I found the path to fitness when I quit the gym | Laura Fountain
I found the path to fitness when I quit the gym | Laura Fountain
Spending on gym memberships in the UK has risen by 44% in the past year. This is a large rise in spend. It is actually a whole lot worse. Analysis of detailed card spending by Cardlytics shows an even deeper dig into British pockets in the name of fitness. In the 2 weeks before gym membership begins, spending on supplements rises by 56% and sports equipment by 96%.
Laura Fountain was one of those new gym goers.
Seven years ago I succumbed to one of those leaflets. After spending most of my 20s avoiding any kind of exercise save for staggering around the dance floor of a sweaty nightclub, I decided to “get fit”. I didn’t know what “get fit” meant, though. It was a woolly, unmeasurable phrase that had been hammered into my brain through magazine articles, advertising and TV shows. I knew I needed to achieve this elusive “fitness” but I didn’t know what that looked like.
She was simply in pursuit of fitness – not 6 pack abs or amazing body tone or anything like that. She joined a gym near her office and would leave the PC screen in the office in exchange for a TV screen in the gym at lunchtimes. After a few visits wrestling with unfamiliar machines, she did not have any fitness – she did not even know what that meant.
Every piece of machinery I used felt like it was designed to inflict pain and humiliation on me. I was red and panting and aching.
The treadmill became her preferred method of torture and she set out to be able to run 30 minutes without stopping. Once she achieved that, she knew what she did not want. She was never going to be a Jen Selter on the treadmill. She did not want to be running on a machine in a basement in Central London. She wanted to be running through the puddles in the fresh air along the River Thames. As soon as she could she dumped her membership and took to jogging along the Thames at lunchtimes.
“I joined a running club, made friends with other runners and went running with them. I chatted to them as we clocked up the miles rather than pounding away on a treadmill next to strangers plugged into their own screens.”
From there, Laura started to run further and further. She used the gym fees saved to buy a GPS watch to measure her runs. She took to swimming in open water places. So successful was she that she ran an 80km trail race through Paris this year, something that no amount of treadmill pounding could have prepared her for. She has taken that appetite for the open air to cycling as well. That is “a lot more fun than any spin class”. Her path to fitness began when she quit the gym – when she found what she wanted to get out of the exercise effort
Exercise has many health benefits, regardless of where you do it. But to me exercise isn’t something on my to-do list, to be ticked off. It’s a way to explore the world and have adventures and being “fit” means making sure my body is prepared for them. And no great adventure happens in the gym.
From those humbling beginnings in the gym, Laura Fountain is now a UK Athletics Coach in Running Fitness and Level 3 Personal Trainer. She’s also a journalist and editor specialising in women’s health.
Borrowing then from Vinnie Tortorich, America’s Angriest Trainer, two thoughts come to mind.
- Make the gym work for you
- Move that body more – walk further; walk faster; or run like Laura does; or cycle like I do in the fresh open air.
Original article from The Guardian
Data from Cardlytics in this article in The Guardian
More about Laura Fountain in her blog Lazy Girl Running
Image of Jen Selter from her Instagram posting
