It’s that time of the year again in the fitness industry.
Nope, I’m not talking about New Year’s resolutioners.
At least not directly.
Rather, I’m talking about the gym faithful. The people who have been consistently dedicated to their training over the past few years now.
These are the people who love, love, love to complain about the aforementioned New Year’s resolutioners.
How they clog up the gyms, don’t understand etiquette and are destined to be banished to the “see, I told you they wouldn’t stick it out until February” pile.
Even Equinox, the eucalyptus-scented towel and beautifully-tiled steam room paradise that seemingly would have a lot to gain by trapping these newbies into their famously hard-to-get-out-of yearlong contracts while motivation was high, decided not to accept any new members on January 1st this year in a not-so-clever marketing ploy designed to show solidarity with the gym stalwarts.
I must confess - not proudly - that I used to be one of these people myself.
I was going to the gym five or six days a week. I was the one who knew the names of everyone in the squat racks and cable crossover stations at 6PM on Monday nights. I was the one sneaking in a final session on Christmas Eve before an early closing time sent the gym staff home to their family parties and eggnog.
Who the fuck were these people invading MY sacred space?!?!
I’m not proud of this mindset.
In fact, I’ve come to loathe it.
I had the honor of sharing the gym floor with a group of our coaches during one of our prep sessions last week. For those of you who don’t know, each day every coach who coaches your sessions comes together to do our program themselves. We feel it’s the only way to understand the ins and outs of the exercises and structure and cuing as well as allowing them to develop a true empathy for what our members are experiencing during training.
It’s actually quite a powerful hour.
While I was reracking my dumbbells after a few sets of incline bench I overheard the rest of the group discussing how many new people we were seeing in the gym now that the holidays were over.
But rather than disparage these inexperienced folks or complain about the need to get them up to speed and give them extra care in the times when the gym is the busiest, they actually went completely the other way.
“Everyone has the right to fitness. Everyone deserves to be able to train this way.”
That was the rallying cry as everyone nodded their heads in agreement.
I have experienced many memorable moments in the gym. From my own personal PRs to watching clients overcome their fear of box jumps to just sharing some laughs with training partners between sets of deadlifts.
But I don’t know if I’ve ever been so proud as I was to be on the training floor when the team that we assembled decided to voice that helping people and democratizing fitness was more important than gatekeeping and making people who are brave enough to take the intimidating first step forward towards realizing their goals feel shitty about their decision.
Our mission is to create environments where we take training seriously and do what works so our community can experience their most powerful selves.
And it’s very hard to do any of that if we scare people from training, regardless of what month is at the top of the calendar page.
I’m lucky. I’ve managed to make training a consistent part of my life for more than twenty years now. And I’ve been privileged enough to have some great environments in which to do it.
I don’t need to make fitness my New Year’s resolution.
But I am resolved to help anyone who wants to join me along the way. Regardless of when they decide to make that decision.
It’s the best way I can think of to pay back this thing that has given me so much.
I feel like I owe it to them.
I feel like I owe it to you.