Birth of a Gym Bro

Okay, let’s get to the point. I go to the gym. Shocker, right? I like myself like I like my jeans- ripped.

The gym is an intimidating place. For many it is a medieval place where cavemen go to follow their primal instincts of doing heavy manual labour. When someone says they go to the gym, the picture of a muscular man comes to mind who has his panties in a bunch over not reaching his daily quota of protein. For the untrained human, the gym may be a terra incognita, a place where you by muscles for a small monthly fee. I’m here to make the gym a less unknown region for the common, skinny man.

Suppose one day you got up and looked in the mirror and decided that “I look fat, maybe I should go to the gym” or “Darlene isn’t with me because my guns are too small” (for the folks unfamiliar with gym lingo, guns refer to the bicep brachii of a man. They are the manly factor for a lot of people). So to address this issue, you decide to go to the gym one fine morning, hoping to look like Arnold.

You wear your running shoes, get to the entrance and open the door. A trainer comes towards you with a face that says “Another brat who will quit before the season changes”.

He tells you to go to the machine which imitates running, also known as the treadmill. On the treadmill next to you is Miss New-Years-Resolution who made a new year resolution to lose those love handles this year. For the third time. Next to her is Miss Lulu-lemons, who is the most in shape female person you have ever seen in your life. Unknowingly, you stare at her for 6 seconds or so because you know, she is kind of hot. However, she doesn’t even acknowledge your existence because she has learned how to filter out admirers and horny men from her field of vision.

After you complete your warm up, you proceed to rep sets of 15 on the manliest exercise ever to be discovered- The Bench Press. Only thing is it is Monday, aka National Chest Day. Which means you have to wait for your turn before you even get a glimpse of the holy bench. In the meantime, you bump against a guy who is wearing Beats headphones, and an invisible bandana which says ‘Douchebag’. Beatboxing between sets is his favourite thing to do at the gym.

Next you hit a couple more body parts, and once again you find yourself waiting in line to squat. This time, an 18-year-old is hogging the squat rack. You get a little annoyed, but only because the guy is hitting biceps in the squat rack. There is always at least one guy who hits biceps at the gym, and most of them have legs smaller than your pinkie finger. But their arms have more cuts than a teenage emo kid.

After spending an hour spent mostly looking at yourself in the infinite mirrors, you decide to head back home, hoping you see some change in yourself tomorrow, only to be disappointed. But you are hooked to sweating like a junkie, at least for the first two weeks or so, so you can’t wait to come back tomorrow.

The (Im)Partial Impressions

Today, Shiv Khera was in town. (Idk he’s a somewhat famous dude. Motivational speaker or some crap). He was invited to give a 2-hour speech on how to change. I didn’t have high hopes for the program to begin with, but it was actually better than I expected. My grandfather had given me Mr. Khera’s book, ‘You Can Win’, which was a good read for people who wanted to change themselves and that sort of shit. When he entered the room, my first impression of him was like, “Dang he’s old”.

Time to take a short detour. Yesterday at the gym, when I was thinking of some clever excuse to skip working out legs (even God knows squats are tough), a guy came in. 6 feet, average body build. “He’s so tall, what a douche” (he was only 3 inches taller than me) was my first impression of him. My gym also had a new trainer, and unsurprisingly, I thought, “What a loser. He’s so buffed, probably doesn’t have a life.” Later when I talked to him, he seemed like a pretty nice guy. My point is out of all the people I have met in my life, 87% (random number which popped into my head) of them had really bad images in my mind, even though I never talked to them. Funnily enough, the people I had the worst sneaking suspicions of actually became very good friends of mine. Most of the time we make negative images of people of in our minds, even though we know shit about them. Anyway this just popped into mind when I criticized Mr. Khera. Maybe these thoughts came in because he has a lot more money than me.

Coming back to the motivation workshop, there was one thing that puzzled me. On one hand, Shiv reminded us that the greatest wrestler of all time, Muhammad Ali, every time he came into the ring, said to said to himself, “I’m the greatest, I’m the champion, I’m the greatest, I’m the champion”, just to remind himself that he is the best. This seemed quite awesome on hearing. On the other hand I read in yet another motivational speaker’s book (I just like reading, I am not that fucked up) that a happy person doesn’t need to look into the mirror and remind himself that he is happy. This seemed pretty on point too.

