Move More
Victoria Summersgill
Toying with the idea of joining a gym but finding the initial sign up and get started process daunting? Our Health Pracitioner, Victoria, felt exactly the same! Lucky for us, she decided to bite the bullet and go for it and is here to share with us her experience from signing up to becoming a gym goer! Over to Victoria...
When you sign up to the gym, you will likely be required to have a gym induction led by one of the fitness instructors. If that’s putting you off joining, don’t worry I felt the same! However, now that I’ve done it, I’m going to share my experience to hopefully put you at ease.My friend and I signed up together and so booked our inductions to be done as one. Neither of us had been to a gym in a good couple of years and when we did, you’d catch us almost exclusively on the treadmills and cross-trainers. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with only using these machines, we were doing it because we weren’t confident with much else.
We met our fitness instructor in the gym and he eased us in by giving a quick tour of the gym and then introduced us to the cardio machines (treadmill, cross trainer, rower etc). As I mentioned, we had experience of these in the past so we just jumped on them for a couple of minutes while the instructor ran us through how to use the different programs.While we were doing that, we’d mentioned we were very keen to learn how to use the weights section properly this time. We’d been too intimidated to do so before. Knowing this, our instructor got us to do a warm up whilst he put together a quick program for us.The program he put together was great – it included use of the weight machines and the free weights. He took us through some weighted exercises for different parts of the body. This was great as he was able to make sure we were using the correct form which reduces the risk of any injuries. We did a few repetitions of each exercise just so we got used to each one.When the induction is over – ours took about an hour – you can stay in the gym and carry on with your workout or if you feel that you’ve done enough for the day (like us!) you can do a warm down with some stretches and head home.
In the end, the induction was actually a really fun and helpful session. I’d really recommend asking the fitness instructor to make you a program as this means you’ll have a plan of action for the next time you go. My main take away thought was that we all have to start somewhere and there is no shame in asking for help! Now that I’ve done the induction, I’m free to attend the exercise classes. The habit I want to build as part of our #BuildingHealthyHabits challenge is to attend at least 2 gym classes a week. I’m glad I put my reservations to one side and decided to joining the gym. I'm also going to be writing little reviews of the different gym classes I try – wish me luck!
