Time To Head Back To The Gym

For months now, I’ve been using my home gym exclusively. I’ve enjoyed the fresh air and sunshine while I train. I’ve liked stepping just outside my home to get my training in. I’ve loved how so little has to work around my training schedule.

And, for the time being, it’s over.

The reason is pretty simple. I don’t like the cold.

Southwest Georgia stays pretty warm most of the year, most of the time. This year, it’s…well, it’s not. I mean, it’s not even Thanksgiving and it’s cold as hell.

I haven’t trained at all this week. The cold weather has sapped any desire for me to train. It’s also been rainy, which makes even cool weather feel nasty.

This left me with only a few options.

One, of course, was to just say screw it and go train anyway. Truth be told, this is what I should have done. I didn’t, though, and that’s obvious right now. Instead, I was a wimpy little bastard and stayed inside where it was warm.

Like I’ve said, I don’t like cold. I mean, I really don’t like it.

Another option was to move inside and start doing more training that would work inside the house. I could use kettlebells and calisthenics and probably wouldn’t have an issue.

This was a serious consideration for me for a while, truth be told. It’s not likely to be my go-to for a few reasons. One is that I really like strength training with barbells and dumbbells. While kettlebells are awesome in so many ways, I don’t want to restrict myself to just them and body weight work.

Another is that my living room is a mess. We had a bookcase kind of fall apart on us and we haven’t found a replacement yet. So, we have books stacked all over the living room at the moment. There’s not really a place to do any training.

That leaves the commercial gym.

When I started to train at home, I decided to maintain my gym membership because I knew foul weather was always a possibility. Granted, I trained in a hurricane, so clearly some definitions of “foul weather” don’t register with me. But cold is something that does, so I’ve been ready for this possibility from the start.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. 

While there are a lot of advantages to home training, the gym also has a lot going for it as well. For example, they have a larger variety of equipment to use. Oh, they lack a few things I’d like to see. After all, there’s no sled or prowler, no trap bar, and no axle bar, but they also have a better selection of dumbbells, ab training equipment, cable machines, and a whole pile of other stuff.

To be clear, if I had a really good way to heat my home setup, I’d stay here.

But seeing has I’m basically out doors with nothing but a roof and a couple of walls that work kind of like a windbreak–if the wind is going the right direction, that is, which isn’t guaranteed around here–so there’s nothing to contain any heat. I could get an outdoor heater, but those are expensive and take up a lot of room. There’s not really a practical option just now.

Since I kind of need to do something, well, I’m looking at it in the most positive light I can.

The truth is, though, you can gain strength anywhere if you want to badly enough.

Of course, now the argument could be made that if I wanted it badly enough, I’d deal with the cold. That’s a valid argument.

But on the same hand, I don’t have to deal with the cold. I have options such as a commercial gym membership. Hell, I might be able to get my wife to go with me, which will be kind of fun since I do have a weakness for women who lift.

Now, if I didn’t have this option available, I’d probably figure something else out. I don’t like the idea of not training anymore, so I’d find a way.

I just happen to have an easy way to do that.

This situation does make it clear that our next home will have either a garage, an extra room, or an outdoor “shop” to hold the gym. Something that will contain heat.

But that’s a problem for down the road.

For now, the only thing I need to do is hit the gym and train like a mofo.