Gym Intimidation : Apprehensions Start Working Themselves Out When You Do
It’s your first day at the health club and the young Neanderthal behind the front desk tries to suppress a smirk as he watches you come through the door. His body is so rippled with muscles you can almost hear the seams of his tank top straining to contain his pecs.
As you sign in, he leans over the counter and takes a fingerful of your loose underarm and jiggles it lightly, much to the amusement of the svelte, leotard-clad woman beside him.
You press on to the entrance of the workout room. As your stand in the doorway eyeing the dozens of glistening hard bodies working those fabulously feared machines, you are aware that all eyes have turned to your waistline. The machines grind to a halt, and the silence rings in your ears.
Suddenly you wake up in a cold sweat.
You have been having the same nightmare every night since you vowed on New Year’s Eve that this time, for sure, you are going to make up for all the excesses of the holidays. This time you are going to embark on a serious fitness program and really stick to it. This is it. You jiggle your underarm for reassurance.
January is boom time in the fitness industry.
More people sign up at health clubs, buy exercise equipment and enroll in weight loss programs this month than any other time of the year. But if industry estimates are correct, by February, 80% of them have already given up. The industry keeps no statistics on those who make resolutions but never do anything about them.
Welcome to 1990, the year you and a sensible fitness program are joined for life. No torture, no failure, no guilt.
You have stumbled into the decade of the smart workout, a decade ushered in by last year’s good news that taking your dog for a brisk 30-minute walk three times a week can be as beneficial to your long-term health as training for the Ironman Triathlon every day.
The trick is to do it regularly and keep doing it.
If tirades about motivation, self-discipline and “wanting it badly enough” have not worked for you in the past, it is unlikely they will ever work.
The real issue may be what some experts call exercise psychosis, the excuses for not ever getting started--lack of time, self-consciousness about bad bodies, not knowing how to use the equipment, even fear of exercise itself.
According to Louis Welch, president of Anaheim-based LA Fitness, the biggest mistake most people make is confusing motivation to join a health club with motivation to work out. “The hardest 10 minutes of your workout is the 10 minutes it takes you to get inside the club’s doors,” he says. “Once you walk in you see everybody else is working out, you feel like a dope if you don’t work out too.”
Conquering the 10-minute assault only starts the battle. Experts tell us that it takes a minimum of 21 days of consistent repetition to establish a new behavior pattern.
Understanding how to stack the odds in our favor is the first step in making sure those New Year’s resolutions stick for life.
A stare is as strong as an insult, says Rosalyn Laudati, a Newport Beach psychologist who specializes in eating disorders.
“Overweight people, especially women, would rather not go to the gym than face the embarrassment,” she says. “They are willing to shortchange their own health because of their fear of intimidation.”
Change your attitude: call it “people watching” instead of “staring,” and realize that those stares can be turned around into admiring looks if you give it time. Prepare yourself by understanding that people who have been working out are going to be in better shape than you.
But only for a while.
You may feel more comfortable starting out in a smaller, more intimate gym than in a big noisy facility. Wear loose-fitting outfits that don’t exaggerate what you perceive as your physical shortcomings.
Women who feel self-conscious exercising in front of men can join clubs that have special “women only” sections.
If you don’t know how to use the exercise equipment, ask an instructor to work with you. Your gym membership pays his or her salary. Ask the manager to recommend an instructor who specializes in helping first-timers deal with the double frustration of being out of shape and unknowledgeable.
Aerobic groupies--you know, those sleek creatures who are on a first-name basis with the instructors and who jump higher and pump harder than everyone else--can be pretty intimidating.
Simply avoid them by taking beginner or low-impact classes, or early morning classes when there are fewer around, says Carl Root, who teaches aerobics at Nautilus-Aerobics Plus in Irvine.
“It takes a lot of motivation to go to a 6:30 a.m. class,” he says, “but it has been shown that people who exercise in the morning are more likely to stick with their program. The people who are there in the morning tend to be a more supportive group as well because everyone realizes it takes a certain amount of motivation just to be there.”
“It used to drive me crazy to go to the gym and see everybody in their size 2s with their legs over their head,” admits career consultant Diane Carr of Placentia. “The first time I went to the gym I weighed 192 pounds. Not only did people stare at me, they were downright rude. I felt like a freak. I would go every Monday and then quit. I just hated going.”
She thanks a Weight Watchers program for teaching her a four-way approach to controlling her weight: diet, attitude, exercise and group support.
Five years and 65 pounds later, Carr says she is now “one of those crazy people that can get their leg over their head.”
“Just remember,” she adds, “once you’ve started, you’re in action. You’ve gone through the worst of it.”
Self-consciousness is by no means limited to women.
