Introduction
Thinking about joining the gym? If you are looking into joining the gym (or even starting home workouts) you may have heard some things about the gym, or have some assumptions. Well, in today blogs we are going to go over a few common gym assumptions about working out and the gym and find out if they are true or false. These have come from personal experience, gym assumptions that I made when I first started at the gym. So let us dig right into the first of many gym assumptions.
1. Everyone is looking at you and judging you:
This one is universal! A lot of people are put off going to the gym because they are worried that people will stare at them and judge them. This is understandable as a lot of people don’t have “gym confidence” when they first start. However what you need to remember is no one is looking at you no one is judging you and everyone is there for the same reason, but more on that later.
When you first walk into the gym, you have a “lost” feeling. Like being the new kid on school. You will kind of feel that everyone notices you and is staring at you. When in reality no one has noticed you are new, and in fairness, no one cares. Everyone is too busy getting on with their gym session to worry about you. As you become more of a gym veteran, you will discover that you don’t even notice when new people start.
2. Longer the better:
“You need to work out for at least 2 hours!” Or “the longer the better” are phrased you might hear a lot when starting the gym. At first, it might make sense, working out makes me lose weight, so if I work out more, I will lose more weight. In theory, this is correct. However, the issue comes with not only the Recovery or sustainability but also how it affects your social and personal life.
Spending that long in the gym will make it harder you recover, meaning each session after that will suffer because of it until you eventually burn out. Also working out for 2-3 hours every day cuts into your social life. I always aim for around 40-60 minutes of intense working out and you are using a progressive overload to make progress over time, then time doesn’t matter.
3. It has to be at the gym
Working out and getting fitter doesn’t mean you have to go to the gym! A lot of people jump straight to the gym without even considering home workouts. For a lot of peoples goals, home workouts are a perfect alternative. Especially if you are unable to make the gym, for example, you have a newborn, work long hours or you work from home. Don’t think that to work out you have to go to the gym.
Using only your body weight or even investing in a small amount of equipment can yield great benefits. If you want to find out more about home workouts, we have written a whole blog post on how to get started with home workouts. Check it out here. A great place to start is by downloading our free workout app and checking out the massive range of workouts on there.
4. Training over Diet
The last point leads us nicely on to our next point. You don’t have to work out at all to lose weight. If you correct and adjust your diet, you will be surprised at how much weight you can lose through diet alone. Add in 1-3 workouts a week and you will notice huge results quickly.
Using the diet tools on our app and planning and prepping meals, you will find it so easy to not only lose weight but also maintain the lifestyle and diet. With simple and effective workouts and an easy and sustainable diet plan, it will become second nature and easy to progress.
Don’t ignore diet! As the popular phrase goes “It is 30% Workout and 70% diet”. I think this is 100% true! Working out alone will only get you 30% of the way, the other 70 is down to diet. Improve your diet and everything will fall into place.
5. That person is bigger, fitter or faster than me
A mistake people make when at the gym is judging their progress based on other people. Which when you say it sounds silly, however, everyone is guilty of it. You get a new Personal best at deadlift and then look over and someone is repping double your PB. This can be dis-hearting. What you need to remember is that everyone is different.
People have different training routines, diets and other variables. No two people are the same. Also, everyone has been training different times. There is no point comparing yourself to another person who has been lifting for 10+ years. Focus on your own goals and progress and everything will be easier and better.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this has cleared up some gym assumptions you might have had before joining the gym. Hopefully, it has cleared up some worries that you might have had if you were thinking about joining the gym.
The most important thing to remember about the gym is that everyone there is there for the same reason. Everyone is there to get in better shape and better themselves. Hopefully, we can work together to put these Gym Assumptions to bed. Going to the gym should be a stress reliever and not a stress builder. It is fun, challenging and a so rewarding.
Written by Kieran Blacker
Kieran is the CEO and Founder of Sets & Reps. He decided to make an application that helped people get a gym workout when not at the gym. He designed, Coded and built the application himself.