November 11, 2022: Recreational soccer makes me realize that I am out of shape. Ever since taking online PE this year, I’ve gotten more free time but much less exercise. Couple this with not playing any sports in high school and poor eating habits, and you create an unhealthy person. I start looking for a gym membership.
The soccer rankings. Try to guess which team I’m on (hint: we’ve lost every single game)
November 18, 2022: Taking advantage of the Black Friday deals, I attempt to sign up for a student membership at the community park fitness center in Lisle. It’s a failure— the gym is short-staffed, and the front attendant doesn’t have permission in the system to give me the holiday special for a cheaper membership. This is my first encounter with the small-town bureaucracy of Lisle, and not the last, sadly.
Now, on to the gym. The gym is a literal room. The picture I attached below is pretty much everything, sans the free weights which include the power rack and bench. There’s only one other guy there; in my short visit, he uses the treadmill for a couple minutes then gets off, grabs the TV remote, and begins to flip through the stations. Honestly, that is the best kind of member, because they won’t judge me and they won’t use my equipment, which is the power rack and bench. Even now, after having gone to the gym a handful of times, the regulars are all 50+ and just use the treadmills the whole time. I chose the gym because it has the bare essentials, is cheap, and is close to my house. The community park fitness center has an odd, alluring charm to it.
Where legends are made
This trip to the local gym highlights the disparity between Lisle and Naperville. Across the street from the gym, I see Lisle High School, which happens to be about the same size as my middle school.
The LHS graduating class can fit on half of a basketball court
Comparing this to Naperville North, I realize that LHS students must get much fewer resources and I begin to feel very lucky. Even though NNHS is quite competitive, I still would never trade it for Lisle High School. If you compare Naperville’s public gym, the Fort Hill activity center, to Lisle’s, it is like another world. Fort Hill has separate floors, while Lisle just has a room. Fort Hill has a pool, basketball court, sauna, hot tub, and indoor track, while Lisle has two showers. Being a Lisle resident but enrolling in Naperville public schools, I am in an odd gray area.
November 20, 2022: Once again, I attempt to sign up for the gym. Once again, I can’t. Feelings of defeat permeate my psyche. The front attendant tells me to go to the Lisle Park District office across the street to get my membership processed, and I oblige. Thirty minutes later, and I get it! I now have a gym membership.
(Side note: I am paying for my gym membership to have some skin in the game. Since I’m using my own money, I won’t want to waste it. This increases my consistency with workouts.)
Now, back to the fitness center. I hit a quick workout, thirty minutes long. I’ve chosen to follow a strength-building routine since I’ve never seriously trained before.
The routine. 5×5 means 5 sets, with 5 repetitions in each set. 1×5 is only one set.
This is the Stronglifts 5×5 routine. You alternate the sessions, and you have a day of rest in between. Two weeks of this program will look something like this, with each letter corresponding to a day of the week:
Week 1: AxBxAxx
Week 2: BxAxBxx
Stronglifts is a routine that utilizes free weights and compound movements to develop strength for people who’ve never been to the gym or haven’t been in a really long time. I was recommended it by my friend Andrew and he’s pretty jacked, so I trust him. The dude who wrote the program is jacked as well, so I guess he’s right.
Apparently, compound movements are better because they develop multiple muscles together instead of isolation, meaning that you can both lift more weights and train in shorter amounts of time. Being a busy man like me, short gym sessions are definitely beneficial. I’ve timed them and they typically run about thirty minutes.
Right now, I do not have a cardio routine. I am looking for something that’s HIIT, so if anyone has any suggestions that would be nice. My gym doesn’t have an assault bike or spin cycle, and doing HIIT on a treadmill is awkward, so basically I’m stuck with using a rowing machine, kettlebell swings, and calisthenics.
The rowing community gatekeeps me on several online forums. I swear they’re out to get me
I want to get started on the ergometer (definition: formal term for rowing machine), but I don’t know the particular technique and I wouldn’t want to do it wrong. I looked online and people basically said that if you row with incorrect technique, you won’t have a good workout and look like an idiot at the same time, so I am putting that on hold for now. I could do sprints outside, but pretty soon it’s going to be snowing so I want something that’s winter-proof, that is, I can do it indoors.
December 1, 2022: I have completed my first week of training! Even though I am very weak, I know that with consistency and hard work, I will surely obtain desirable results.
