Fitness Article

Sem 2 wk 12

Nikhil Sood

Fitness is important. Fit people never die. Ever. I read that in a book once. Ok, I heard it on a podcast. I don’t know how to read. My parents failed me. As did the New Zealand schooling system. Also reading books is for old people, and podcasts are for cool millennials drowning in a sea of consumer and student debt. Being young is cool, because the youth are the future. To remain youthful I would personally advise YOU to go to the gym.

Going to the gym is fun, because it makes you feel bad about yourself. Self-hate is critical for personal development, according to my recently divorced uncle. My personal mentor, Tony Robbins, once advised me through YouTube that if someone shows you charity, you should squeeze them dry and throw their carcasses by the wayside. With that in mind, let’s go to the gym!


Firstly, don’t go to the university gym. There are university students there. Everyone knows that university students are gross and should not be looked at. Go to Fitness First. It’s expensive and full of corporate douchebags so it’s got to be good. Price always means quality. I learned that from another personal mentor, Gwyneth Paltrow (shout out to Goop).


Walking into Fitness First for the first time can be a sensory overload. Weights clanging. Men grunting. Me crying. Sometimes, it is all too much to bear and might make you want to run out of the gym, screaming with rage. But never fear! Fit people with perfect bodies disgust me, so instead of hearing from them, these are my three top tips when gymming as a non-fit person.

1. Establish Dominance – Gyms are like prisons. No one wants to be there, so prison rules apply. When I first walked into the gym I found the biggest guy lifting the largest weight and after finding a stool to stand on, I smacked him with a foam roller with such strength that his head didn’t move and my rotator cuff hurt a lot. No one spoke to me again at the gym - that’s a win in my book. Establishing dominance is vital if you want to survive in the hard world of corporate fitness.
   
2. Secure Property Rights - My second tip is to spend as long as you can on a single machine without using it while scrolling through Spotify to find a song with a sick drop. If you miss the drop, pick another song. Time is a mere construct! Who cares that five people are waiting! They are probably just cis-gender males. My personal favourite is to lie on a bench on my stomach and telling people that I ‘just have one set to go’ when in reality I don’t know what a set is.
   
3. Maintain Appearances – Going to the gym is about much more than breaking down muscle fibres and burning calories. It’s about letting people know that go to the gym. You can do this in many ways. Inside the gym, I advise that you wear overpriced ornate gym gear, preferably made by Nike, with iPhone arm-bands and personalised yoga mats. It also imperative to be holding three to four bottles of multi coloured liquids. Three Insta-stories per session with captions like ‘Hard Work All Day’ and ‘Feeling dat pump’ will allow those not privileged enough to go to a gym to be aware that you gym and are better than them.

Go forth and prosper.