(originally written August 2018 – I just forgot to post it!)
32 times. I’ve gone to the gym and completed a 45-minute intense circuit workout 32 times in the last two months.
I didn’t know that number until just a few seconds ago. I hadn’t been counting up to it or anything – but now I wish I had been.
Burn Boot Camp
I signed up for this gym called Burn Boot Camp when they were offering a grand-opening deal: the first 100 people to sign up would get a month free. I figured it would be lack-luster and that I’d quickly lose interest in going. Instead, that first month I went more often than I’ve ever attended ANY work-out program.
My full (quite cheesy) review of the gym is below. Note that the gym was running a promotion that if you wrote a review you’d be entered in a raffle to win a bunch of goodies but that they specified even negative reviews would be entered!
Classes are held 6 days a week. I started out disappointed that they weren’t all 7 days – then quickly realized I was never goign to show up 7 days a week anyways. I made going 5 days a week my goal. My trainer told me she recommends 4 days a week to see results.
I was going pretty consistently – until two weeks ago. I only went on Tuesday the 17th. I didn’t show up the rest of the week. One of the many mantras you hear in the gym world is “Never Miss a Monday” and the internet is full of cheesy motivation posters about Mondays at the gym as you can see in my Google search below:
Do the same search for Tuesdays and there’s not nearly the same amount of neat inspiration posts about Tuesdays. When I failed to go to the gym for the rest of the week, I blamed it on my Monday missed class.
Yeah. That was it.
So you can bet your bottom-dollar that Monday the 23rd I was up and at-’em and back in the gym. It was tiring. It was more tiring than any of my sessions had been in a long time. I could not stop yawning… and I don’t mean like “I’m tired” yawning every now and again. I mean like “my body isn’t getting enough oxygen so it’s forcing me to yawn every other breath” yawning. Not good. I was miserable.
That misery helped motivate me to skip Tuesday. “I’ll just take this week easy”. Then I didn’t get enough sleep and “sleep is more important than the gym on Wednesday” then then then… soon I’d missed another week.
Two days in two weeks.
I berated myself over and over about it. I’m a failure. I knew this would happen. I knew I couldn’t keep myself going for more than a month or two.
But today, I went to the gym. A Monday. I didn’t miss it.
And tomorrow? Well, I make no promises, but I plan on going. But next week?
Well, I’ll be on vacation. At Pennsic. And everyone is telling me I don’t need to go to the gym while I’m an Pennsic because I’ll be doing plenty of walking through the day but… I know me. And even if I go 5 days this week, if I take nextweek off it’ll feel like almost a month without Burn Boot Camp. That’s how you plateau. That’s how you stop good habits from forming. I don’t want that.
I did two things:
First I looked up a location for Burn Boot Camp near Pennsic. There’s one about 30 minutes away. Add in 15 minutes for the walk to the parking lot and some time for a shower without a line and some time to stop on the way back to grab ice or something and we’re looking about a 3-hour excursion. I’m at Pennsic for a week. My goal will be to get my behind to BBC – Wexford, PA at least three times during that week. 9 hours out of my vacation can go towards my goals. That’s nothing.
Second I logged into my client portal and saw something neat: the number 32. I’ve been to 32 classes since I started Burn Boot Camp. That comes out to… get this, EVERY OTHER DAY. When I look back and feel bad about my stints of not going for days in a row here and days in a row there I haven’t been giving myself credit for all the days that I have been going in a row. Every other day? Fuck yeah. That’s 3-4 a week and that’s INLCUDING the weeks I only went once and the week I was at Scorched Nuts and couldn’t go.
I don’t feel nearly as bad when I see 32.
Maybe I should make an inspirational poster with that on it…
