Could Nietzsche Be My Gym Buddy?
An earnest effort to unite existentialism and hitting the peck deck machine
I have been skipping workouts and running afoul of holding a diet for a month now.
This delinquency unfolds in a simple pattern— the previous day’s shaky feet act as a “sunk cost” to avoid hitting the gym on the next. After all, it takes only one miss to break the track record and compel me to enjoy the rest of the week.
As I engage in idle mental chatter to drag my will back, a nearby Indian restaurant always ends up the last of the metaphorical rose petals I pluck, and it says, “It’s okay to cheat today.” Only Doordash makes the decision more accessible.
I had been working out regularly for the first three months. Fired with self-discipline in the early weeks, I barely lost out on two workouts and cheated perhaps thrice.
But it came at a cost, one that still keeps me in bed in the mornings.
This is what my weekdays looked like - Wake up at 9 am, work from 9.30 am - 5.30 pm, get ready for the gym, and leave by 5.45 pm.
It took me 30 mins to reach the gym on foot. So I spent an hour every day commuting for something that I intended to make a habit of.
My muscles would flex for two hours at the gym; ergo, I lost the rest of the evening trying to burn the addictive calories poured liberally by my favorite restaurant.
Weekends would be spent on household chores, and weekdays were consumed by work and training. Working out became another menial task.
I gave up.
I didn’t have time to practice music anymore. The songs I had planned to play were getting shelved, and I was turning up for classes unprepared.
Raised in a financially frugal family, I viewed spending money without intended improvement as engaging in luxury—an immoral action. Gradually, it was chipping away at my soul.
I couldn’t keep this up anymore, especially when I didn’t have an inherent purpose to maintain a macho look. I am existential and uninterested in unfurling my plumes to impress the ladies.
In contrast, I am curious about ideas and would spend hours just listening to upcoming scientific podcasts during my foot commute (perhaps this motivated me to fire up my cold feet after a tedious workday.)
In the near future, tasks at my day job will ramp up steeply, and I will need to dedicate 60-80 hours weekly. There is no way I could spend an hour on the commute and a couple of hours training. It could get worse, considering I might need to work weekends.
What’s the point of paying my trainer hundreds of dollars a month if I’m incapable of holding my end for even a short while? Muscle degeneration happens within weeks, and I am sure to skip workouts and slip on my diet sooner than later.
This made me wonder if Nietzsche, who considered existentialism as a solution to Nihilism, would have dragged me for the coveted leg days.
To set himself as a role model, would he have personally strived to push a couple more on the pull-ups? Would he have squatted above his weight on Bulgarians? Would he have clocked five more minutes on his daily cardio?
Perhaps, he would have advised me to consider training my body as providing meaning to my existence.
But what if I told him that the activity was only making me depressed? I was setting goals that were harder to achieve over the longer run, especially when they had no expiry.
This required me to compare it against something I loved doing—strengthening my brain. I wanted to jump on this thought-train to check if I can produce similar feelings for training.
I love idle meta-analysis of my daily choices. For example, I could spend an hour trying to compare the inclinations of the people around me to my own. I would ponder about their opinions on hobbies, relationships, family, and so on.
But I don’t need to be compelled to have these thoughts. I love engaging in them, even on busy work weeks. Asking “why” is one of my favorite pastimes. When I don’t find an answer, I double down, “Why did I choose to ask why?” It helps wind my clock.
However, I believe that, as with everything, we need a threshold. If we cross it, the equations that define healthy living start to break.
If we engage in philosophy beyond a point, it becomes depressing. If we cross that line in psychology, it starts becoming false. With physics and neuroscience, it becomes speculative. If we ask “why” too many times, it becomes futile.
When I constantly listen to philosophy podcasts, it disrupts my day-to-day living. I start debating if buying three extra tofu scramble rolls is worth the added effort of carrying the bag for the few minutes of walking to the bus stop.
So am I hitting that threshold on this venture? They say that working out is therapeutic. But when I am at the gym, my brain doesn’t shut off. It feels great some days, and on others, there is an emptiness in my heart. The former helps stack heavier weights, while the latter takes them away.
Using my ruminative state (over which I have no control over), I homed in on two fundamental problems with training.
The first is my toxic competitiveness. I was raised in a bullpen and was struck when I didn’t stand on top. Now, in my late 20s, I cannot turn off that state.
If there is a metric to compare, I compete. I don’t even need other living participants; I create one out of imagination. It is an addiction to break my own records at the bench every time.
This becomes deadly, especially when I lose (which is bound to happen.) Every failure leads me to question the purpose of existence itself. I wonder if there are people out there who have overcome this hurdle. However, would I adopt their learnings even if I knew they worked?
The second problem is immersing oneself in the present, i.e., maintaining what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “The Flow State.” Mihaly recommends that every activity be neither too complex to create dreaded anxiety nor too simple to become drudgery.
Every evening, I struggle to change into my workout attire. My focus is increasingly on the pronged future, one of which grants me the rest of the day.
