When the gym is not good for you…

The Times Online today report that Britons spend £200m each year on gym memberships they do not use! While on one hand I am thinking that £200m is a staggering amount of money, I can probably also think of at least ten people I know who have signed up to a gym membership and only gone once, if at all. And I include myself in that figure.

So why do we do this to ourselves?

To be honest it is baffling, as it is quite a large sum of money being wasted – correct me if I am wrong but aren’t most gym memberships between £35-75 per month?

I guess it comes down to the need to satisfy our own emotions, that we need to feel like we are doing something to improve ourselves or solve a problem. And lets be honest, signing up to the gym is a really quick, ‘solid’ commitment that we can make towards a new healthy lifestyle without actually making a commitment at all. What I mean by this is, we can get all gee’d up, motivated and head to the gym for a glossy signing up experience (usually with the mandatory hunk or hunkette to seal the deal) while feeling safe in the knowledge that this is not really any commitment at all. Lets face it, our direct debit will slip silently out of our accounts and the chances are we havent told too many people about our new healthy start and so in reality it will make no difference to our lives whether we go to the gym or not.

This is a classic pressure cooker situation – we feel bad about our health, bad about our bodies, guilty about doing nothing again and again until the pressure builds up. Then we take action, buy a new pair of trainers, join the gym, go once and then the pressure is released and we go back to square one. This is even more classically seen with the people who join the gym, go once and then do not go again for three months – the pressure builds up (with the added pressure of ‘I am paying x pounds per month for something I don’t use!) and then they go again, once, which lets a little pressure out and then they do not go again for another three months…and so on…

So what is the antidote to this?

The answer is to create your own pressure.

To generate the momentum we need to do something that doesnt seem all that attractive (like going to the gym every day) – we need to create pressure and in turn, create discomfort in our current situation so that we are forced to do something about it. This discomfort therefore creates action, which creates momentum, which will create results. If the results are then rewarded then you have the twin forces of the desire to keep improving alongside the encouragement that the effort is making a difference.

How to create the pressure?

My most sustained and disciplined period of exercise was when I was training for the London Marathon in 2004. Although, granted, I had a lot of get up and go – the bottom line is that to most people there seemed no real reason for me to do this. I wasnt overweight (if anything I was underweight), I wasnt that unfit, I was happily working out at the gym twice a week and everything was rosy.

The determination to do this and the motivation to follow through and train every single day for eight months came from the pressure I created for myself.

Firstly, I told everyone I was going to do it.
Secondly, I agreed to sponsor a charity that was very close to a very dear friend.
Thirdly, I then managed to get everyone in the world to sponsor me.

The pressure to do this was then enough for me to drag myself out of bed every day and run at least 6 miles (18 miles on a sunday).

I got into the best shape I think I will ever be. I had more energy than I knew what to do with. I didnt get ill…ever!

So the message is – set yourself some goals, decide on your outcome and then make it impossible to get out of! Tell your friends, make commitments, create and associate more pain to failure than there is pleasure associated to sitting still in front of the TV!

As a nation, I urge us all to stop giving the gyms money for nothing! Lets get our butts in shape!