Lots of people feel guilty about taking the time to go to the gym, particularly if they have kids, but I’m here to tell you that there’s nothing wrong with prioritising your “me time”.
In fact, your life is significantly better with it than without it.
I say this from first-hand experience because – unbeknownst to most – I actually cut the gym out of my life for more than six months in 2022, and fell into a bit of a mental health black hole because of it. Regular readers will know that I don’t usually discuss my personal life on here, but I’m going to today, as I feel it will illustrate why you should never feel guilty about prioritising your “me time” in the gym.
Settle back with a protein shake, storytime with Russ…
We have to re-visit the crazy year that was 2021…
The country was in lockdown, and had been for quite some time.
Gyms were closed, and people were restricted to one hour of outdoor activity per day.
Now, I’m lucky to live by the seaside, so for me this outdoor activity meant carrying my 3-year old son across the parks, fields, and local trails which surround us.
Once this was complete I’d go home, ride the exercise bike, lift some rusty dumbbells, let the kids go WrestleMania on me for a bit, and then I’d spend my lockdown evenings levelling up russhowepti.com into the beast you know it as today.
That’s a far cry from my pre-lockdown life, of course, because regularly spent 13+ hours per day training victims clients at Powerhouse Gym, and I’d jump on my website to write new programs for the website in any gaps throughout the day, so I was hardly ever at home.
Here’s the curveball…
When the government announced the end of lockdown, my partner Sally said she’d like me to close down my PT business so that I could remain at home with the kids.
Now, I’d absolutely loved being back home in the last few months, but I was fucking terrified of no longer being a PT (it’s all I’ve done for 20+ years), but the way Sally saw it, if I stayed at home this would mean we’d all see more of each other, and I could focus on running my website full-time while she got the chance to pursue her own career goals – something she hadn’t been able to do since 2006.
It made sense, right?
Oh, jeez…
I’ve gotta tell you, the prospect of no longer being an in-gym PT scared the shit out of me, because it’s part of my identity, but deep down I knew this was a smart decision. After all, my partner had essentially put her own goals on hold so that I was able to do my thing in the gym for all those years.
Quite frankly, it seemed like the least I could do.
So one week later I began informing people at Powerhouse Gym that I wouldn’t be taking on any future PT clients, and then we embarked on this new journey where I’m a stay-at-home dad with an online business and Sally landed the job she had been waiting for.
It felt weird, but good weird, and although I had no idea what this new lifestyle would entail, I figured it couldn’t possibly be as challenging as the 24/7 madness of my old schedule.
Oh, how wrong was I?!
I began to mentally struggle after about five months of switch.
I’d regularly ask myself, “How on Earth was Sally able to stay at home for 15 years?!”. The lack of social interaction, the hectic nature of the kids’ schedules, the endless laps around our home with a fucking hoover… I have no idea how she did this!
Me being male, of course, I never told anybody that I was struggling with things.
It got progressively worse as the weeks rolled by, and by now the prospect of just leaving the house had began filling me with an assortment of strange emotions which I’d never really experienced before. I was nervous, anxious, self-conscious, worried… what the fuck?
That’s not me at all.
Sally noticed this change in my behaviour pretty early on. She’d come home from work and say that I seemed “down” or “sad”. Her explanation was that I’m most likely aving difficulties adapting to the radical role-reversal because I’d gone from being surrounded by people in noisy gyms for the last 20 years and now I’m at home all day either by myself or with our kids.
As usual, she was right.
You see, during the adaptation phase of this new lifestyle I had unintentionally shut everything else off so that I could get to grips with my new tasks at home.
My social life had ground to a halt, rarely speaking to anybody outside of these four walls. Heck, I’d even stopped going to the gym! This was the longest time I hadn’t trained in my adult life, and after a while the thought of returning actually filled me with dread, because I felt fat as fuck.
That might seem odd, because I know I’m not obese, but being a PT carries a certain level of pressure to always look great, and this put me (at least mentally) at a dead end.
And then it got even worse…
Soon after this I stopped publishing content on my website. I guess the social withdrawal and lack of training time had led to a frame of mind where I just felt like I had nothing to say? I don’t know, I just felt so uninterested in everything.
So if you were reading my website in early 2022, now you know why I disappeared for a while.
… and yet still I didn’t tell anyone!
That’s the power of stupid fucking “male pride”. I soldiered on making everything seem like it was perfectly fine, but inside I felt más desubicado que chupete en el culo.