It makes me anxious since the right answer seems to be embedded in hedonism. But I’m aware of my responsibility to my loved ones, to be healthy and charming in both mind and body.
I also know that such mental chatter often leads to avoiding the workout. So I “will” myself to don my training pants, strap on my sneakers, and get out of that comfort zone. I treat it as the first workout. I compete.
But, over the last 30 days, my alter ego, the little demon, has been winning. How could I focus on the present when my chosen destiny follows the path of least resistance?
I can choose to call a friend, play a game, watch a movie, or just do nothing. Instead, I have to get ready for a 30-minute commute which eventually devours my evening…another evening!
Being lazy grants me a future where I don’t have to compete at all. If I end up at the gym, I would need to win over the next three hours.
Doesn’t it make sense to take the loss in the first set and go home? If I always play to win, I’d prefer not to play. Why wasn’t I taught to just enjoy the show? Why didn’t Lenka raise me, instead?
It doesn’t help that my support systems— my family— are couch potatoes. My mother asks me to chill and be careful, my sister-in-law asks me to do my best, and my brother lets out a “hmm.”
I don’t have a great rapport with half of my roommates, and the others are either too old or chubby. My friends in town shower extensive compliments but are terrible liars. I can often glimpse the facade before they the reel ends.
I don’t want to rely on my trainer too much. It isn’t healthy to maintain a habit via an expensive extrinsic motivator.
So how do I build an inherent inspiration? Or, tilting to the other end, how do I generate complete apathy for spending time on training? Could I ever view lifting weights as fundamental to my being, like the ritualistic morning brush?
I have a few ideas.
I want to print out a calendar and stick it on the wall.
Maintaining visual cues is quite effective in silencing mental chatter. Each day will have data on both workouts and diet. This way, I can track how often I lick excess oil off my plate.
But I have anger issues. Too much mental strain would only cause me to tear the calendar into little pieces. This rebellion would be catastrophic and could even set me back by a few years.
I need insurance, a quiet inner voice encouraging a flexible schedule.
There is no way that “training at the gym” could share the bed with “brushing my teeth.” After all, I don’t even brush them twice a day. Let’s not get into flossing.
My first brush of the day is a testament to inculcating good childhood habits. This isn’t remotely the same as setting goals as an adult.
If the “21/90 rule” were valid, we wouldn’t witness carcasses of broken New Year resolutions in June. If such Youtube soundbites had worked, many of us wouldn’t have stopped being vegan after the first year.
This is also why I never read self-help books for better living. Most of them are either trite or scientifically inaccurate. They focus on correlations and conclude based on insufficient sample spaces. They rely on cheap tactics, like referring to their readers as “one percent-ers”—shallow compliments that try to raise self-esteem, a band-aid on a bleeding aorta. It is aimed at making us feel unique, not whole.
While self-importance might kick our butt off the sack initially, it isn’t enough to maintain the routine.
The first brush of my day defines me; the second is just optional. A slim and athletic lower body, a broad upper torso, and well-defined musculature should neither act as an advertisement for superiority nor as a moat against sub-human living.
What I need is to forego ideations of a dream destination.
I need to view paying my trainer (or for the gym) as buying a new toothbrush.
I should stop considering it as an investment and instead make it an essential part of my life. Since I can afford it, could I deduct $4K annually for this goal?
Next—how could I make the gains from the effort flexible?
Could I pop into the gym for 30 mins and return? That would be an hour of commute for a 30 min quick training and might not yield the goal of a defined body fat percentage.
But there have been countless days of rushing the toothbrush to attend a morning lecture or meeting. Sometimes, we gulp down our meals without chewing, hold our farts until they hurt, or postpone our showers (or skipped them altogether.) Do we even recall them as “failures?”
It isn’t crazy to believe in a routine without a focus on the metrics, is it? So I need to be okay with losing muscles temporarily. I need to stop having body fat goals since I love a tasty serving of butter paneer. I must have stop-gaps in my training if I feel work would ramp up.
I would need to discuss all of this with my trainer. He likes getting paid, and I need him to teach me to avoid injuries. I can afford him, but I cannot afford a slipped disc in Canada, especially with the long wait times for doctor appointments.
So, there we have it!
A calendar to keep me accountable, flexibility in gym training duration (even a single workout is okay), and the willingness to pay my trainer to avoid an injury and make training fun.
These should help me achieve my goal of maintaining a routine.
Of course, a complimentary benefit of embedding these habits in our lives is shiny teeth on an athletic body. It may neither make dames fawn over our cuts nor would it bestow our lives with more purpose.
We shouldn’t refer to them as a “goal” because a destination would make us think about it. The more we become conscious of a habit, the less it becomes one.
Perhaps I don’t need Nietzche’s assistance on this matter. What kind of a bestie allows his friend to roll over in his grave just because you wanted your calves to show?
I guess, writing about this was effective in engaging my head. It is now time to strap on my boots and let my muscles fly.