Gym Motivation: Sometimes Getting There Is the Hardest Part | Devanney Strength
- Jordan Devanney
- 11 hours ago
- 7 min read
Sometimes The Hardest Part Is Getting There
So, I was in the gym last week and bumped into a man I hadn’t seen for a while. Small talk back and forth (my idea of hell by the way!) and then he was telling me he’s apparently lost 20kg in three weeks - just by coming to the gym five to six days a week and doing 45 minutes of high-intensity cardio on the cross trainer or bike. He proceeded to then utter the magical words with pure conviction of, “you should do the same as me and I bet the weight will fly right off you!” There are several things wrong with that sentence. One being the idea of weight simply flying off you. As a scientist I know that is physiologically impossible and that weight simply does not fly anywhere darlings. But the main thing wrong here was him assuming I am training in the gym to actually lose weight.
It is fair to say I’m probably not the person you’d look at in the gym and immediately think, “She’s here because she’s a proper gym bunny.” For those of you who know me and have met me - I’m rather rotund! I’ve gained weight, and I’ve spent much of my life going through various weight-loss journeys, mostly because other people haven’t always been comfortable with me being comfortable in my own skin, irrespective of what current shape and size I am at the time. So, I understand why people might assume that’s why I’m there.
Not my usual gym attire – rather rotund and that’s ok!
And yes, I’d quite like to lose some weight. But that’s not actually my main goal. If I lose weight along the way, that’s a bonus. I’m rather partial to driving quickly, so carrying a little less of me around a racetrack might even help me get around it a bit quicker in my GT3…!! But seriously, all jokes aside, if I am not primarily there to lose weight, what am I actually there for, I hear you ask? I go to the gym because I want to get stronger. But sometimes I actually just want to get to the damn gym. In the words of the great Ron Burgundy, “I’m in a glass case of emotion!” which is often how I feel when trying to get to the gym, especially after work. And that is often the hardest part; the mental anguish of getting to the gym and scanning the QR code to check in. For some people, the hardest part of exercise isn't the workout itself. It's finding the motivation to get to the gym in the first place.
A lighter driver = a faster GT3. In theory, anyway!
You Can't Always See What Someone Has Gone Through Before Training
You can see someone’s physique and their nice matching outfit in the gym. But what you can’t see is the effort it took to get them through the door. I’ve realised that the hardest part of going to the gym isn’t necessarily the workout. Sometimes it’s getting there in the first place. There are days when I’m tired, I’ve had a lot going on, or something has happened during the day that has left me mentally, physically or emotionally drained. If I’m really lucky, then it may be all three..!! Sometimes I’m driving home and I’m already having the conversation with myself:
I could just go home
I just want to go home and have an early nightI’ve had a long dayI really can’t be bothered todayI’ll go tomorrow instead (I probably won’t!)Missing one session won’t matter
I’ll adjust my session and make the next one a bit longer to make up for the one I miss (realistically though I won’t!)
You Don't Have to Feel Motivated to Train
And sometimes I genuinely don’t feel like going. And I don’t go. I’m not going to pretend that I bounce into the gym full of motivation every time, because I don’t. Something happened to me earlier this year involving someone I cared about very much, and it affected me more than I expected when they suddenly disappeared from my life with no warning. I didn’t go to the gym for three weeks. And before this, last November, I lost someone I was very close to, who was basically a mother to me. After she passed away, I didn’t go back to the gym until sometime in January. When I did eventually venture back those two and a-bit months later, I spent half an hour chatting to my friend Becca on reception and then went and just had a shower and washed my hair! I didn’t even use any gym equipment that evening I first went back, unless you count putting a hair mask on as a “workout”! I’m not perfect and I don’t pretend to be.
Today’s workout consisted of “bicep curling” a glass of wine. And that’s ok.
That’s when I’ve realised that sometimes my biggest achievement is much smaller than anything I might do once I’m actually training.