After this existential crisis I came to realize that these “motivational speakers” are only really good speakers. They know how to sell their words. They can probably shake your religious beliefs around which your whole life was built from the ground up and get away with it, with you still sucking on their (not just) words, which are the new sermons as far as you are concerned. These melodious speakers become your new gods. And god forbid you spend one day without someone telling you some verses on “How to earn fuck loads of money while being a lazy shit”, while they race along in a Mercedes to their next venue.

People get convinced easily. And that’s why we have more “speakers” that educated people. A few of these are actually good, but still, take what they say with a grain of salt. Never make someone your God. Peace.

So You Wanna Change

Let me guess. You’re either-

1. Fat
2. Poor
3. Aimless
4. Depressed (self-diagnosed of course, that meme you saw was so relatable).
5. Having the concentration span of a goldfish.

If you’re here, at least 4 of these apply to you (I’m not fat). And you wanna change (no shit). Listen kid, change ain’t that easy. If it were that easy, everyone would “change” and suddenly change won’t be as cool. Let’s look at some of the things that are easy –

1. Sleeping more than 8 hours a day
2. Complaining
3. Procrastinating all day
4. Getting angry over small things

When was the last time you saw someone who slept less than 6 hours a day regularly and was unsuccessful? Or lay in bed all day making shit-tons of money looking at cat pictures? Like I said (or more like like everybody says) –

Change ain’t easy

Okay so if I were you I would be wondering ‘Yeah Mr. WiseGuy we know that. But still you don’t see us changing, why is that?’

That is because when you finally make an effort to change, you try to change every fucking thing you don’t like. One day suddenly you decide to wake up at 4 A.M, meditate, study for 10 hours straight, get more ripped than Zac Efron in Baywatch, go to Mars… All at once.

See the thing about change is that it’s something everybody wants but nobody likes. The only way you’ll change is if you take baby steps (unless of course your willpower was forged in the volcano of Mordor). Commit to small changes, like regularly making your bed whenever you wake up,  meditating for 5 minutes everyday before you go to bed, doing just 10 push-ups everyday, whatever you like. You commit to one change, you get comfortable, you feel good about yourself, and you change a little again. It keeps piling up and voilà – you are already a much better version of yourself.

This brings us to our next problem – Patience. You can’t just become the next Mr.Hey-Look-At-Me-I’m-Ripped in a day. It takes time, years of hardwork (unless of course you decide to go juice). Don’t get disheartened if you can’t shoot 5 straight 3-pointers after only one week of practice. The most important rule, and I can’t stress it enough, is that

He that can have patience can have what he will

-(another famous dude)

Don’t try to build your Rome in a day, instead make long term plans. Like going to drum lessons everyday for a year before quitting. Or sweating in the gym everyday for atleast a year before you go on blaming your genes for robbing you of all the mad gainz you should have had by now. This is probably the hardest part when trying to change, and that is committing to change. Peace.

 

 

…Another Same Old Blog, Start of A New Journey, Blah-Blah-Blah.

You are young. You are filled with energy and want to achieve something. You want to change the world.

Well you ain’t gonna get any help from me.

This is another one of your average run-of-the-mill blogs. So what makes it different?

Nothing

I’m just gonna come here once a while, rant about something utterly nonsense, and you’re still gonna read it. Why? Because you’re bored, you’re procrastinating and still looking for that magical piece of writing that is gonna make you get off your ass and do something already. Well, first things first, any motivation you get from here (which I highly doubt) or any other place like The Most Popular Ted Talks of All Time or Top Motivational Quotes doesn’t last long. Some famous dude once said –

People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.

So hey – at least we figured out something. The key is to procrastinate EVERYDAY and look for motivational quotes and blogs by filthy rich people.

Let’s get one thing straight – motivation alone is not the key. The key is to keep pushing through when you are not motivated. Easier said than done.

Looks like we strayed a little off topic. This first article was just a general introduction of what to expect. I’ll be posting articles on random topics regularly. Random topics will not include Hollywood Gossip, Political Scandals, and reviews of Cosmopolitan. I will talk a lot about Motivation, Technology, Game Reviews and other fun stuff. This first article will also be a milestone for me because I finally got of my ass and did something I wanted to do for a long time. Peace.