So, I became a gym bro...

This year a new gym opened near my home and with it came an opportunity to better myself.

I've always been an active person. When I was a child I loved PE and I played for the local football team. I use to play most sports offered for the school including football, tennis, table tennis, cricket, badminton... Essentially, if it involved chasing or hitting a ball, I was there. I occasionally went in the gym at lunch but found the idea of bodybuilding intimidating because there was always someone bigger than me who seemed like they knew what they were doing, and I had no idea!

As I got older sports drifted in and out of my life. I played cricket for a local club, then stopped and played five a side football, then tried handball and now I play football for a local club on a Sunday morning. But all those sports rely on someone else. It's difficult to play a game of football on your own, and as an only child, believe me, I tried my best. Starting at the gym seemed to be the perfect blend of a challenging activity that could be done alone. But, I was anxious.

I signed up to the gym months in advance, while the gym was still being built. In fact, I signed up so far in advance that it was a shock to get an email inviting me to come to the gym to start working out. But, I was signed up. I had my entrance code and I was ready to go. I'd originally signed up with my friend, Kieran, but on the day I felt ready to start, he was busy. My options were to wait or to take the motivation while it was there and go to the gym, alone! I spent a good two hours procrastinating. Working out all the things that could go wrong, what I would say if someone started talking to me, what exercises I wanted to do, how long I wanted to be there... This culminated in me searching for the floorplan of the gym. My theory was "if I know where the changing rooms are I can walk in with confidence. The rest is easy." So I searched, and searched, and searched some more. But being a new gym (we're talking two days old), there were no floorplans or photos available. So I went one step further and found the company's fire risk assessment which included a plan of the smoke detectors and alarm sounders in the gym. While I was sat in my living room looking at a plan only a fire alarm engineer could make sense of I could see where the walls in the gym were and guessed where the changing rooms were. With this estimation in my head, I travelled to the gym (pretending I was some casual guy who was just going to "turn up").

As I approached the gym doors a lady walked out who was incredibly well built. Her shoulders would have shadowed my whole body and she genuinely looked like she could lift a truck with one hand while scrolling Instagram with the other. This didn't do my confidence any good. But I continued into the gym and made my way to the changing rooms (my guess was right and I found them with ease). Next thing to do - start exercising.

With a multitude of machines and free weights available I didn't know where to start! Luckily, in my obsessive preparation stage, I'd found an app called Fitbod which offers "tailored" sessions based on your experience and goals based on information you put in. All I had to do was follow the app. This made life so easy; I didn't have to think, I just had to do. I completed the session, felt amazing, and went back the next day with Kieran. The first gym session of my adult life was on 15th January 2023.

I continued going frequently with and without Kieran, and started to really enjoy the process of building a fitness habit. At the time of writing this post (13th April 2023), I have completed 67 workouts. I started at 73.48kg with a body fat percentage of 16.74% (this was not welcome news). I am now 79.6kg with a body fat percentage of 13.2% and I feel amazing! I'm the heaviest I've ever been but I have also grown wider in the process.

This is by no means the end of my fitness journey but I am so happy with how far I have come so far. If you have worries about starting at a gym, I implore you to just do one session, see how it goes. It's a bit of a cliche on social media but honestly, no one in the gym is bothered about you to notice if you do something slightly wrong. They're too worried about looking ridiculous to notice you.