I spend a decent clip on the treadmill a few times a week which gives me a lot of time to think and people-watch.
I never understood the draw of these hip adduction and abduction machines, the “bad girl” and “good girl” machines as I’ve heard some women call them. These machines are in plain view of the cardio area, and what I see is a constant demand for them, often with a line.
I do my best to show grace to people in the gym because I have no idea of their situation or their reasons for doing what they do.
But damned if this one doesn’t mystify me.
I’m a goal-directed person, when it comes to lifting, any kind of activity.
Why am I doing this? What is it for?
I like working with goal-directed people who do things for a purpose, too.
The many people who don’t think like that are aliens to me.
It isn’t that these folks don’t have a purpose, though. They may not be aware of it, able to put it into clear words, but they’re doing those moves for a reason. Could be as simple as “makes my hips feel sore the next day”.
These hip machines always struck me as over-engineered for what you get from them. A case of majoring-in-the-minors, where the effort would be better spent knocking over a bigger domino.
I like to be a little clearer and more definite in my purposes. The gym and all the things in it are tools for getting specific results. Feeling a burn or getting sore ain’t it.
Most people aren’t clear.
If you’re in the gym to get a feel-good burn today and soreness tomorrow, enjoy yourself. You pay your fees and your business is no business of mine.
But I’m reminded all over again how few people are directed at any real purpose that brings them outside of their comfortable present.
And it’s made me realize, all over again, what a losing battle I’m fighting here.
I started writing here wanting to work with, coach, educate, people who are goal-directed. People who have a definite purpose they are working for. To me that purpose means:
You are over 40 but want to keep looking, moving, and feeling like you are not.
That’s a major theme that you might think people at a certain stage of life would be interested in solving in their lives.
Not so.
It’s the opposite. The more appropriate the person, the less likely they are to care or want to do anything about it.
Many of my recent conversations with prospective clients have me talking with a visibly out of shape person making demands of me to prove myself and my methods and my perspective to him, to his satisfaction.
As if his satisfaction is not the reason why he is in the condition he is in.
Me: Age 46 with abs coming in, the mobility of a healthy 21 year old, and the strength to squat twice body weight as almost an afterthought, all while I’m drinking beers and eating chocolate several times a week.
I’m the only male in my family for at least three generations with normal-range blood pressure. I can show you the chart in My Fitness Pal documenting the week by week loss of weight over the last 12 months which happened directly due to the same nutrition advice I’d give anyone.
I’m living proof that what I do works.
Him: An overflowing belly, hypertension, pre-diabetes. Can’t walk up three stairs without huffing and puffing.
Demands that I jump through 14 hoops to satisfy him that what I do works.
That is a Twilight Zone episode.
But that’s the business model, if you want a business and not a hobby of writing emails that nobody reads.
Taking care of my health for the long run was one of the only good life decisions I ever made. Lucky for me it’s a life decision with some of the highest dividends in return.
Not everyone agrees. The fact that I have to be a dancing clown with my own TV network on social media to even find people who might be interested enough to be terrible clients demonstrates that.
I can’t do anything about the boundless human capacity for self-betrayal and disappointment.
If there’s a theme in my recent writing, it’s that the diet and fitness how-to is almost incidental.
You fail because you are a failure inside yourself.
Your workout and diet don’t even register against that. That’s why I don’t bother talking about it.
I can give away the exact workout and diet plan that I follow each week, which has carried me to where I am now. So what? It’s of zero use to someone who isn’t me, with my own quirks and needs, and is more likely to complain about doing it than stick to it for a month.
My workout and diet plan have zero value to somebody who only cares to do the good girl/bad girl machines and call it a good day. More power to them, but they aren’t going to transform their bodies (if that’s even what they want to do).
A real change starts inside, with what you really want (not the lies you tell yourself) and with the will to do it.
And that’s why I talk about behavior.
Matt Perryman