Once upon a Wednesday, there was a guy working out in his garage. A self-built garage gym. OK, well equipment bought off Amazon that required assembly. But at least it wasn’t Fisher Price, or so the package said. The idea of a home gym is, by most accounts, a tremendous idea. No gym membership. Time saver. But then the concept of motivation creeps in. Each night, you set the alarm for 5:00 the next morning. Then the devil on the shoulder starts to speak up. “Stay up a little later… Come on. It is only 10:30. You can still get close to 6 hours of sleep. Watch the end of that Purdue vs. Northwestern women’s basketball game. I know you didn’t care about that score, or even sport, 35 minutes ago, but now that it would be a healthy time to go to sleep, you should get to know each of the players.” So you stay awake for another hour, watching that Modern Family rerun of Cam screaming “STELLA!” for the 6th time this month. Note to self: When updating your Snapchat story with what has basically turned into an entire episode of Modern Family on loop, make sure your TV volume is up high to drown out your own laughter that has slowly turned into lonely sobbing in the background.
Finally, you find yourself in bed just staring at the alarm screen on your phone. The moment of truth… or dare. This is when you start to hear the voices…
“Set it for 5:30. You can still work out and make it to work on time.”
“Set it for 7:00. You can work out after work. You deserve this.”
“Who are you talking to?”
That last one comes from the other side of the bed. After apologizing to your wife (or husband; this is a blog of acceptance), you make the decision to follow through and leave the alarm set for 5. You can do this. And if not, what the hell does it really matter?
The alarm goes off. It is 5 AM. You say this out loud. “It is 5 AM.” In high school, you had coaches telling you that there is someone out there working harder than you. Someone waking up early, putting in hours at the gym, just chomping at the bit to be better than you. This is entrenched in your brain at a young age. No one tells you that when you are an adult, the ability to convince yourself to NOT do something you really don’t want to do is substantially easier and quite honestly, the most uncomplicated decision to make in your life. I guess you can still pit yourself against those high schoolers, but that is a fine line to walk. It cannot be appropriate for a 30 year old man to lie in bed thinking about high school kids.
Well you did it. You have made it to the garage. There are a few times that you had to audibly remind yourself what you are actually doing standing in your garage, but let’s blame that on the time of day and not your spotty past. Now there is a big choice at hand: to open the garage door or leave it closed. This is a pivotal moment in your sesh. If left closed, it is between you, the weights and your hanging poster of Johnny Castle. If opened, you invite the judgment of your neighbors. And if you can tell anything from the exclusive Facebook group that was created so that the neighborhood can dish on the latest, breaking subdivision news, your form on that dead lift could be up for discussion by dinnertime. Needless to say, this decision could make or break your workout, or could it give you the motivation you desire?
That is the core of this post: motivation.
- The purchase of a gym membership pulls you there, making it difficult to justify the monthly cost when your routine is attending once every other Sunday afternoon.
- Insert a gym partner, all of a sudden you cannot just say no to yourself. There is a science to cancelling a gym session with your partner. Do you prep them the night before with the “Man, I am so sore” text or play it “cool” with an Instagram tag with a picture of just your legs with the comment, “Bro, quads, right?” You could wait until morning. This feels exceptionally cruel though.
- Other people. You don’t realize how much you could miss the guy at Retro Fitness with the bandana at 7 AM until you find yourself gazing into your dog’s eyes in your garage doing body squats.
You are searching for something. Anything to get you through this workout. This is where the open garage door becomes the huge factor. There are wildcards out there on the streets. You don’t know who is walking by. It gets pretty intense in there. Family of 3 walks by, you find yourself yelling answers to questions that father did not even ask. “YEAH! GOT IT FROM TRACTOR SUPPLY! IT’S A RUBBER MAT THEY USE IN HORSE STALLS!” That sounds like a car backing out of its driveway 3 houses down… Next rep better be flawless. This is what you reduce yourself to. Say that rep did not meet expectations. “Well now we wait until that car comes back and we show them why we spent all of this money.” Turns out it was a long trip to the grocery store. Car passes by and you have them wondering how it could be healthy for someone to do standing dumbbell curls for an hour and 15 minutes straight. But you are not just someone, you are obviously a raging lunatic.