Robert Hall, a controller who works in Newport Beach, weighed 217 pounds, smoked, and had just recovered from open heart surgery when his boss dragged him to the gym five years ago. “I felt so out of place that without the forceful insistence of my boss I would never have gone back,” Hall says. “The amount I was pushing around on some of those Nautilus machines was so small I was embarrassed. Even the women were doing more weights than me.”
Hall says people stared at him in the beginning, but he wasn’t allowed the luxury of letting it get to him.
“After a while, though, those people began to notice I was losing weight. They congratulated me on my progress and urged me on. That was the best reinforcement I could have had.”
Today, a hard 160 pounds and a nonsmoker, Hall exercises five days a week before work and jogs six days a week. On his own.
“Remember,” says his boss, Newport Beach real estate developer Gary Fudge, “when you go to the gym, you are not competing against the people who are there. You are competing against the ones who aren’t.”
Thanks to society’s “instant” conditioning, people become easily discouraged if they don’t see an immediate change in their bodies once they’ve committed themselves to a fitness program.
But there is no way around the fact that it takes time to get in shape. As one wag put it, you can hardly expect to get in shape overnight if it took you years to get out of shape.
“The whole body grinds down if it is not used,” says John Callaghan, a sports psychologist who heads the Sports Studies Program at USC. “Now that you’re going to get it going again you have to start off slowly and very easily.”
Not only will an overly vigorous start make you sore long enough to make you drop out, it may even be harmful.
“More is not necessarily better,” cautions aerobics instructor Root.
“When I hear people say they have taken seven classes in one week, I know they are not going to stick with it. Every time you exercise you are tearing down muscle fiber, and your body needs time to recuperate, so rest is really important. Over the long haul, something has to give with these people, and it’s usually the whole program.”
Pinpoint one goal and work toward achieving it. It can be as simple as a desire to get in and out of your car a little easier, walk up a flight of stairs without having to catch your breath, or pedal three minutes on an exercise bicycle. You can gradually work up to longer-term goals, such as being able to run five miles by summer.
“It is critical that beginners get into a program where they can have some early successes so they feel they are achieving something,” advises Callaghan. “Otherwise they become discouraged and frustrated and drop out.”
Park your scale in the back of your closet for a few weeks and judge your progress by what really matters: your clothes will fit better, you will begin to sleep better and you will find yourself handling stress better.
“People should stop looking at exercise as an end in itself, like toning muscle or losing weight, and start looking at it as part of a balanced life, as a way to drain tension and hold onto their sanity,” says Root.
There are always reasons to avoid working out.
It’s easy to stick with a fitness program when the going is easy. But when those down times hit, you need to build the spirit to endure. Even top athletes have slumps (called “spirals” in the business) when a multimillion-dollar contract isn’t enough to get them going.
It’s time to call in the reinforcements. A workout buddy can make the difference between success and failure.
“Most self-motivators say you have to do it for yourself,” says Dr. William Beausay, president of the Academy of Sports Psychology International. “But I believe the best way to stay on a program is to find a friend to compete with and get a friendly competition going between yourselves, whether it is winning at racquetball, losing weight or simply arriving first at the gym. Human beings are stimulated by competition. You have no idea what you are capable of until you test yourself against someone else.”
Even if you don’t have a competitive vein, a workout partner can be a tremendous source of moral support.
Says Welch of LA Fitness: “People help keep each other motivated. They have proven scientifically that you get better results working out with someone else.”
Maintain a network of two or three different partners both for variety and as back-ups.
Because of job and family pressures, many people who join gyms find the most convenient time to work out is on the way home from work. The problem, of course, is that everyone else on the planet has the same idea, so the clubs are crowded at peak hours and the waits for machines can be frustratingly long.
Don’t give yourself an excuse to get fed up and drop out. Use the club’s pool instead. Swimming is an excellent aerobic sport and a great muscle toner, and there is never a wait. Then head back to the gym on Saturday morning for a once-a-week workout on the equipment or an aerobics class.
Boredom is one of the top reasons people stop exercising. Begin each workout with activities you find enjoyable and gradually work up to the tougher exercises when you have found your rhythm.
The current workout vogue is cross-training or circuit training, a kind of high-intensity game of musical chairs where participants spend a few minutes at each of a number of different machines. The variety not only prevents boredom, it works many muscle groups and minimizes injury. Change your workout quarterly to avoid the fitness blahs.
Above all, be kind to yourself. Forgive yourself for lapses. Reward yourself with a new workout outfit or a new piece of equipment for a milestone reached . . . or as an incentive to get back on track.
Don’t let a momentary relapse be an excuse to punish yourself or sabotage your health.