Romanticizing the gym
How I've turned a chore into a devotion, and pouring my heart out to the barbell.
Once upon a time, I stood at 112kg. Fast forward to present times, my bodyweight gracefully oscillates between 70 and 72kg. The golden question I am continually asked is “how?” How did I lose the weight? How did I stay consistent with diet and training? The list of queries feels unbounded. The answer, honestly, isn’t rocket science. A simple cocktail of unwavering fortitude and at least 90% consistency can set anyone with the desire to achieve any sort of fitness feat well on their way. But beneath the discipline and occasional anxiety-induced body dysmorphia lies a deep-seated affection for the metals. I am not metal-sexual, but I fell profoundly in love with the gym.
The unfolding of affection
Like anyone’s infant days in the gym, mine were animated by frustration, consistent soreness, unwarranted rest days, and frustratingly flailing progress. Going to the gym felt less like an enjoyable experience and more like a relentless chore. As time wore on, however, I realized an abysmal mindset shift: from demonizing the pain I was enduring to treating it as a privilege. Billie Jean King’s motto, “Pressure is a privilege,” which found its way to me through CBum (6x Mr. Olympia), deeply resonates with this mindset of relishing in suffering. What a joy it is, truly, to have been chosen to “set the standard” (coincidentally another CBum slogan) for the rest. This established a precedent of how suffering by choice is the heart, earnestly looking towards the growth and good fortune that will inevitably manifest from it.
Adjustments for an enduring love
To truly cultivate and enjoy this evolving journey, I made a couple of deliberate adjustments.
Retail therapy for gym outfits. Dress good, feel good. Imagine spending every day in a shared space and not dressing your best—what would your gym-crush think? Investing in gym wear became a positive ritual.
Curating diverse workout playlists. My music choices now fluctuate with my mood, ranging from ear-bursting Afrobeats to mellow Indie. This sonic variety ensures my mind stays engaged and my spirit lifted, despite the intensity of the lift.
Choosing fun workout movements. I consciously veered from strictly optimal and fact-based workouts to incorporate lifts I genuinely look forward to. Bench pressing, for instance, may not always be the single most optimal chest exercise, but I enjoy it immensely, so it’s usually the first lift for chest day.
Changing the scenery. Gym hopping, outdoor workouts, and even dance class sessions keep the journey fresh and exciting, preventing monotony from setting in.
Embracing ‘Gym dates.’ This doesn’t necessarily mean the fairer sex; even platonic friends can make your lifts a fun, shared experience. Alternatively, choosing a gym-crush whom you look forward to staring at (discreetly, of course) can be a hack—debatable, perhaps.
The inevitable pause: Embracing rest days
Overdosed on caffeine at the break of dawn, I sat in the check-in lounge for my flight, the jitters definitely pronouncing their presence in capital letters. Naturally, caffeine’s effects on me typically emanate through standard heart palpitations as it breaks the blood-brain barrier to block adenosine receptors (adenosine is what makes you feel tired and groggy). This time, however, it seemed to circulate in a counter-cyclical pattern, as if sending signals to my heart to become a more self-sufficient unit, and that familiar anxiety about my romantic life slowly crept in.
Now, the stories about my unfortunate affairs of the heart need not be carved into the permanence of a digital footprint, because the line of best fit simply can’t map out how scattered they’ve been. What struck me, though, was the realization that any damage i.e. spikes in weight or defaulting from my diet incurred during the stint of absence would be truly insignificant to my long-term fitness trajectory. Yet, this truth, this calm reassurance, was somehow not enough. The anxiety during rest days, however irrational, remains.
For people who don’t understand this feeling, this profound connection with the gym, I hope you get to experience it one day. It’s like finding a marriage partner you actually look forward to seeing every day, despite how mundane or bland every conversation might sometimes be.
At the end of the day, Socrates made it clear: “It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”
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3 Things I’ve learnt
“It’s everyone else’s first time living too.” A stark reminder to desist from judging others too harshly for unfamiliar reactions to nuanced situations that might be misaligned with our own innate beliefs and heuristics if faced with the same predicament. So, extend grace.
Source: Carpe Diem Dad on Medium.
“…fortune favors the prepared, and good things come to those who take action”—Audentes fortuna iuvat (translation: fortune favors the bold). If a truth has been reiterated in different languages, across different decades, and still alludes to the same essence, then it must indeed hold some merit.
Source: Gonzo Capitalism by Chris Guillebeau; on how a social studies teacher garnered fame from TikTok and is now relishing from the spoils and unlimited potential of a social media presence, spoils that she would not have realized if she shied away from recording her first “cringe” TikTok video.
The blockchain is the paparazzi of the Bitcoin world. Picture this: The first Blockchain is a celebrity called Jennifer. Jennifer is followed around by the paparazzi everywhere she goes and is bombarded with pictures, which are uploaded to a file every 10 minutes. This file is called a ‘block’. The block contains pictures of not only Jennifer but her friends too, and wherever they were every 10 minutes. Hence, within newly created files, there’s always a picture of Jennifer and her friends from the past. These pictures from the past link the pictures from the present through a continuous chain forming the ‘blockchain.’
Source: The Bitcoin Big Bang by Brian Kelly; an analogy about how the blockchain technology works for Bitcoin transactions.