Every year, around the middle of December, the infomercials for gym memberships begin inundating us. This is a marketing strategy at its best. It’s planned. It’s studied in psychological behaviors of human beings. The fitness industry, teaming up with marketing industry, knows when to take advantage of you.
The beginning of the New Year, a new start, where we let by-gones be forgotten. Let’s start the new year with a new you, this is the year you’re going to get that washboard stomach! You will have arms like cannons! You will be the cause of wet-dreams of all of your co-workers! Nah, nope, not likely.
You will look the same on January 31st, of the new year, as you did on December 31st, of the old year. But with a gym membership or unwanted equipment taking up space in your home and out a lot of money.
We all make jokes about how many new year’s resolutions we’ve made. We make jokes that the first two weeks the gyms are packed. However, by the third week, they are nearly empty. Unfortunately, your membership doesn’t stop just because you’ve stopped going, quite the contrary.
Some gyms offer an easy cancellation policy. They’ve found that collecting some money for a few months is better than none at all. The large gyms offering easy cancellation options do not want to go through suing the member for an early cancellation. Mom & pop style gyms rely on memberships and will sue the member for early cancellations or non-payments.
Another attractive marketing tool in the fitness industry is home gym equipment sales. Equipment makers offer incredible sales on left-over inventory. They claim ease of setting it up in your home gym, the convenience, work out anytime, no waiting in lines. But, guys, let’s get for real. Trying to get it put together in your home is not as easy as they said in the advertisements or infomercials. You need an engineering degree for some of it, and/or a home space redesign. After a long battle of putting it together, it becomes a hangar and dust collector. Even small pieces like treadmills, stationary bikes, rowing machines, stair-steppers, become hangars and dust collectors.
You’re out thousands of dollars and the piece ends up on your local marketplace for pennies. We, as a society, are busy, limited attention spans, our interests may only last for a short time. Using the same piece of home equipment will have its time of use, but it becomes boring, limited results or gains in our bodies, thus, becoming frustrated and we move on to something else, or nothing at all.
In reality, getting caught up in the sales, the ease and convenience of use, the hot models, the image of yourself being buff and gorgeous (you already are!), by the gimmicks from the marketing and infomercials, is what drives us to make these purchases. But, if you really, really think about it, will you use it daily, weekly, monthly? Maybe, but probably not. If you don’t enjoy it, you won’t use it.
I use to be overweight, drank a 2-liter bottle of Mt. Dew in a day, everyday for years, smoked up to 2 packs per day for about 16 years, ate the world’s worse diet, I was a physical mess, which also began to affect my mental health. One day, I took my oldest daughter to her first elementary basketball game. While we walked to the school’s front door, I lit up a cigarette, sipped at my Mt. Dew, and when we go to the front door, I gave her a whole bunch of basketball instructions, do’s and don’ts, play hard, have fun, make me proud.
The whole time I was inflicting upon her my bullshit hypocritical advice, I puffed on my cigarette, sipped my Mt. Dew. I saw her little brown eyes look at the red end of the cigarette as I sucked in. That moment was when I realized how much of a hypocrite I am and the unhealthy life-style I am living. At that time, I worked as a Paramedic, it was cool to smoke, drink beer, eat poorly, sit around, live on the edge. Well, I delivered my daughter to her coach then I went into the bathroom, dumped out the Mt. Dew, crushed up my cigarettes, and never looked back.
The next day I walked, outside, for a mile. Holy moly, that was long and painful. But, everyday, I walked a little more, then added in some jogging, slightly increased the distance. I remember feeling like hell one minute, then the next like I could take on the world. It was a very long process but it didn’t cost me a dime (I already owned sneakers and the roads are free to use). I did eventually buy a treadmill, but it was months later after being completely committed to my new addiction; walking.
Over the next few months, I got to where I could jog a full mile, then two. I hit 2 miles of jogging in 22 minutes and danced around the garage (where our treadmill was) like I just knocked out Apollo Creed.
At the time, I only changed 3 things: stopped smoking, stopped drinking Mt. Dew (eww, I can’t believe I use to drink that stuff), and began walking. My diet remained the same for quite awhile. Why? because as human beings, we become very accustomed to our comforts, our safety zones, our habits. In order for anything to change, especially a bad habit, it must be done slowly, progressively, and with a goal in mind.
Too many changes at once is an inevitable way of failing. The most harmful habit, smoking, was the first I wanted to change. I felt my diet will slowly come as I kept working on the smoking and walking. Quitting drinking the Dew, wasn’t as hard as I thought. With my new walking plan, I started to lose a few pounds, my legs began to show a touch of muscle development, and one bad food at a time, I cut back to either none, of once in awhile.
If you are, currently, a non-workout type of person, I ask that you do one thing, first. Anything that you enjoy. The easiest is walking. It’s free, you probably already have sneakers, so you don’t need to buy anything. I do not, however, advise running/jogging until you can walk at a steady pace without leg pain/cramps (shin splints included) for at least 3 miles.
When I coached runners, folks use to come to me with all kinds of aches and pains, blaming running on their problems. But, I’d ask them to take me through their journey, thus far. They’d go on something like, “well, I want to get into shape, so I bought the best pair of running shoes, without advice, and ran 5 miles straight uphill, I want to run a spring marathon,” it’s now February. Or something along those lines.
I’d give them encouragement, then tell them we can fix it, but we’ll need to start from the beginning. “How far,” I’d ask them, “could you walk at a steady pace before you went out running?” “Oh wow man, I could walk like 10 miles without stopping.” I’d say, ok, tomorrow, walk 3 miles, record it on an app, and bring it to me. Some did, most didn’t.
That’s my advice here, walk before you run. Begin to move before you shovel out your hard-earned money on memberships, equipment, injury-causing activities. Commit to some type of movement, walking is the best. Use an app, or a stop-watch, or pencil and paper to track your time and distance. Most all of us have smartphones. There are a million free downloadable tracking apps that will track your distance, time, effort, and store it for you for progressive comparing. Walk out of your front door, go to the local park, trail, track, or something along those lines. If you are not that type of person and would rather look at doing body building type workouts, my advice is playing cards.
Playing cards is an awesome way to whip yourself into shape. My family and I did this for a month and were amazed at our results. A deck of cards (52) has 4 suits. Assign an exercise to a suit; diamonds-pushups; hearts-squats; spades-crunches; and clubs planks, just as an example. Flip a card onto the floor and do the exercise corresponding to the suit, and the number according to the number on the card; 2,3,4, etc., Jacks, Queens, Kings, Aces, can be any number you assign 11, 12, 13, 14 or whatever you choose.
You could also just take out the face cards until you get to that level. Do this for one deck each day for a month, then take a good look at yourself, I feel there will be noticeable changes, for a few minutes per day, that is fun because the excitement of the next card you flip dictates the exercise. Use only your body weight at first, if this is way too easy, add in some light weights, but most of the time, everyone will have some benefit from just using your own body weight.
This post will be updated as we go along. Keep checking back for new ideas and advice. Together, we can get into shape and keep our money where it belongs, in our pockets! Now get out there and have fun.