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089 - I gave up on going to the gym. Here’s why…

Hello there, Kevin here with another episode of The Feel Good English podcast, the only podcast that is helping you naturally improve your English while you are having fun learning about life lessons, business lessons and today, about health.

Actually I am going to talk about something I’ve been doing recently something that has changed, something that I am experimenting with. I like to experiment, try out different things.

Try out, great phrasal verbal, try out, experiment. And am going to tell you why I stopped going to the gym, maybe forever, we’ll see. Maybe I’ll miss it in the future and go back. But also about a book that I found that made me, that helped me come to this conclusion and cancel my gym membership and do something totally different.

I am going to share with you five reasons why I think this could be a good new plan to keep me on track, to keep me consistent with a fitness routine and you will also learn some English vocabulary about working out, phrasal verbs.

For example do you know what a pull up is? “Let’s do some pull ups.” So you will learn some stuff like that. And if you have been looking for a new fitness routine, if you don’t like the gym…maybe you love the gym, maybe you love going to the gym, being around people, lifting weights, getting big muscles, listening to Rihanna play on the radio.

There is nothing wrong with that, the gym obviously is very valuable to many many many people, But, if you don’t like the gym, if you have been looking for something different I will give you some ideas on what you can do as well.

And if anything, if none of this is interesting, at least you will be learning some more English to build your English speaking muscle, yes?

So let’s get into this episode and learn all about body weight exercises and why I don’t like the gym.

So as I talk a lot about in this podcast, if something is not working, if you are struggling to do something, if you don’t see the results, it’s good to take a step back and to look at the situation more objectively and see why am I not doing this? Why have I not been going to the gym for the last two months but I keep telling myself, “Oh, I should get back to the gym.” Get back, return

Well, that’s what influenced to me to try something different out, as it had been a couple of months I hadn’t gone to the gym and I realized you know what, this isn’t exciting, why force myself to do something that is not exciting? So I found this book, read the first few chapters and said “This looks interesting, let’s try this out.”

And the first reason I’m going to talk about why the gym didn’t really work for me is just a practical thing; it takes a lot of time to go to the gym.

Now my gym is only, well, it’s a fifteen minute bike ride or a five minute drive so it is not far. Here in the US we have a lot of gyms, but the time it took to get ready, go down to the car, drive, get there, put my stuff away, start working out, finish and then go in reverse, get my stuff, get in the car, drive home.

And if I didn’t have a car, then I would take my bike which was a half hour total trip round trip, which means going to the gym and coming back from the gym, round trip; just like on an airplane, round trip flight.

But it took a long time, so you go to the gym for an hour and a half, this adds another half hour so you’re talking like a two hour time frame, you need to plan two hours in your day to go to the gym. And often I ran out of time, I didn’t have any time left, I ran out of time so I didn’t go.

Now sometimes when the schedule would work, I would make time for that, it would be priority but lately it just wasn’t happening.

So this body weight workout from this book, not going do you do it in your home or your apartment on the floor, which takes zero time to get to; unless you have a huge mansion, then good for you, you probably have your own home gym in your huge house; but I live in an apartment so when I stand up am I at the gym. Cool huh?

Plus, these workouts are thirty minutes, thirty minute workout. Believe me, they are tough, you get to your limit where you can’t do any more exercises, especially now that I am new, I get pissed off, angry, you know pissed off, like “Oh god, this is too hard.”

And it is quite frustrating in the beginning like everything else, in the beginning you are going to struggle.

But it is so much more efficient with time, total time is forty five minutes let’s say. So if you find yourself short on time it could be a good option.

Number two, it’s always been more important for me to have overall health and not just big beautiful muscles. What do I mean by overall health? Meaning full body health, working all of the muscles in my body and what these exercise are are kind of functional exercises, so functional exercise mimics a real life movement.

So some examples, here are some examples of exercises. If you do a lunge, a lunge is where you take one leg and you put it forward and you bend down and then you push back until you are standing. And when you keep doing that, you are bending down and the pushing up.

Or a squat. Squat is where you stand straight and just squat. It’s a verb to squat is to lower your body, lower your butt towards the ground and then you would stand up again. You don’t touch the ground with your butt, that would be hard to do; if you can good for you. Oh, that’s rhymes. But that’s another one, squatting.

