Conquering the Fear of Weights

December 1st 2022. I woke up at 5 am, freshened up, packed my bag, picked up the car keys and stepped outside. It was pitch black and I drove my red Swift guided by its lights. Seven minutes later, I stopped in front of the Titan showroom and took the lift to the fourth floor – the lift was a little rickety which is usually the case in such buildings. I took my first tentative step inside the gym. The first feeling was that of intimidation.

The definition of gym – in my head

I was never a fan of gyms – they made me very uncomfortable. Right from childhood, I had been thin with skinny arms. And in my head, gyms were a place for bodybuilders with huge muscles on every part of their body – I could not relate to it at all. And once you started gym, you had to take protein powders (which would make you abnormally disproportionate) and before you knew it, you would be having supplements and steroids of all kinds. Everyone knows that, right? Going to the gym for “fitness” was not something I had encountered growing up. 

The definition of fitness – in my head

Fitness had a few definitions. One of them was running and cardiovascular exercises. All you had to do was get 20-30 minutes of walking or jogging and that would take care of the entire body. It’s ok if you aren’t able to do it regularly when you’re young – once you are older and have more time, you could always walk a little extra and catch up. If you wanted to go a step further and improve your flexibility, you could get into Yoga. That should tick all the boxes for overall fitness, right? Wrong!

Challenging definitions

November 2021 – I had just turned 31 and, for the first time in my life, could feel my body slowing down. It was taking effort to drag myself around. Lethargy was a constant. And I realised that I was doing something wrong. I had grand plans of travelling the world throughout my life – I just couldn’t do it with a degrading body. That moment of realization marked the beginning of the journey.

In July 2022, I spoke to Samarth, a fitness expert and he told me how weight training is a crucial component of leading a long and healthy life. He explained in simple words how muscles become weaker with age and the body starts breaking them down. So it was crucial to include weight training as part of the exercise routine – nothing else could substitute the benefits. That triggered a curiosity in me and I started reading all the information I could find. I realised that I would have to step into the dreaded gym and there was no running away from it. 

Removing the mental obstacles

Fine, so we are going to the gym. But what exercises have to be done? How to ensure that all body parts are covered? What if I’m doing exercises incorrectly and it leads to injury? What if I end up worse than when I started?

The brain can put up an admirable amount of resistance by raising a ton of questions.

• I need a smart watch to track my VO2, calories burnt and a ton of other data, right?
• Makes sense, but which one should I buy – there are so many in the market!
• I need new gym clothes because the ones I have are almost a decade old from college – how can I go without that?
• Earpods are a must, right? Which ones should I buy?

But I decided to side-step all of this by looking for a personal trainer. A fitness expert who would tell me what to do and all I would have to do is listen to him and follow his instructions. I didn’t want to be in “thinking” mode – the only thing that would work is “doing” mode. So, I asked around and met Jamal. The plan was to get personal training for a month or two and then go forward on my own.

I decided to reward myself with a basic smart watch if I finished 6 months at gym consistently. And then clothes at the one year mark.

Day 1 at the gym

The first tentative step that I took in the gym on the 1st of December 2022 was scary. Jamal asked me what my main objective was – I told him I just wanted to make workouts a habit. No weight loss goals, no weight gain goals, no bulk up goals. Just do it regularly, 3 days a week, every week. By his reaction, I guessed not many people came in with this weird objective.

Day 1 was mostly warm up exercises – treadmill, jumping jacks, squats and a few exercises with 1.5kgs. I was dead by the end of it – Jamal said that we hadn’t even started with actual exercises! But I was happy that I finished day 1! I also told him that I didn’t want very strict dietary restrictions – my brain would go into complete rebellion mode if that happened. He made it easy for me and said to reduce the following as much as possible – sugar and maida (refined flour), add Omega-3 and increase protein (eggs, chicken, pulses) as much as possible.

Slow and steady progress

Judging progress was tough. I was not fat to begin with – so there was no scope of a “Before-After” picture. But I could feel that I was losing the fat that had accumulated around my belly during the Covid years. I could feel my body getting more toned and a lot of the random fat around my neck, arms and legs started melting away. But here are some “Before-After” lifestyle changes that I was super excited to see:

Tomorrow, 6 AM

I treated these words as gospel. Jamal would send “Tomorrow 6 AM” the night before my workout days. And I would have been thinking of a 100 reasons why my energy levels were not good enough to go to the gym the next day. But as soon as I saw this message (even if I was at an office party that night), it was a trigger to stop thinking and start doing. I would pack my gym bag with shoes and a water bottle. I would lay out my workout clothes and car keys for easy access. In the kitchen, I would fill the kettle with water and keep a lemon next to it. Doing everything possible to reduce friction in the morning. All I had to do was wake up, get dressed, switch on the kettle, have warm lemon water and leave. Once again, thank you James Clear (author of Atomic Habits) for the actionable insights and your contribution to my weight training journey!

Keeping track

I downloaded a free habit tracker app on my phone where I could keep note of the days when I went to the gym. It would highlight the weeks when I would meet my goal of 3 days in a week. I would try to ensure that even if I missed one of my usual gym days, I would go on a different day and ensure that the weekly goal was met. Here is a snapshot of my tracker. 

Adding more data points to strengthen motivation

In January 2023, I discovered the Huberman Lab podcast and I can say, without overstating, that it has been an absolute game-changer. It is the single best source of understanding the science of the body that is available on the internet today. The episodes are long – stretching up to 3 hours at times – but contain a lot of information to understand the body better and optimize it for immediate and long term health. Here again, I heard the benefits of weight training and how it helps in improving the response of the nervous system and brain among others. I could go on in great detail but I’ll leave that for another time (leave a comment below if you’d like to read more about the things I’ve learnt from the podcast). This further empowered me with motivation to continue doing what I was doing.

Is it a habit yet?

Some people say that if you do something for 18-60 days, it becomes a habit. I’m not sure if weight training has become a habit yet. I am writing this on 2nd December 2023 – exactly one year after I started my weight training journey. My habit tracker says that I’ve completed 124 sessions in the last year. That is roughly 2.4 sessions in a week. There were some weeks where I couldn’t go because I was travelling or sick. Leaving those weeks aside, I did not miss a single week. I feel at least 4-5 years younger, with more energy. It’s been months since I’ve felt the mid-morning lethargy bouts.

I got a basic smartwatch after 6 months – I bought one from Noise and ended up discarding it within 3 months because I couldn’t bother charging it again and again. The delayed reward system worked!

Jamal is still the core reason why I go for the workouts – he ensures that the exercises are different every time and keeps challenging me every single session. And everything gets triggered by his late evening message.

So, tomorrow, 6 AM?

If you like reading this blog, do leave a comment below – it gives us much needed encouragement! Also consider subscribing, it’s absolutely free and I’m sure you’ll have a few valuable takeaways.

Also check out the below blogs on related topics:

• How I Overcame the Resistance to Writing – Fighting against internal resistance to make writing a habit – here’s what it took me!
• Getting into the flow – part 2 of the story about how I started being regular on this blog
• Bridging Time and Connecting Generations Through Podcast – bringing the story of Remani teacher to the world