It’s getting out of the car
Walking into the reception
And scanning my QR code
Because once I’ve done that, I’m there. And once I’ve done that, I’ve already won the first part of the battle. Plus, once I have scanned in there isn’t really anywhere else for me to go at that point..!!
I don’t have to feel motivated. I don’t have to be having a brilliant day. I don’t even have to know whether I’m going to have a particularly good workout. I’ve just got to start. But to do that I actually need to get there in the first place. It’s a ridiculous little battle of wills between me and myself!
And I think that’s the bit you don’t necessarily see when you look at someone in a gym. You see the person doing their set, pushing a sled or lifting a bar jam-packed with heavy weights, but you don’t see everything that happened to them before they walked through those gym doors.
Sometimes they’ve had a fantastic day and can’t wait to train
Sometimes they’ve had a mediocre day and aren’t sure what they want to train or whether to attend the spin class they booked last week when they were in a better headspace
Sometimes they’ve had a bloody awful day and nearly went home instead
And even now I’m very much all three of those people at times.
Getting Stronger Is About More Than Losing Weight
For most of my life, whenever I’ve started another weight-loss journey, the number on the scales has been the thing I’ve focused on. How much have I lost? How quickly am I losing it? How much further have I got to go? And I’m not suddenly going to tell you that I don’t care about that number. I do. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. But I don’t want it to be the only thing I measure anymore.
I want to know that I can lift something today that I couldn’t lift six months ago. I want to be able to push a heavier sled. I want my deadlift to get stronger. I want to look at a weight that once felt ridiculously heavy and think, “actually, I can do that.” I recently got 50kg for my bench press PB. I couldn’t do that this time last year.
And sometimes strength isn’t even about the weight on the bar.
Sometimes it’s turning up when you’re tired.
Sometimes it’s having a rubbish day and training anyway.
Sometimes it’s accepting that today’s session isn’t going to be your best one, doing what you can, and going home without beating yourself up about it.
I’m still learning this. I’m still guilty of looking at the scales and letting one number influence how I feel about myself. I’m still capable of comparing myself to people around me who are stronger, fitter or further along in their own journeys. I’m not standing here having magically worked it all out. And I’m certainly not going to spiel off some motivational BS, that even I don’t believe, to you all who are currently reading this like a pretend Instagram Fitness Influencer and abracadabra convince you otherwise. In a tough session when training with Jordan, I tell him to say something motivating to me to get me though and he always comes out with this wishy-washy comedy voice and saying to me, “you can do it!”. It’s become our silly funny “motivational in joke”. But I’m not going to do that to you readers. Life has a habit of life-ing and it’s not easy to try and not be affected by outside influences.
I’m just trying to give myself a few more ways to recognise that I’m making progress. Because if the only evidence I have that I’m doing well is a smaller number on the scales, there are going to be a hell of a lot of days when I feel like I’m failing. But if I can look at the weight I’m lifting, the things I AM capable of doing, and even the fact that I got myself through those gym doors on a day when I really didn’t want to be there, suddenly there are a few more victories to count.
And perhaps that’s what getting stronger actually means to me. Not just being able to lift more. Not being able to run for hours on the treadmill (that one may not happen for me given the fact I am currently the wrong shape for running!). But perhaps getting stronger is actually becoming a little harder to stop when it comes to giving up and finding a reason not to train.
More often than not, the strongest achievement of the day for many of us isn’t lifting the weights or doing the workout or class you had planned. It’s simply getting there and scanning the QR code at reception and making it through the door.
Dominic Toretto lives his life a quarter mile at a time - I live my gym life one QR code at a time.
Written by Jill M
Guest contributor to Devanney Strength, sharing her personal experiences of strength training, body image, motivation and building a healthier relationship with exercise.
If you're looking for a way to get stronger, build consistency and train without making every session about the number on the scales, that's exactly what we do at Devanney Strength.
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