Here it's so I can look back over what I've done, maybe do a bit of learning, and maybe even offer up some encouragement to those of you out there who may have never ever even set foot in a gym before and feel terrified at the prospect.
A bit of background...
When I was a teenager I used to do a lot of sport. As in, when I try to think of all the different sports I participated in, I end the list with "is that it.. I'm sure I'm missing something", and I probably am. I was kinda good, too. Not excellent. Just hardworking enough, I suppose.
Then I went to uni and thought that everything would be beyond my ability, so it all fell by the wayside. Then I dropped out of uni, started work, dug myself into a rut and couldn't be arsed with anything. Back to uni! Loved it, but absolutely zero time between hospital placement and academic work.
A first class degree (yippee) and a job at the hospital I trained later (starting soon), I feel like I have the time and money to invest in fitness now, but not exactly the know how.
I live in a hilly city. I walk around, sometimes I even cycle but after getting completely drenched one day on the way to work I fell out of love with that. I've always been against the idea of a gym - paying money to go and do exercise, but I guess now I can see why people maybe do as it's a lot more than just handing over cash to get a space to do sit ups.
Starting Point
A friend of mine has been raving about certain classes for years now - Body Attack and such - and whilst I have little idea what this actually entails, his enthusiasm was infectious, and I sort of thought that maybe classes might be something I could really get into. But go on my own? Aggh!
Yeah, no answer to that really when there's no one around for me to really go with on account of finishing uni. The only people I'd feel comfortable with are at the uni gym which doesn't even have classes, so, I just had to get over it really to do it myself.
Started looking around at all the gyms in my city - there's a very good selection - and sent out a few enquiries. Basically, the first one to get back to me (and the only one with a climbing wall), was the one I ended up choosing. Partly because they were first, but also partly because they were somehow considerably more friendly than others. Be prepared for gyms to constantly call you afterward to try and set up appointments, though. I'm hoping that if I ignore them they will go away.
Complete Novice
And I mean it. I'm sure people can empathise with that. I mean, I went to get some new shoes and the guy wanted me to run on a treadmill so he could assess their fit and how I run. I hadn't ever run on a treadmill before so he made me run on the shop floor instead. Proper face palm moment.
I went along anyway to meet someone to have a look round the "club", and she was really nice and showed me all the bits and pieces. I forgot to ask things about how to use the lockers (bring your own padlock, I guessed thankfully), or if there were shower cubicles (there are). That kind of thing matters to a person who is completely new to the gym, I reckon.
Said I'd never been to the gym before, didn't feel an absolute idiot either, so felt I made the right choice. Signed up and booked an induction session, which is where I just came back from.
Induction
Again, no clue what to expect, of course. It lasted an hour, which I think is probably on the long side in comparison to some.
It involved first of all height and weight (cringe), talking about what goals I'd like to achieve (lose a stone amongst other things), whether they were achievable (apparently I don't need to lose that much, hurrah!) and over what sort of timescales. I really emphasised how new I was to it all and didn't want to go too hard and put myself off too early and such, and I think my trainer person took all that into account.
After that he put a programme together - cue lots of smiling and nodding as I have no clue about my own abilities and limitations - and loaded it onto an electronic key thingy for me that makes the machines load up my settings (how many times I do each exercise).
Then it was time to learn how to use all the machines. I hope I don't forget completely next time - yellow buttons and things are for moving the machine into the right place, I just need to remember that. This entailed having a mini run on each of them really, doing a set of reps (that's a set of exercises, before I get a rest) and I coped with the weights ok.
The thing I'm worried about though is running! I want to be able to do it so I can run with my boyfriend and it can be a thing we do together, but I've famously hated running in the past as I've never been good at distance, even when I had the stamina to do 90 mins on a football pitch. Part of my programme at the moment though is to do 2K on the treadmill over varying gradients and speeds, so I'm hoping I can cope with that.
And if I don't to start with, well, it's the last part of my programme so I can always quit early and not feel a complete failure :D
What next?
Tomorrow evening I think I will go and do a full workout. It should be quiet again, which makes it a bit easier when you're being a bit of a sillyface with it all, and at least now I know what I'm doing with this sort of thing.
The guy who did my induction today seemed confident that I'd be able to go along and do a class tomorrow if I wanted, and said how everyone's at different levels and there's always people at the back who can't quite keep up and such. Everyone's there for the same reason after all. I'm just worried I won't be able to learn the moves or do things wrong or whatever. Basically, all the things that were never a problem for my 15 year old self and seem to have fallen away over the past decade. That's why I'd feel better if I had someone to go with.
Nevertheless, I've booked myself in for a spinning class on Monday evening, i figure I should be able to manage not to screw that up :)
No comments:
Post a Comment