I Need to Get in Shape Before I Start Boxing

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“What brought you in?”

I was sitting across from a woman in a Strong Again Session when she gave me the answer I hear most often.

“I want to lose 20 pounds.”

Fair enough.

“What have you tried before?”

She'd worked out before. In fact, she'd been in really good shape at one point.

She knew what it felt like to be strong. She knew what it felt like to have energy. She knew what her body used to be capable of.

But life looked different now.

She'd tried to get back into a routine a few times. Something would work for a while. Then life would get busy, she'd miss a few workouts, and eventually she'd stop altogether.

And then she said it.

“I just feel like I'm so far from where I used to be. Honestly, I should probably get in shape before I try something like this.”

I've heard that sentence hundreds of times.

And there is a perfectly reasonable answer to it:

Getting in shape before you start working out is a little like cleaning your house before the cleaning lady comes.

You don't need to get in shape first. This is the thing that gets you in shape.

But after a decade of having hundreds of these conversations, I don't say that.

Instead, I ask:

“What does getting in shape first mean to you?”

She thought about it.

“I don't know if I could actually do this right now.”

“What do you think would happen?”

“I don't know. I'd probably make it five minutes and die.”

Fair.

No one has actually died from our warm-up, for the record.

“But let's say you get tired five minutes in. Then what?”

She paused again.

“I guess I just don't want to be the person everyone is waiting for.”

There it was.

This wasn't only about being out of breath.

“Who would be waiting for you?”

She didn't know.

She'd never been here before. She didn't know how the workouts worked.

She was picturing a room full of people who were fitter than her, all moving together while she struggled to keep up. A coach telling her to keep going. Everyone else knowing what they were doing while she tried to figure it out.

So we talked about that.

There isn't a class to keep up with.

Nobody else has to stop because you need a break.

If you don't know what you're doing, we teach you.

If your knees don't like lunges that day, we're not going to stand over you demanding lunges until your knees reconsider their position.

The workout isn't a test.

But something about the way she'd said I'm so far from where I used to be was still sitting there.

So I went back to it.

“You've mentioned a couple of times that you used to be in really good shape. Tell me about that.”

And the conversation changed.

She told me about what she used to do.

How strong she used to feel.

How much more energy she had.

The things her body used to be able to do without her thinking twice about them.

Then she looked down.

“I don't even know how I let myself get this far away from that.”

And now we're not talking about whether she can survive five minutes of a boxing workout anymore.

We're talking about the distance between who she remembers being and how she feels today.

Because sometimes the woman you're afraid you won't be able to keep up with isn't standing on the bag next to you.

She's you, ten years ago.

So I asked what created that gap between "you" then and "you" now?

And the answer wasn't dramatic.

Life happened.

Work got demanding.

Kids needed her.

Schedules got fuller.

Other things became more important.

She kept taking care of what needed taking care of.

Life pulled her in a million different directions.

And somewhere along the way, taking care of herself kept getting moved farther down the list.

She knew exercise was important.

She didn't need another person telling her that.

She already knew.

That's part of what made it hurt.

Because the more she talked about the woman she used to be, the more it became clear that she didn't just miss being 20 pounds lighter.

She missed feeling strong.

She missed having energy.

She missed feeling like her body could do things.

She wanted to be able to keep up with her kids.

She wanted her kids to see her taking care of herself, too.

She wanted to look in the mirror and recognize herself.

She wanted to look on the outside how she still felt on the inside.

She wanted something in her life that was for her.

“I just want to feel like myself again.”

Sometimes she cries.

Sometimes I cry.

Sometimes we hug.

Because for the first time in a long time, she feels comfortable enough to say out loud the things she's been silently thinking for years.

The things she's never felt comfortable saying because she was afraid of being misunderstood.

Twenty minutes ago, her answer to “What brought you in?” was:

“I want to lose 20 pounds.”

Now we understand why.

And that's important.

Because there will be days when she's motivated to work out.

And there will be days when she isn't.

There will be weeks when everything goes according to plan.

And there will be weeks when life pulls her in a million different directions again.

On those days, “I want to lose 20 pounds” might not be enough to get her through the door.

But I want to feel strong again might be.

I want to keep up with my kids might be.

I want my daughter to see me taking care of myself might be.

I want to feel like myself again might be.

Now we know what she's really here for.

And after hearing hundreds of versions of this conversation over the years, we started paying attention.

Not just to what women told us they wanted.

To what made starting hard.

What made them nervous.

What made them quit before.

What they needed from us in those first few weeks.

And we built those answers into the program.

You told us you're worried you'll be out of breath five minutes into your first workout.

That's okay.

The goal of your first workout isn't to prove how fit you are. If you need to stop and catch your breath, you stop and catch your breath.

You told us you're worried everyone else will be waiting for you.

So we don't run classes.

You have your workout. Everyone else has theirs. Nobody needs you to keep up with them, and nobody has to wait for you.

You told us you're worried you won't know what you're doing.

So we teach you before we expect you to do it on your own.

You don't walk in on day one, get pointed toward a heavy bag and get told, “Good luck.”

You told us you're worried something might be too advanced for you, or that your body won't be able to do every exercise.

So we teach you how to make the workout work for you.

If your knees don't like lunges, we find something else.

If today's workout isn't the perfect workout for your body today, we adjust it.

That's not failing the workout.

That's knowing how to exercise.

And you told us that you've started before.

You've been motivated before.

You've had the new shoes and the new plan and the Monday where everything was going to be different.

And then life happened.

So we didn't build a program that relies on motivation.

We built one that teaches you how to keep going when life gets messy.

Because that's what hundreds of these conversations have taught us.

You don't need to get in shape before you start...whatever "getting in shape" means to you.

You start from where you are.