There have been no shortage of great nicknames in the history of the NBA.
There’s Kobe “Black Mamba” Bryant. George “The Iceman” Gervin. Allen “The Answer” Iverson.
Magic Johnson’s nickname is so good that most people don’t know that his actual first name is Earvin.
But my favorite of them all goes to Jason “White Chocolate” Williams.
Williams managed a middle-of-the-road 12 seasons in the league as a point guard. He was mostly known for his incredibly flashy dribbling, eyes-in-the-back-of-his-head passes and, as his nickname might imply, having a playing style typically associated with black players even though he, himself, is white.
Williams played his college ball originally at Marshall but when his head coach, Billy Donovan, took a job at the University of Florida, Williams transferred to that school.
Admittedly, Williams didn’t care much about academics. He’d routinely miss classes and skip scheduled sessions with his tutors, threatening his eligibility. The problem got so bad that Donovan threatened Williams.
“For every class, tutor or study session you miss, you are going to have to get up the next morning at 6AM and run miles,” Donovan told Williams.
And for the next week, every day, Williams missed his academic obligations, got up at 6AM and started running.
When confronted about this by Donovan, Williams replied, “Coach, how about we just cancel all these classes and I’ll just run in the morning.”
This is a beautiful example of consequences not being sufficient to prevent specific actions.
And this is something I see in fitness all the time.
You have a desire. You want to get stronger. Increase your odds at longevity. Complete a marathon. Feel confident taking your shirt off at the waterpark. Finally get a six pack.
But the consequences of not showing up just aren’t that severe.
Unless you’ve had a heart attack or are on the verge of losing your scholarship or you are about to fail your fitness test that gets you into the police academy, choosing to go to the gym after a long day or when it’s raining outside or you just don’t feel like it feels like an easy decision.
“How much can this one workout really matter,” you ask yourself.
The truth is, any one workout, in isolation, is meaningless.
But let’s be honest with each other here. None of this is in isolation. The one workout is an indication of typical behavior. It’s a momentum killer. It’s another version of “I’ll start on Monday” or “I’ll wait until the New Year” or “Let me take it easy for the Summer”.
And it’s not that periods of less training aren’t applicable or even beneficial. But those are earned after years and years of training.
On my favorite place on the internet, Reddit, there are countless threads of young men who, after a robust 4 months of training with moderate consistency, are at the end of their ropes because they haven’t achieved the body of their dreams after such a soul-draining sustained effort.
But we all know the body of your dreams isn’t built in one consistent quarter. It’s years of dedicated and thoughtful effort.
Perhaps the consequences of missing any one training session aren’t that impactful but if this is your pattern you are robbing yourself of the actual benefits of training. Instead you are in an endless loop of starting over, feeling like a beginner and being at the furthest point from realizing your goals which, we already established, is a long road even when you are doing everything right.
OK, I’ve beaten this to death more than Joe Pesci beats an NPC in a Scorsese movie. Let’s just accept that you need to recognize the consequences of your actions in order to have a reasonable expectation of what you’ll actually get out of training.
“That’s nice, Dan,” you mutter to yourself softly as you stare at your bottles of untaken supplements and barely-used keychain barcode tag that gives you access to the gym you signed up for seven months ago. “What do I do about it?”
Ah, now you are asking the right questions. Let me try to provide some remarkably simple and obvious answers that will not only make you question why you are reading this in the first place but also actually provide solutions so you don’t face the consequences of not going to the gym.
Pay more
Most people shop for gyms or nutrition coaches or running groups based primarily on one factor: price.
Specifically, which one is moderately decent enough for me to tolerate and costs me the least.
And that seems to make a lot of sense. Truth be told, I could get a great workout at a $20 per month Planet Fitness-type facility.
But if you have repeatedly joined inexpensive gyms and stopped going, the low price may actually be part of the problem. Even the Scrooge McDucks among us don’t feel bad about pissing away $20 per month.
So try doing the opposite. Sign up for a gym that is a bit beyond what you are comfortable spending.
If you are used to the $20 bargain, try an $80 per month mid-tier gym. If that’s your current level, try a $300 per month premium facility. You can, of course, progress this to group fitness classes, semi-private training all the way up to a personal trainer who will charge you hundreds of dollars per session whether you show up to the session or not.
The point is, making the price high enough that it would be painful if you didn’t go is, logically enough, a great method to get you to go.
And before you think this is all just self-serving advice, a recent industry study found that people were eleven times (11 times!!) more likely to attend a group, semi-private or personal training session than they were to go to the gym on their own.
Find a crew
Training around other people of your choosing will do three things.
The first is it will make the training more impactful. Everyone trains harder when others are suffering and struggling alongside them. This is human nature.
The second is it will make you more likely to go because you will feel worse about letting others down than letting yourself down. Which, perversely enough, is also human nature.
The last is that it will make training more fun.
Listen, I get it. The gym is your “me” time. And you just want to put on your over-priced over-the-ear headphones and crank early 80s Madonna while you do some terrible lat pulldowns.
You know what else is your “me” time? Sitting on the couch eating half a family size pack of Jelly Bellies while your favorite gym leggings are laid out on your bed and you decide you’ll start working out again tomorrow.
So find a squad, build in some accountability, and get to work.
Get on a program
The gym is crowded (because you didn’t spend enough on your membership) and even though you know you’re supposed to train legs at some point during the week, why not just sneak in your third day of bench press and bicep curls instead of waiting for a squat rack and call it a day?
Most people don’t follow a program because 1) they don’t understand the basic principles of exercise science, so they don’t know how to put one together for their goals or 2) they like the exercises they like and know so they default to those or 3) they didn’t even realize their training was supposed to have any structure.
Let’s face facts. Strength training is not the most complicated thing in the world but it is a science (which is why, coincidentally, it is called exercise science). There are foundational principles that will help you make progress, keep you injury free and use your time efficiently.
The problem isn’t that you don’t know how to program. The problem is that you think (particularly if you are a guy) that you should somehow intuitively understand programming like it is your birthright. “I’ve been lifting weights since I’m 16, of course I know what I’m doing” is probably what you are yelling at your screen right now as you read this.
But, be honest here. How have your partial-range-of-motion-leg-presses and every-Monday-three-sets-of-ten-bench-press been contributing to your results? Probably not much since you adapted to them decades ago.
A program has to systematically progress while also addressing your desired outcomes. Plus, following one will actually make training much more engaging and fun while also making it more effective.
A program also gives each session a job. When every workout is improvised, skipping one feels meaningless because there was never any larger plan to disrupt. But when Tuesday’s squat session builds into Friday’s work and this week builds into next week, missing becomes more tangible. You are not just skipping exercise. You are breaking the chain.
So find one. Or, even better, seek out a coach to design a specific one for you. But don’t just wing it.
Seemingly I’m asking you to sacrifice your wallet (by paying more for a gym), your autonomy (by committing to a training group) and your freedom (by having you follow a program). Which have probably earned me the nickname of “Buzzkill” or “The Bummer” (man, I really wish my name started with a “B” so these would be cool alliterations).
The funny thing is that these restrictions are actually what create freedom. You stop debating whether to train, wondering what to do, and hoping motivation arrives. The decision has already been made. You paid, your people are waiting, and the program tells you what comes next.
And I think that sounds a lot better than sitting on the couch wondering why you can’t get yourself to go.