THURS: Are You Not Entertained?

We want to have fun in life wherever possible, right? Life laugh love? #Blessed? No one wants to be a stick in the mud in life, but, there are certainly varying degrees of fun, and some places where fun is not among the priorities, wouldn’t you say? In turn, if that is true, then there are also places that when you arrive, you are expected to have fun and match the energy in the room, not bring it down.

For example, a funeral? Probably not the best place for laughs and snapchat. On the flip side, a New Year’s house party is probably not where you want to curl up on the couch with a novel. We adapt to the environment we’re in and adjust our fun expectations accordingly, so we tend to bring different versions of ourselves to whatever social occasion we’re attending.

What about the gym? What side of the fun spectrum should the gym fall under? Does the needle migrate towards a funeral or a house party? When you go to the gym, is your primary objective to have fun or is it to work? I’m not suggesting that you have to pick a left Twix or a right Twix, but I believe that we all have a basic mentality when we’re in the gym and that it subconsciously drives what workouts we attend and how much we challenge ourselves when we’re there.

If fun is your top priority, you might cherry pick workouts and avoid training that you don’t enjoy. A common instance that we hear in passing are the longer workouts, the twenty and thirty minutes non-stop. Are those fun? No. But you are what you do. If all you do is one type of workout, then you’ll only be that workout as a performing human. Not necessarily a good or bad thing, but a thing it is indeed.

If work is only priority, you might have your head down a little too much. Maybe you’ll miss an opportunity to meet someone new or put yourself out to the community around you. Not a major deal, you’ll still getting what you came for, which is the work. But still, it’s an inherent ceiling on your all around communal experience. You then start to equate the success of your gym time only with the numbers, a dangerous place to be.

Julianne, Pritz, and I were talking one day about how hate when gyms market themselves on fun. You know what’s fun? Results. Result are fun. The act of getting them doesn’t and shouldn’t be the main priority. Self-improvement is not supposed to be a constant joyous occasion. In fact, if it is, are you really improving or are you just choosing comfort all the time?

This isn’t a for or against fun in the gym. I’m just trying to shed a little perspective on how we can strike more of a balance if we skew more one than the other. Have an honest conversation about where your approach to gym fun tends to migrate. Once you determine that, try to find areas that allow you to drift just a little further towards that opposing side, and I would bet that you start to get a lot more out of your time spent with us.

-Dave

Thursday, 2.15.18

In Teams of 5:
A: 300m Run
B: 6 Wall Balls/15″ off
C: 1 Rope Pull & Drag
D: 5/s DB Bulgarian Split Squat (don’t repeat)
E: 30 Plate Carries /15″ off
(x30 Min)