My Journey With Health And Fitness – You Don’t Need A Gym To Get Fit

When I walk down at the beach each morning I see an older man who is swimming in the ocean. Now you have to imagine how cold the Pacific ocean is this time of year. However, he swims every day regardless of the outside temperature. Then today as I was just heading off the beach I see a younger man in shorts with no shirt carrying a beach towel running towards the beach. I am sorry, I have done a lot of things out of my comfort zone in order to get fit but I’m drawing the line at the thought of swimming in that freezing water.

I know my title seems a little odd since I go to the ‘gym’ 6 days a week. But really, it is not a gym rather it is more of a fitness centre. There is no cardio equipment or weight machines at this place. Instead, there are dumb bells, kettle bells, medicine balls, exercise balls, resistant bands etc. Quite frankly this is more than enough to get in a good workout. As for cardio, they have a range of exercises that the trainers use to get that heartrate up. Several of those exercises I couldn’t do when I first started at the fitness centre 10 months ago, now that I am in great shape I do it all. I don’t miss the true gym experience in any way, as a matter of fact I much prefer these types of bootcamp and strength workouts.

I started thinking about how I don’t need a gym and all the extra fitness equipment yesterday. You see I had to take my brother to his new specialists yesterday and I knew I was going to lose at least 3 hours out of my day which stressed me out because I wouldn’t make my daily goals (trust me when I say things like this really get to me). Then while I was sitting waiting for my brother I thought huh, this is a pretty long hallway I bet I can get in a bunch of steps. And so that is what I did, simply briskly walking back and forth along that hallway until I got in the workout I wanted. Ok, so maybe the patients waiting in the hallway as well as the staff thought I was nuts but oh well, it made me feel better to move.

Remember, when I started this journey originally I lost the weight mainly by walking. I didn’t need a gym or fancy equipment to help get me healthy and the same holds true now. I’ve only got 2 weeks until I am back at the condo and I have even less access to equipment there (i.e. there is no treadmill and my heaviest set of weights are only 10 lbs) but I am determined to come home after 7 weeks just as fit as I am today.

So do the gym if that is what you need but remember, you can take this journey without it.