I was speaking with an online client of mine this past week and I had to reminisce on just how far she has come these past few years.
She wasn’t always an online client but recently had transitioned that direction a few months back after moving away from the area. From the day we started working together and even through that transition, she has been EXTREMELY consistent and hard working. If she is reading this, then I hope she understands how appreciative I am of those two things!
I don’t want to jack up her ego too much, so I’m going to be moving on!
The way we first met was in person, at the gym, after she had submitted a training form for a free consultation.
When someone submits an application for coaching, I always like to either meet with them in person or talk to them on the phone. That short interaction can make a big difference in our relationship as client and coach to build some trust right from the beginning.
During our first talk we took a deep dive into not only her goals and expectations but also her background and what prompted this move to work with me. The thing that came up more than once was the intimidation she felt walking into the gym. More than her goals, he wants, and her needs.
That intimidation is real. Anyone who has gone through it knows just how hard it is to get a full workout done when all that’s on your mind is the people around you. My goal off the bat was to make her sessions enjoyable and effective. Two things, that in my head, would make her WANT to come back and do it again. Instead of making her dread the idea of having to workout 2+ times per week.
It must have worked because we have been working together for over 2 years and she is always very eager for her new workout plans! At first she played it off as if she knew nothing about working out (maybe she was trying to make me feel smart or something) but all the while she had great technique and effort on just about every movement we did.
We would do a sit-down talk for a deeper check-in every 4-6 weeks. At one of these meetings she mentioned to me that she still felt VERY INTIMIDATED coming into the gym every session. This is months into our training, after she has met almost everyone in the gym, done about 100 workouts, and started seeing some great results.
So what was It about the gym that caused this sense of intimidation?
It took me until now to realize that I wasn’t really helping her get over her “gym-timidation”. More or less because since she moved online and is going to a big box gym for her workouts, she doesn’t seem to have even half of that intimidation.
At first, yes, there was some anxiousness with a new space and new people. But since those first few weeks, she gets her shit done no problem. What the hell!
I really do think I was part of the problem. After months of working together 1 on 1, I was the person to help set up her exercises and walk her through each workout. Seeing how fast she adjusted to things online, I feel as if I was almost holding her back to feeling fully comfortable being able to do things with a little more freedom.
Sometimes it’s best to just rip the damn band-aid off. Like she did at her new gym. She knew she had to get her workouts in, so she went in there and did her work, despite how she felt. Now, I have been thinking about this more and more over the past week.
How many other people feel the same way? Intimidated, anxious, or even nervous to walk into the gym. Other than just ripping the band-aid off, I want to go over four other tactics to help break that gym intimidation.
#1: Know What You Are Doing
If you had a plan ready to go. Knowing what exercises you are doing, where to do them, and confidence in how to do them, I guarantee you will feel more confident walking through those doors.
This ties back to what I talk about in just about every article, PLANNING! Make your plan before you walk in the gym. If you don’t know how to make a plan, either hire someone to make it for you or go through this article to make your own plan.
Your plan is your roadmap for your workout. If you know you are starting your workout off with goblet squats paired with a DB row, then you already have a vision as to where you are going to do them. What weights you are going to use. You can even think about the form for each exercise and what they might feel like.
If you ever had to do a presentation to your class at school, I bet you had some nerves. Did you plan and rehearse what you were going to say? The same thing can be done for a workout that you are scared to execute.
#2: Make A Friend
Most gyms have adopted a style where they will put their friendliest people up at the front desk to greet new members. These people tend to love human interaction and shooting the shit with everyone who walks through that door.
These front desk people are the first interactions you will have at the gym every session. So introduce yourself, be friendly, and build a relationship with them. Trainers and even front desk staff like talking with people. They wouldn’t be in this type of work if they didn’t (or they just wouldn’t last long enough to even be recognized).
To take it a step further, be completely honest with that person. Tell them you are intimidated by the gym and see if they could take you around and show you some machines. They will know most of the people on the floor anyways and might be able to introduce you to even more people that you will see on a regular basis.
