A gym is not just a gym. It is a place that can bring out the best in you while exposing your limitations.

Most of the time, we solely focus on losing weight or building muscles but it's more than that and it all reflects on progress, achievement, discipline, self-control and perseverance.

I attended classes at DOJO Wellness Club over a period of one month. I learnt new ways of exercising met exciting people and beyond that, I came out with these seven life lessons.

Change happens gradually but this fact of life seems to get lost on people. We want things to happen now and if we don’t, we trash all the progress we might have made to chase another high.

Well, if all you are looking for is another high, the gym will disappoint you badly. The muscle you want, and the weight you are hoping to settle in will come after hours and hours of working out and over a lengthy period of time. 

It’s about the accumulation of small habits to produce greater results. It’s just that we fail to notice the tiny progress because we are so fixated on the eventual outcome. This is why people drop out of the gym so quickly after starting with so much excitement.  

The sooner you realise that you will need a saint's patience to get to your goal, the more likely you will stay on course. The time it takes varies from person to person but eventually, the results will come.

Variety is the spice of life they say but much of how we live our lives is about doing almost the same thing on a daily basis. 

Isn't this why people create routines or timetables? The difference is that we change the approach depending on how well or bad the situation is going. 

The gym is a great place to demonstrate this. My best class at DOJO was spin. The basics are the same for a forty-five or sixty-minute session. If you take this class enough times, you will be able to withstand the resistance of the more difficult gears.  

This goes for anything in life. Repetition breeds consistency. This is what makes you good at what you do and gives you the result. You master the skill and it sticks. 

Keep in mind that it is so easy to regress and lose all the progress. You can’t go to the gym or do what you want just when you feel like it. 

In school, I was known for my sporting abilities - I played football and did athletics and occasionally, I turned up to the basketball court - so going to DOJO was obviously exciting and I thought I’d breeze past the exercises. Well, having a sporting background helped but I hadn’t done any meaningful exercise in over two years so that was rarely useful. 

I was on the same level as someone who was stepping into the gym for the first time. Looking back to those days, good as they were, did not have any effect on what I did at DOJO. 

The trainers are more interested in what I want to achieve now, whether I am learning or improving. Learn from the past but don’t get stuck there. 

Who loves pain? We do everything to avoid the disruption that pain causes but it is just what you need to make yourself better.

A lot of times during my spin class, I wanted to stop especially when we were going through the harder gears. The pain in my leg muscles was so intense that almost sacked out of the excitement of the class.

These were the moments when I dug deep and readjusted. The idea was to keep going regardless of the speed I was cycling at. I gradually increased the pace and maintained it for as long as I was able to and at the end of the session, I was proud of myself for holding on and pushing myself. 

 

That is what pain does. It’s easy to give up but if you hang on, it builds your resilience as nothing else will.

I know I kind of threw this idea out of the window but hear me out. I was exposed to different types of workout routines at DOJO Wellness Club and this made it enjoyable so much I looked forward to going. 

Don’t make variety a gym thing. Incorporate it into your life as well. Have different dimensions in your life - work-life, personal, social, religious etc. all of which help in expanding your horizons. 

What if I tell you that you don’t need the motivation to go to the gym or write or pursue what you want? Motivation is fleeting. Most of the time, you will not feel like doing what you are supposed to do when you are supposed to. Thus, if you wait for motivation to move you out of this zone, it won’t happen.

The key is to understand why you are doing what you are doing. Why are you going to the gym or writing or having that dream? Then, realise what‘s going to help you attain your goals. It's dedication. Doing what you have to because you know the value even when you don't feel like it. 

I’ll pull off this quote, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” This doesn’t mean that you deliberately underdeliver. It means that you acknowledge your limitations and the shortcomings they might lead to.

Yours truly is not as flexible and thus, I can’t crisscross my right and left legs and so in my yoga class, I modified the poses whilst achieving the same effect. 

This is the middle ground. Learn how to negotiate with yourself. If you are always striving for perfection, you might end up not doing anything at all because you are obsessing over every little thing that you lose focus on what’s important. 

Understand your shortcomings and instead of berating yourself, strive towards improving them and in the end, you become better.  

Have you been to DOJO Wellness Club? Are there any lessons you’ve gained from working out that we haven’t listed? Let us know.