The Gym

I've been going to the gym lately with the girls on my hall. The fantastic thing about going with girls on your hall is that they see you at your worst, so they don't judge you when you look like a hyperventilating, sweaty mess. It's nice. I can count on one hand the amount of times I had been to the gym before now, and I have to tell you...machines and I do not mix. It isn't that I don't like using the machines in the gym to work out; it's that I can't. I am completely illiterate when it comes to reading those things. There are too many buttons and numbers and symbols, and I just don't have the patience to deal with that. However, these past few days going with other people has helped me to be so much more confident about taking on the machines...except the treadmill. Treadmills scare me. Every time I see one I think about the scene in Monsters University where Mike and Sully are running on treadmills and Mike gets sucked into the belt. Maybe it's irrational, but no thank you. Instead, I use the elliptical. Let's face it: ellipticals are a lot more user-friendly, and I feel like they work out a lot more than treadmills.

Last night, the only free elliptical just happened to be to the right of this guy who was probably twice my size. I don't say that to make myself seem small or to pick on the guy; I say it because it's crucial to what I want to talk about. I didn't think much about him being there. I just hopped onto the machine and starting working out. I don't own a pair of headphones, so I couldn't listen to music while I was running. About 15 minutes in, I felt like I'd been staring at the front of my machine for two hours. I was so ridiculously bored. Now, I try not to be a nosy person. I really, really do. But when I'm in the same place for over 5 minutes, even if I am moving, my eyes start to wander, and they just happened to glance over at the machine to my left.

The very large guy beside me had been working on his elliptical for an hour.

Maybe you go to the gym quite often and are used to using the machines for hours. From what I hear, that isn't out of the norm. However, when I looked at this guy and saw how much work he was putting into it, and noticed that he had been going for a straight hour, it really made me think. Maybe his new year resolution was to lose weight and he'd only been in the gym for a couple of weeks. Maybe that was the only time he was planning on working out this week. Or maybe he found himself in the gym every night running for an hour. I don't know what his story was, but I was impressed. I was impressed that he wasn't half-way doing it. I was impressed that he'd set his mind to improve, and he was working for it. He may decide to give up in a few days, but that one instant of looking at his machine was inspiring.

If you wait for improvement to fall in your lap, you'll never get to the place you need to be.