If you survive this, you’ll survive the gym floor.
STAGE 1: Fear
It’s normal to fear a facility where people swan in-and-out at ungodly hours, in unforgivable outfits, drinking unidentifiable liquids. If you weren’t afraid, your fight or flight instinct is broken and you need to see to that before you proceed any further. This stage is characterised by stalker-like activity such as driving by the gym and trawling their online presence.
STAGE 2: Anxiety
Once you have conquered the Fear stage, the slightly more proactive Anxiety stage takes over. This is the stage you are at least able to set foot in to said facility and make general enquiries.
STAGE 3: Anger
What? You mean I have to come here 3-days a week? I have to sweat? I have to put in effort, do things, and eat better? How very dare you insult me with this outrageous propaganda. How very dare you imply that exercise will add years to my life, make me look younger, reverse the effects of gravity, make me feel mentally sharper, positive and clear minded and make me generally not dead. I’m calling the ACCC. Then making a Facebook post about it.
STAGE 4: Bargaining
After the ACCC blocks your crazy-ass number, your outraged social media post is less than a trillionth of a byte of cyber-garbage that has long been replaced by a cat-falling-backward-off-a-kitchen-bench-video and you’re feeling sorry for your bloated miserable self schleping on the sofa demolishing an entire wheel of baked brie and maple with a box of jatz*, you think to yourself:
Maybe.
Possibly.
Feasibly:
Going to the gym may be of some benefit to me?
STAGE 5: Acceptance
You decide that scientific research, decades worth of studies, your friends and the internet are correct about the benefits of going to the gym.
You sign up to the gym. It was a process to get here. Well done.
Now for your first actual session at the gym. Go back to Stage One.
*True story from last night: here is the link to the baked brie recipe. I regret nothing.
Wretched 