Everybody
knows that kid; the kid who picks up a new hobby every few months and spends
his whole paycheck on the latest gear. While the rest of are wondering what
happened to his last hobby, he’s diving headfirst into a new one. Though there
is a lot to admire in someone who approaches their passions with such gusto,
sometimes the junk that they buy in the process is just a waste of money and frankly,
a distraction.
Now, I’ll
be the first to admit that I criticize consumerism every chance I get, so
perhaps my point of view is slightly biased, but whenever a gym newbie shows
off their new “stack” and workout gear to me, I make an internal bet with
myself that their relationship with the gym will last but a few months. Call me
critical, call me cynical, but with these types of people it’s like watching
re-runs of Made, where nine times out of ten (hyperbole), the reality star is
just interested in the glamour of whatever they want to be “made” into.
In a
previous blog, I mentioned that sometimes setting goals means investing a
significant amount of money into achieving that goal, but it’s important to
distinguish between being enamored by how the goal looks from the outside and
actually committing to that goal. Do you need the latest and greatest gear to
achieve your goal? Absolutely not, and this rings true for any discipline. You
wouldn’t buy your kid a Stratocaster the day they express interest in playing
the guitar; you’d buy them a used little Starcaster (Fender’s beginner model)
and simply upgrade to better quality guitars as they acquire skill. And unless
your name is Harry Potter, you really don’t need a Nimbus 2000 on your first
go.
So why
do people feel the need to buy tons of gear that they don’t need when they
start going to the gym? I’ll tell you why: because they need it to stay
motivated. They need to dive headfirst into the lifestyle they’ve seen on
Instagram or they won’t ever get themselves into the gym. Part of the problem
is simply engrained in our culture of more, more, more and that’s a whole
different topic. But the other culprit is social media. I follow many fitness
gurus on social media, and I’ve always felt that there’s a certain theme of “Look
what I have, look at this”, and though I don’t think this is inherently a
negative thing, I think it’s important for beginners to consider that these
fitness gurus eat and breathe the lifestyle.
So
please, understand that the most important thing you can have for any goal is
your motivation to achieve it, not the material goods that are constantly advertised by the fitness industry.
Savannah Steamer, Intern
No comments:
Post a Comment