Let’s talk for a minute about people.  Specifically, let’s talk about the people that you run into when you’re going to work out at the typical gym.  I mentioned this a little bit in my first blog, but to really point out a thought that I have about the people at Fun Intelligent Training I need to backtrack a little, so bear with me.

I have run into all sorts of people at my previous experiences in gyms.  There are the skinny guys who plow along with dogged determination and really make no noticeable gains.  This may be because they really have NO idea what they’re doing or how to eat properly, or maybe because they don’t know how to optimize their workouts to properly cater to their body-types.  Who knows?  I actually remember one guy I talked to who had not put on an ounce of muscle after literally years of doing the “lifting thing.”  It turns out that he ate mostly Twinkies and SpaghettiOs when he wasn’t exercising.  Somewhere in my mind a red flag sprang into sight…

There are the high school kids who go for max weights all the time, backs arched towards the ceiling while they try to hit a new bench press weight for bragging rights at school.  Very rarely does anybody point out their terrible form or give them any pointers.

There are the few huge guys who come in and sort of prowl around the gym with smug looks.  They are alphas in the gym pack, and they know it.  Their exercises aren’t very well rounded or scientific, but they have slowly become able to lift large amounts of weight short distances for no real purpose.

Then there are the overweight people.  They need help and encouragement as they struggle to lose a pound here and there, living half on the scales (hoping nobody notices them) and half on a treadmill, hoping against hope that maybe they’re doing what it takes to lose weight but they’re not really sure about what they’re doing at all.  After all, how CAN you be sure that you’re doing the best thing possible to work toward your goals when everybody tells you something different?

What I just described is not a community.  It’s a rat race.  People are run over and lost in the shuffle constantly.  This leads me to one of the things that has impressed me most about F.I.T.: the people.  As I said before, I discovered at my first Bootcamp session that there were all sorts of people at all levels of fitness working out in the SAME place at the SAME time.  These folks didn’t avoid each other or try to keep their own workout space as far from the next person aspossible, but they instead were interacting, encouraging, and pushing each other to “keep it up” and reminding each other thatthey were “almost there.”  I had people come up, shake my hand, and introduce themselves to me.  A few even recognized me as “the blog guy.”  (It’s always a little startling to remember that people actually read these sometimes)  All in all, I felt welcomed.

You know that you’ve stumbled into a really different and really great kind of place when not only is the owner welcoming and affirming, but the members are as well.  These people aren’t just coworkers in a sea of fitness cubicles; these are your teammates.

Tags: Adam Zobel, Article, Bootcamp, Common Questions, exercise, fat-loss, fitness, informational, results