Tuesday, June 4, 2019

My darling, my barbell? I don't think so.



It is always dangerous to generalize, so I hesitate to say this, but, I’m going to get crazy and do it anyway:  no one totally loves going to the gym for itself.  Maybe people like the feeling they get from having been there.  Maybe they like the music in the spin class, or that guy who is always hanging out by the cable machine, but mostly we go to the gym for reasons other than love for barbells, dumbbells, and cardio machines.

We go so that when we go on vacation, we can take the fabulous hike up the cliffs that overlook the sea.  We go so that we can help our older relatives shift that sleeper sofa without spending the next week in a close personal relationship with an ice pack.  We go so that we can run up and down the sidelines at all those soccer games our kids are playing in, yelling encouragement (if we go to yell imprecations at the refs or a bunch of criticisms at players, I have to say that I don’t support that!!!!).

Motivation will rarely come from the iron or the rubber or the plastic we find in the gym itself.  It comes from the experiences we get to have after we’ve used all those things, the ones that open our hearts and make our spirits soar.

Why are we going to work out today?

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