Don’t be scared to ask for help!
If you don’t want to meet any new people, bring your friend or family member with you. They can follow your workout plan and you will have each other to lean on no matter how uncomfortable either of you feel.
Having someone on your side creates a sense of security. You can either build that security with someone new at the gym or bring someone you know that can be your rock through the process. One thing I want to say on the aspect of bringing a friend→ It might work against you in the sense that you are “relying” on that person to not feel intimidated in the gym. If there is a time (or a length of time) where they can’t join you, will you feel confident enough on your own to be able to still go and get your workouts done?
#3: See Results, Get Motivated, Gain Confidence
I made a post about this last week. Check it out HERE.
When you start to work hard, you will see results. Those results start to drive motivation to see even more results. When things move in the right direction we not only trigger that feedback to increase some motivation, we also gain confidence in ourselves to do more.
Confidence radiates. When you start to feel some type of way about yourself and your training, it will carry over into how you feel about the gym. That intimidation you felt at the beginning slowly fades the better and better you do.
You feel like you belong, like you know what you are doing, and that you are only going to get better from that point onward. This doesn’t mean that it’s easy. You need to start, and that might not be as easy as you would like. I think of it in terms of myself starting to run. I hate running, more or less because I am not great at it.
When I start out, everything sucks. It’s hard and makes me feel out of sorts. But there’s one day within the first few weeks where I hit a stride. That particular run feels easier, I crush my split time, and end up tacking on some more distance during that run.
Now I’m excited. I saw a result and I am MOTIVATED as anything for my next run. I am also confident that things won’t suck as much as they have the past few weeks. That next run most likely won’t break any records, it might even be a little slower than the last one, but I still felt 10x better than day one. This is what it takes though, you have to stick with it even when it sucks because it will pay off over time.
You will crave that feeling of seeing results. Those results give you the confidence in yourself to keep pushing forward. A lot of this gym intimidation comes from the thought that everyone else knows what they are doing, except you. If you can prove to yourself that what you are doing works, you will feel in control and confident in what you have to do at the gym.
#4: Change Your Mindset
I am placing this one last because the mental aspect of confidence and intimidation is deeper than we can explain.
With that said, you have goals, and you deserve to hit those goals. What is stopping you? The fact that you feel nervous about working out in front of other people? You think they are going to judge what you are doing?
Screw that. Other people who you don’t know (and frankly, who really don’t care what you are doing) should NOT be the dividing line between where you are now and where you want to be. I hear it often and it upsets me every time, “gym anxiety”.
And I am not upset at the person or the situation, I am upset that a place that is made for people to improve themselves has a general connotation of intimidation.
Starting off as a middle schooler in the gym, I was intimidated as HELL of the high school and college kids who trained there. They trained in groups of 4 or five. Taking up a squat rack for an hour, just putting more weight on the bar, laughing, getting excited, and lifting heavy. I would purposely skip squats and bench press because of the embarrassment I felt putting on a fraction of the weight they were using right next to them. In my head, I’d be judged for how weak I was. Looking back I was just feeding that intimidation. The more I skipped it, the less opportunity I gave myself to get any better. Making me feel even less confident in myself to do those exercises in front of anyone.
Every single person in the gym is there trying to get better in some way. You are at a different part in your journey than all those people, but everyone has done some hard work to get where they are. And for the most part, people understand that. Results don’t just happen by accident.
These people are not judging you, quite the contrary. They are happy to see you working hard and getting results. Even if you don’t feel a deep sense of “community” at the gym you go to, there is a mutual respect people have toward one another.
Although these things might not eradicate your intimidation, I hope they can give you enough help to actually go and get your workouts done. That is my goal here, if you aren’t able to go and do any work, you won’t see progress. But the more you get yourself there and doing the work, the more your confidence will build.
Make your workouts a positive experience and this journey will feel much easier!
In good health,
Jeff