Another great post, Ian, I really am sad that this may be the last blog post. I don’t think there really is a way to do the rowing machine wrong? But maybe I am a gym “muggle”. I think the inclusion of cardio is important, maybe you can join the 50-year-old men on the treadmill for a few minutes every day. Starting with even 5 minutes is the way to go, and then slowly increasing maybe 5 minutes per week. The disparities between lisle and Naperville also resonated with me because I think it is so interesting how geographically they are close, but in every other sense of the word, they are not. Again Ian, great work and I hope maybe you will continue this after the semester ends. Good day.
Hey Ian, I really enjoyed reading your blog. As you know, I’m in the same rec soccer league as you are, and even for me the rapid back-and-forth of the indoor games tested my fitness, and I play soccer. It’s tough out there. My team the Goaldiggers isn’t doing a whole lot better than yours, and obviously we lost to you guys in heartbreaking fashion last week, but we’re coming for the rematch. One suggestion I have for an HIIT workout that you could do on a treadmill is interval sprinting, and it’s something that I do for track. I turn the incline up very high on the treadmill and also the speed, and then I sprint for 20 seconds and rest for 40 seconds, usually for 10 minutes. I did this when I wanted to stay in shape during the winter when it was cold and I couldn’t run outside, and it is a killer workout. I liked reading your blog and I wish you the best of luck on your fitness journey, and also hope to play against you again in rec.
Hey Ian,
I decided to get a gym membership a few months ago at LA Fitness, and I too decided to pay for it just so I feel obligated to go. Except then I got sick 3 weeks in a row, and the guilt of wasting my money each day that I wasn’t at the gym became all-consuming. But I got over it. Anyways, when I first started going to the gym, I had zero clue what I was doing but luckily my brother is a gym-rat of some sorts, so he has helped me significantly in assimilating to the gym mindset. My mistake was asking him what his PR’s are and getting absolutely humbled. My brother told me to divide my weight-lifting days into three general movements – pushing movements, pulling movements and then leg day. I’ve found it pretty useful, but I’m sure there are plenty of ways to go about training. Cardio is my favorite part, because it gives me the excuse to consume a large amount of caffeine and burn the energy away. For HIIT, I recommend going on a StairMaster for 15 minutes ( you will question your will to live). My routine is basically a 3 minute warmup at level 3, then 3 minutes on level 8, 3 minutes on level 10, and then go back to 3 minutes on level 8, then a 3 minute cool-down on level 3. If there’s no StairMaster, try Kirsty Godso’s HIIT workouts on the Nike Training App.
Hi Ian,
I also recently started going to the gym, so I can relate to your adventure. My health was at a low during college apps, so my reward on Nov 1st was becoming a gym member.
Walking in, I was clueless. I never took Strength & Performance and not many of my friends exercise, so my only mentors were the conflicting opinions of online fitness influencers. I have wasted a lot of time watching tutorials in the free weight section and doing exercises incorrectly, but over the past month I have become much more efficient. While I may not have the best form or workout plan, as long as I am sore the next day then surely I am getting somewhere.
My blog post this week was about my nostalgia for Lisle, so it was interesting to read your experiences as well. Despite my love for Lisle, I would not want to go to LHS and am lucky that despite also being a Lisle resident, I go to Naperville North.
It’s funny that you mention how everyone at your gym is old and only uses cardio machines. I used to be a member at Lifetime, but I never used it much as I was overwhelmed by the environment. My current gym is much more subdued relatively, as the majority of the people there are older. I find it a lot less intimidating, and their old age has not stopped them from being stronger than me.
I enjoyed reading this, and thanks for the recommendations!
Out of all the blogs I read today yours was definitely the most relatable I haven’t really been keeping up with my health and fitness recently but now that swim season has started I’m definitely feeling the regret of not working out earlier on. The biggest challenge for me personally is eating healthier I really only eat a couple of things and I don’t like to try new foods at all. I try to expand as much as I can but it’s definitely very hard because I’m such a picky eater. Similar to you I also started going to the gym recently and working out. At first, all the routines and muscle stretches seem very complicated but then once I got the hang of it, it made a lot more sense. I would highly recommend getting a cardio routine because although keeping up that muscle is very important having some cardio is also very important and I would highly consider it. It’s really cool that you do recreational soccer a lot of people stop trying new sports when they get older but it’s great to see that you’re not shying away from trying these new things. Although I suck at a lot of sports I try to play as many as I can because my friends and I don’t share similar sports so we all kind of have to learn from each other. I really enjoyed reading your blog partly for its relatability but also because it allowed me to get a better idea of you as a person. It is always cool to see people being vulnerable every now and then.