As I continued to pile on some additional pounds, another huge lifestyle change was thrust upon our family when our teenage son had to go in to full-time home education.
Fuaaaaark!
If somebody had pulled me aside in the gym one year earlier and told me that I would be a slightly overweight stay-at-home home-schooling parent I really wouldn’t have believed them!
Truth be told, there were several moments where I questioned my ability with the home-schoolings stuff.
After all, I’ve worked in a fucking gym my whole life!
I had no idea the work and mental strain of the task until we were knee-deep in it, so over the months which followed I began pouring all of my energy into learning how to make this situation work to the best of my ability.
(Hey, and I must say, aside from it being challenging as fuck, watching our son get past the traumatic experience he endured at school has been one of the things I’m most proud of!)
My issues, though?
Yeah, they just got worse.
If I’m being honest, I used the home-schooling thing as a distraction. I told myself that I no longer had time to have a social life, and that I would feel guilty if I went to the gym (our teenager wouldn’t leave the house for the first few months).
Oh, and even though I could’ve resolved this issue by just hiring a sitter or going to the gym when Sally got home on an evening, I decided to just hide away and let te situation get worse and worse inside my fucking head.
And yet still I didn’t ask for help.
As more time passed, the guy in this photo seemed like a distant memory.
Eventually, my partner Sally encouraged me to phone our local GP.
I’ve gotta tell you, dialling that number was one of the most daunting moments of my life. I’m not really a guy who talks about my feelings, and the prospect of doing so filled me with this weird kind of embarassment.
However, it also turned out to be the best move I’d made in a very long time!
The GP believed I was suffering from a lack of social interaction which had, in turn, led to the onset of both depression and social anxiety.
Fuck.
The solution?
“Go to the fucking gym, Russ.”
I knew she was going to say that, but something about hearing it from a professional seemed to make it land.
One day later I plucked up the courage to trudge into town and renew my gym membership at Powerhouse. Man, I can still remember this day vividly. It was pouring with rain and I was wearing an oversized hoodie, looking paler than Gollum from Lord Of The Rings, and then the lad on the front desk of the gym looked up from his computer screen and said, “Fucking hell, Russ! Where have you been?!”
It was at that moment that I realized I’d fucked up.
You see, as soon as I got back in there around everything I use to love so much, I felt like I’d wasted so much time ignoring my problems and letting things get worse.
It felt great to be back, and I fucking loved it.
There was a palpable shift in my mood from the very first day back, and lots of the issues I’d built up inside my own head (e.g. being around a big group of people) just seemed to evaporate.
I spent about half and hour chatting to various gym members who I hadn’t seen for what felt like years, and those self-conscious worries about being out of shape didn’t seem to matter, because once I explained I’d been going through a bit of a shitty time nobody gave a fuck whether I had abs.
Now I’m sure the endorphin release from exercise also helped me on this day, but I don’t want to understate the importance of the little social interactions which took place and the gaps they filled in my soul. (1, 2)
That’s the shit I’d missed the most; from yelling “Fucking lift it!” as I spotted someone on the bench press, to awkwardly maintaining eye contact while saying “Alright mate?” to the old bloke who’s always wandering around the changing area bottom-half naked.
So if I can give you one piece of advice from this experience, it’s to prioritise your “me time”.
Don’t feel guilty about it.
I think many of us do, especially when we have a family, but I’m living proof that cutting out the thing you enjoy the most is a recipe for di-fucking-saster!
Now it’s been over a year since I re-joined the gym, and this are going well.
And while I don’t yet feel like I’m in the kind of shape I was in five years ago, I know that I’m gradually getting there, and I’m certainly a million miles ahead of where I was in those first few dark months of our lifestyle switch-up. Sally is crushing things at her job, our son is excelling in his home education, and even though that period of my life was strange, I’ve come to believe that it’s actually helped me to grow as a coach, because I experienced challenges which I had never previously endured.
So there you have it; don’t feel “guilty” for enjoying your gym time.
Now go lift something fucking heavy!
Further Reading:
If you enjoyed this blog, then you’ll probably also like reading these.
>> The Rules To Ripped
>> Russ’ Holiday Training Guide
>> The Top 6 Reasons You Always Feel Zonked
References:
- Herring M. P., et al. Mental health benefits of strength training in adults. Am J Lifestyle Med (2010).
- Umberson D., et al. Social Relationships and Health: A Flashpoint for Health Policy. J Health Soc Behav (2010).
Training helped me a lot with my own mental health that’s for sure