Just Do It

I need to re-adjust my schedule and find time to fit in exercise because, oddly enough, the sitting on the couch physical fitness program isn’t working for me.

In the interest of getting back in the saddle, I bought a couple of workout dvds and some new hand weights this weekend.  Because everyone knows that newer stuff is more inspiring than the old stuff, even if the old stuff is perfectly good except that maybe the ends periodically unscrew themselves from my dumbbells and fall off.  On my foot.

All that new stuff?  Is still in the Jeep.

That’s the problem with trying to economize and do my working out at home.  I can always find something I’d rather do at home than working out.  Quite honestly, I’d rather scrub bathrooms than work out at home most days, and I detest scrubbing bathrooms with a fiery passion reserved only for mushrooms.

Which, if you think about it, are kind of related.

Back in the day I always had more success when I went to a gym, because I had a destination with a purpose, and the sole purpose was exercise.  There really isn’t anything else to do at a gym but exercise.  Well, I know that people go to the gym to “see and be seen” but that’s not me.  When I go to the gym I prefer to not be seen.

It helped when I had a trainer, because then I had an appointment.  I had someone on the other end expecting me to be there.  Someone who wouldn’t let me half-ass my workout because I just wasn’t feeling it that day.  Sometimes I think that’s the real value of a trainer, the idea that you have to be there because of someone else, and that you have to perform better than you might on your own because that person is watching you and calling you on your bullshit.  They make you do things that you don’t think you can do, until suddenly you’re doing it.  That is the awesomesauce about trainers.

I’m on the fence right now about re-joining a gym, for several reasons:

• It’s expensive, of course.  I could use that money to pay off some bills instead of spending it on a gym membership.
• I have equipment at home.  I have a treadmill and kettlebells and weights and videos and yoga mats and balls and a Wii Fit and and and and…  I have the tools.
• I’m not considering a trainer again because that’s just TOO much.  Plus I wouldn’t really want a different trainer than before, but I don’t want to go back to my old trainer and have him give me crap about re-gaining weight.  Because he would.  He’s a mouthy one.  And my trainer doesn’t work at the gym anymore, he’d have to train me at home, and he’d whine a LOT about how far it is to drive to my home.  Fucker.
• What if I don’t use it?

But

• There’s the destination thing.  That’s a big deal for me.
• I hate when the people at home watch me work out.  This is not a spectator sport but I don’t have a private place to work out at home.  Oddly, enough I don’t mind that other people can watch me at the gym, mostly because I know they’re not really watching me.
• There’s infinite variety at the gym.  I can change things up frequently a little easier at the gym because there is such an abundance of equipment and different classes to take.
• They have a pool, and I kind of want to try the water aerobics.
• There’s a sauna.  I loooooooove the sauna!
• Alone time!  Even if hub goes to the gym with me, he’s never with me.  I plug in my headphones and I am my own island.  I don’t care how much I sweat, or what I look like, or who is next to me on the treadmill.  It’s my own time in my own brain, and I work out a lot of stuff in my head at the gym.  I love that.

The big thing, though?  The thing that’s really stopping me from biting the bullet and spending the money?  My foot is not healed.  (I know, you’re sick of hearing about it but this time it’s relevant and it’s a real consideration) It’s still pretty sore most of the time and I’ve stopped thinking that it’s going to get better.  Am I really going to be able to suck it up and ignore it?  Because that gets really hard sometimes.  I can do it for a long time, until suddenly I can’t.  Only this time at the end of that period where I stop sucking it up I’ll still have an expensive gym membership that I’m no longer using because I’m a wuss.  So there’s that.

I think in the end I’m going to chose the gym because I need to.  I’m not working out at home, that’s been proven.  I appear to need a place to go.  Whether I can do it on my own, without a trainer, remains to be seen.  I am awesome when I’m being pushed, but not always when it’s just up to me.

I know, I need to be like Nike and Just Do It.  I waffle on these decisions for way too long.