Or with your arms you are doing push ups. So push up is where you lay on the ground and then you push your body up with your arms; so you are kind of at an angle, your feet are touching the ground, your arms are straight up and you push your body up and down, up and down, that’s called a push up.

Or the very challenging, which I can’t do yet, the pull ups. Pull ups are where you hang from something above you, you grab a pole, let’s say you grab a pole, or in your house you can grab your door and you pull your whole body up.

Now I am very tall, so it is hard for me to do a pull up now, but I am recording this now in March maybe in a couple of months from now, 6 months from now I will be like I can say “I can do a lot of pull ups.” We’ll see.

But anyway, these are exercise that actually mimic, replicate movements that you do in life, building the muscles that you might be using day to day, which I like the idea of. As opposed to at the gym where you are laying on a bench, you are laying flat on a bench, you put a bar above you and you push it up in the air and you pull it down.

Now it’s very uncommon that we are laying down flat on something and pushing something above our head. Now if you are in a circus that is something you would be doing; you would be pushing bodies up above you, or pushing heavy bodies above you, above your chest. But in general, no, that wouldn’t be overall, that is isolating very specific muscles.

So overall health, helping your core, your back, your deep muscle tissue, all of these things that we use day to day is important to me.

Number three, very obvious, if you work out at home, it is free. Or you could buy some equipment, some cheap equipment. The other day I bought push up bar, remember push up, to push your body off of the ground. But it was fifteen dollars, twenty dollars, but basically you’re using the furniture in your house, so it’s free.

In the US they are very tricky, these gym memberships, they are very smart they charge you just enough so you continue to pay even if you are not going. For example I was paying thirty dollars, thirty dollars is a gym membership to all of the different gyms in my city that were the same company, and it was only thirty bucks a month, very cheap.

But I didn’t go and I said I might as well keep the membership; might as well, there is a good expression for you, I might as well. Meaning I just, I should, I should keep the membership, it is only thirty bucks. But I cancelled, so now it’s zero bucks.

Number four, if you are traveling, if you are not in your city, if you are on vacation, if you are traveling for business, you can work out wherever you are; a hotel room would be perfect for this. If your gym is closed, no excuse; stand up, you’re at the gym.

So having the idea that you are creating a fitness routine in your life based on exercises that you can do anywhere, anytime, forever, is legit; that seems very valuable, very convenient, very practical, that you take your gym wherever you go.

And number five, that last one here, there’s probably a lot more reasons but these are just the ones that I came up with, that I thought of today.

You don’t have to do that long cardio, running on the treadmill; the treadmill is the belt that goes in a circle that you run on top of. Or a bicycle, an exercise bike, those different machines; where you are running on them for twenty to thirty minutes. I never liked doing that, it was always a struggle. You don’t do that with these types of workouts.

You do thirty minutes of hard intense muscle training and then you are done and you have been doing cardio that whole time as well. If you like running and I have had phases of where I like running, go outside and take a jog; that works for you

But it is not necessary if you want to see results, if you want to look toned, toned is where your muscles are showing because you have burned a lot of fat. You don’t need those long cardio workouts, which a lot of people go to the gym for.

I remember a guy used to walk thirty minutes to get to the gym and he got to the gym and then he would walk another fifteen minutes on a machine to warm up, which made zero sense to me. He had already had a thirty minute warm up walking to the gym. Anyway.

So those are five reasons why I’m trying to do this. Why am I sharing this with you? Well, maybe it is something you can start doing if you have been trying to find at better workout routine for you; but more so, I’m sure you learned to some English vocabulary today. Did you not?

And that will do it for today’s episode. Are you pumped up? Excited? I hope so. And then again the name of the book is You Are Your Own Gym and if you type that in,you will find his website, the apps, videos on YouTube of course.

So check it out, take a look and if you are going to do this, send me an email kevin @feelgoodenglish.com, let me know your plan, we can talk about it. And in a few months from now I can give you an update and say “I love this! I am looking really strong, my muscles are big, I’m feeling better I have mastered the art of home workouts.” Or, maybe I will just say, “Ah, no. That was a waste of time I am over that.” Well you never know, that is the point of experimenting.

Until the next episode, have a beautiful day, put a smile on your face and keep moving forward.

Bye bye.