I hate stupid gym slogans.
Examples:
Cool.
People are told constantly that exercise is tough, exercise is tricky, exercise is hard and somehow for doing it you are putting yourself through an abnormal strain. Motivation on gym posters is all presented as 'feel the burn', 'embrace the pain' and other irritating catch phrases. The thing is, whilst this is all well and good if you are a masochist, in fact most people don't like pain and therefore you're immediately put into a negative mindset. Internet ads show grimacing faces leering out at us, tv segments have puffing and panting groups of gym patrons looking like they're attempting to squeeze a watermelon out of their most private orifice.
This is all well and good if you treat exercise as a form of auto-flagellation but as I mentioned, the vast majority of people (myself included) avoid pain. You can talk about endorphins being released during a workout until the chocolate covered doughnuts come home but if the general image being portrayed is that of exquisite pain then is it really any surprise that around 62% of adults in England and 75% in the USA are overweight? We work all day so that we can earn enough to enjoy pleasure in life, and failing that to just try and avoid displeasure. So why spend your hard earned cash on a gym membership when a pint in the pub will release those same endorphins at a fraction of the cost?
The thing is, exercise has been a normal part of every single human being's life for 99.99999999999% of the time we have existed on this planet. What we call 'exercise' is day-to-day life for every single other animal on the planet. It is everyday, it is boring it's... normal.
This was the revelation that finally spurred me to peel myself off the sofa, heave my gelatinous frame out the front door and to go for a jog. I won't talk about how well I did because that's boring and I don't want to blow my own trombone. The motivation though wasn't an inspirational quote about how 'pain is my slave yarrrrr', it was simply the revelation that exercise is just exercise. It doesn't have to be screaming in pain whilst some overly chiselled employee screams back into your face. Does a lioness sit in a spin class with the lights off whilst the leader of the pack shouts inspirational quotes about sunlight over the Serengeti at her? No, she goes out everyday and runs. Medieval man may have stunk to high heaven and died of syphilis aged 32 but his daily routine would have almost entirely involved high intensity resistance training from sun up to sun down, plowing fields, beating metal or servicing the local lords and ladies.
Treating exercise as a painstaking commitment, as an act of self-sacrificing devotion at the bullshit church of self idolatry puts off the vast majority of the population. I know it put me off. It isn't vanity that drives most people, it's routine, and creating exercise as a normal everyday part of a routine is what creates a healthy person. Walking past a window with a large poster of a sweaty man roaring at a pair of battleropes isn't as motivating as 'it's 6 o'clock, it's gym time'. Fad exercise trends like crossfit, spin classes or wine yoga may work for a while as the eager beavers and new years eve-ers jump on the bandwagon, but you look at a spin class today and again in 2 years and I can guarantee the turnover will be about 90% or higher. On most occasions people don't hold on to things when they're told they hurt, even if they don't realise that's why they're not holding onto it.
Don't get me wrong, exercise is painful (not in an ow ow ow sense, if it's that then see a doctor, or Brad from the gym reception), if it isn't hard then you're doing it wrong and yes I realise that's a massively hypocritical thing to say as that's probably written across the walls of most of the gyms in London, but that is absolutely no reason for it to be held up as a marketing technique. No-one actually likes the pain. No-one can embrace the pain and people that say they do are a) lying and b) very stupid because no-one is impressed and no-one cares. We push through the pain though because the pain is normal, it is something to be expected. A cheetah's legs will burn like the sun as it's chasing its prey but it doesn't stop to congratulate itself because it knows that this is totally fine; a buildup of lactic acid as a result of anaerobic respiration and so it carries on until it physically can't or it catches its prey. Then tomorrow it will do it again, and the next day and the next until it dies.
When you stop treating exercise: running, working out, punching a bag whilst softly crying, whatever it may be, as a special occasion, as something that was novel or impressive and more as something that is just part of the routine is when you will start to see real change. When going for a 5km run is as everyday as brushing your teeth you just wait and see how easy a 10km run is. Our ancestors have done it for millennia without anyone telling them they were special, noone was telling them to 'do battle with your lazy demon' (just doing battle with actual demons).
Being fit is good for you is the bottom line. It makes us happy, it keeps us going longer, it boosts moral and confidence, it helps your body to work because that is what your body is designed to do. Stop thinking about the pain or the hard work, there's hard work in everything, there's no-one advertising groceries with someone screaming at an apple. No-one convinces you to buy baby nappies with a slogan like 'fight through the hardship' (though that would be fantastic). Think of it as another thing to do, another tick on the list and one day you'll realise that it isn't actually that hard at all.
In fact it's really quite normal.