Don't Let Junk Distract You

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