I tell when people ask me why I started working out. It also explains why I spam pull-ups on every back day. LOL.
This may not be the healthiest way to start a gym habit, but it’s what worked for me. I had to get mad at myself. I had to get a burst of passion.
Building it
Although I had all the motivation that I needed to get stronger, I knew I had to be smart about it. I couldn’t just show up and expect to achieve my goals in a day. I had to build it day by day by day. I watched YouTube videos about how to craft a routine, and I kept track of my progress. I started slow, with light weights, and only progressed to heavier weights when I felt ready for them. Slowly, I began to get stronger. Even though I still didn’t find it fun, I could see the progress.
Initially, I kinda looked like this:
But as time went on, I started to get more and more reps on the pull-up bar. I remember the day I hit seven. I felt like the king of the world.
This is when I finally found my why. Progress.
Progress
When I realized that I was making progress, the discomfort I felt towards the end of my sets didn’t matter anymore. It’s not that pain didn’t exist. It’s that it didn’t matter. Progress became fun. Improving became fun. I wanted to get better at everything in the gym.
I soon began to apply this mindset to other exercises. Bench press became fun. Bicep curls became fun. Squats became fun. Everything became fun.
This is a positive mindset that would benefit many people. The only competition you should have is the person you were yesterday.
After only a few weeks, you will start to see progress in how you look and feel. The gym will become a ritual that you look forward to completing. You must complete it, or else you’ll get a strange feeling of missing out.
Purpose
In my opinion, one of the biggest issues in society today is that people lack a sense of purpose. Without anything to drive you forward, you’ll stall. You need to carry a purpose, a sense of direction, in everything you do, at least if you want to be an effective person. For the gym, you need to find your purpose. Do you want to look better? Do you want to get stronger? Maybe you’re not that into weightlifting, and you want to work on your cardio instead. Maybe you want to improve your vertical jump to be a better basketball player. Whatever your purpose is, you need to keep that in mind when working out. It will not only keep you consistent with your gym routine, but it will also shape your routine and what exercises you choose to do.
I’ve said this before, but one of the best things about the gym, in my opinion, is being around other people who want to better themselves. I actually hate working out in an empty gym. I want to be around others who are working hard. They inspire me to get better. I love seeing people make progress. Growth is essential. If you’re not growing, I can only assume that you’re dead.
The philosopher Socrates has a famous quote: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” You need to self-reflect on why you do what you do. What ends are you trying to accomplish? What’s your goal at work, at home, in your relationship, and in your fitness journey? If you can’t explain why you do something, then you’re simply going through the motions. Maybe you enjoy that, but let me tell you, there is so much more to life than that. Developing your sense of purpose is one of the best things you can do. Write your own story.
I hope you can learn something from my story. Fall in love with the process. Once you do that, lifting weights becomes fun. You get to witness yourself improve. Embrace the journey. Become the athlete you want to be. Find your purpose.
My purpose for fitness? To improve. To achieve progress. To improve for the sake of improving. To prove to myself that I can overcome challenges. To inspire other people to become something great. To test myself.
What’s your purpose? Comment down below.
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