Week 1 Blog

• Why am I taking this course?
• What does fitness mean to me?
• What do I hope to gain from this course over the next 3 months?
• What are my own personal fitness goals for this semester?

Starting on January 1st, I did what many people do and hit the gym. Part of me didn’t want to because I’m lazy and part of me didn’t want to because of the pandemic. Gyms are scary because everyone is sweating and breathing and not following directions. Despite these barriers, I wanted to become healthier. I have been a runner for most of my life which has left me with the physique of a wooden board. It was lean muscle that usually exempted my arms from doing much work at all. Now, with the gym every day, I am figuring out that my arms have fallen behind my legs all these years in drastic ways and that this year will be about making them less useless. I want to be able to beat someone up if I have to and I am hoping this course can steer me in the direction of protection.

Fitness, to me, means being strong and healthy. Some people think it means just being strong, but then they realize that despite having large muscles they are still experiencing health problems due to a poor diet or other faults. There really is no set definition of fitness because it looks different for everyone. Not only is it key to be able to work your body through exercise, but fitness also entails a good diet, a sound mind, and other aspects of self-care.

Over the next 3 months, I really want to continue going to the gym 6 days a week. I know it sounds excessive, however, I have a nice app called Fitbod that I rely on to tailor my workouts for me. Even despite this personalized workout regimen, I am still very much alone at the gym without someone helping me figure out what will and will not hurt me. I want to understand the science behind fitness over the next 3 months so that I can move my fitness journey beyond the app that I treat like a constitution. I also want to get to know more about the human body. Being a public health major you would think I would be exposed to more physiology but I am pretty much without any real knowledge of how the human body responds to exercise.

So overall, my fitness goals are to get stronger and build muscle. Not just in my legs, as I have in the past, but additionally in my arms and my abs and all those other parts of the body that my Fitbod app tells me I’m working out. Is Push/Pull/Lower body actually the right pattern for me in the gym? Why do I feel like a weenie when I can’t like a 25lb dumbell? I hope that these three months make me feel less intimidated and more confident when I go to the free-weights section. Even these past 2 weeks have shown me that men ain't shit and that I can do what I want no matter if they creepy stare or not. Do I really need to do cardio or should I skip it so I stop resembling a string bean? Will I become unhealthy if I just focus on weight training? These are all questions from my two-week fitness journey that already run through my mind. I hope that this class resolves some of these for me and allows me to focus on what really matters — fitness and staying healthy!