A new gym opens, the marketing tells you that if you join, you can finally tone up, lose weight and get fitter.

Possibly.

But only if you know what you’re doing with the rest of your life.

Otherwise, its just a kind of fun place to hang out and move.

The gym should be a place of education (in ancient Greece, the gynasium was a place of practical learning, and its still grammar school in Germany). It should be a place where you find new boundaries, develop skills and work on yourself. It should be a structured, functional representation of the rest of life.

But. If you were to get a modern gym goer to take off their huge headphones, stop posing for IG reels and ask them why they’re there, it will more likely be that they want to get toned, or lose weight. Or both. If you managed to ask a teen boy, they’ll probably tell you they want to build muscle. The ironic thing being that a healthy teen is so awash with growth potential, almost any resistance training will create that effect. Less so a man over 30 but the potential is still there.

None of those will happen unless you have the rest of your life squared away. If you’re too stressed, if you’re not sleeping great, if you leave the gym and walk straight into Costa for a triple syrup latte with added cake, if you don’t get your protein intake dialed in, if you don’t allow yourself space to rest, then its going to be so much harder to achieve any of your desired outcomes.

Even if you have defined them well enough. But thats a subject for another day.

Go to the gym. take advice from a professional, not just an influencer. but get the rest of your life sorted as well.