Some of the more formidable challenges in adopting a gym training routine are those of fear and boredom.  While both of these two emotions might appear to be opposite in nature, they actually share one thing in common: a lack of knowledge.  In order to adopt a lifestyle of healthy exercising, one has to have no fear of walking into the gym. This can be very daunting for the uninitiated.  Whenever someone goes to the beach, it is a rare person who can throw on a swimsuit and strut their stuff proudly without some type of insecurity creeping their way onto the scene.  Walking into a gym means letting go of all types of fears of people staring, laughing, and/or making fun of you. In reality, those who make it to the gym make up less than 50% of the general population.  So if you make it into the gym, you’re doing what less than half of the mainstream does.  You’ve got a leg up on them.  Walk inside the gym with confidence knowing you’re part of an elite few who actually get in there.  After all, half of the battle of exercising is getting to the gym.  The other half is actually doing something productive.

That’s where most people drop off due to lack of knowledge.  While most people think that having a “routine” is the answer to achieving one’s goals, it’s actually the kiss of death.  The body learns fast that you are hitting it with the same tried and true exercise, and it’s only a question of time when the body stops responding.  The shock and awe of hitting the muscle groups have worn off, and almost as soon as you began your training regimen, the body has become unimpressed.  It fails to respond to your efforts.  You get frustrated, scratch your head asking yourself, “what went wrong?”, and soon you’re out of there.  You’re not getting results and you have gotten bored at the gym.

Your body has gotten bored with your routine as well.  It has become just that: routine – the same ol’ same ol’.  What your body is seeking is a jolt.  It needs to be jump started regularly.  The muscle groups that you are training need to be shocked into shape, not clobbered with the same exercises over and over again.  And in order to achieve the goals you have come to expect from yourself, since you see an acquaintance of yours achieving theirs, you have to hit the muscle groups from every conceivable angle.  That is, each muscle group is tied to your skeleton with tendons.  Your bones are attached to each other via ligaments.  The point of attachment for your muscles to your skeleton can be exercised from the top, bottom, rear, front, 45 degree angles, sideways, etc.  Each and every muscle group is pulled this way and that way when it comes to daily activities.  Why would you expect your muscles to respond when you hit them continually from the same angle with the same boring exercise?  You don’t do this in real life with your daily activities. During your day, your muscle groups are pushed and pulled unexpectedly from every conceivable direction. They don’t respond to your “routine” because they have come to expect the movement.  They must be attacked from a different approach.  Once you have surprised them with your new tactic, surprise them again with a different tactic, then another, and still another.  In this way, your muscle groups are whipped into shape, utterly confused and become very taught, toned and tense.  Over time they start to grow.  Your reward comes after the using the 4 letter word: w-o-r-k. 

Approaching the gym in such a fashion requires a great deal of knowledge about training.  I get a kick out of watching the guys at my gym do bicep curls with exaggerated movements, in hopes of building their beach muscle: the biceps.   About all they are really doing is putting their tendons, skeleton, ligaments, cartilage, and muscles at risk of injury.  They mistakenly think that if they go at the biceps aggressively with the same bicep EZ curl bar, they’ll get those 21” guns they’ve always admired in magazines.  Truth be told, they need to switch up their bicep regiment with cables, dumbbells, machines, curl bars, pull-ups and other exercises.  It requires an attention to detail in technique as well as a number of varied types of exercises, or else they will fail. 

Training in a gym shouldn’t be an intimidating ordeal.  Nor should it challenge your self-esteem. Rather, it should build you up in many ways.  Training should be enjoyable, fun and a healthy dare that can be accomplished with measureable and observable results.  The trick is having knowledge of what you are doing.  As a general rule, training should be done with anywhere between 4 - 6 different types of exercises per muscle group.  Those exercises in turn should be done at a bear minimum of 3 sets. This translates into 12-18 training exercises per muscle group. Using the bicep example, if you are doing 4 exercises for this rather small muscle group whenever you train at the gym, you should know at least 16 bicep exercises.  In this way, if you train your biceps once a week (just 4 times per month), you can do a different training regiment the following week, and the one after that, and the one after that.  Your biceps will have no choice but to respond favorably to your program, assuming you’re doing them correctly.  Intensity matters.  Form rules.  Nutrition is two-thirds responsible for how you look. Reaching exhaustion is necessary with short-timed rest periods between sets.  And so forth.

If you don’t like the way you feel, how you look or how your body responds to every day stressors, you’ve got options.  If you hope that one day you can eliminate the medications you are taking for illnesses which are completely lifestyle related, hit the gym.  It’s achievable.  Afraid of walking into a gym?  Don’t know what to do?  Are you bored of what you are doing once you get in there?  Hire a Certified Personal Trainer.  A CPT should be able to take one look at you, and, after listening to your goals and history, create a training regimen almost instantly as soon as their eyes land on the weights.  If your trainer isn’t challenging your muscle groups, and you are bored, hire a new one.  A personal trainer should be able to throw together a workout schedule for himself or herself the second they walk into a gym without much thought.