INTRODUCTION
Going to the gym can help you build various things, strength, muscle, it can help you lose fat and alter your body shape in many ways. However, there are a few unexpected skills that you will pick up from the gym that have nothing to do with fitness but will become very handy gym skills you will notice yourself using more and more. Not only in the gym but also outside the gym.
In this article, we are going to go over a few unexpected skills you pick up from visiting the gym and just working out in general. Some of them seem logical but some of them might surprise you a bit. These are handy gym skills that you will use in everyday life and are very different from the skills you might think you pick up from the gym. So let us get into our first handy gym skill you didn’t know you had or didn’t know you learnt from the gym.
PLANNING & ORGANISING
When you go to the gym you tend to have a gym plan, how many Sets & Reps (See what we did there) you are going to do on certain exercises and in what order. Which is fine. However, sometimes you might get to the gym and find that it is busy, or the piece of equipment that you wanted to use is now out of order. What do you do? You quickly move your plan around, swap out some exercise, move other around so that you can still have a great session without much distraction. You do all this in your head on the fly. The more you do this the better you get at it. This carries over into your normal life as well. Had plans to go to a restaurant but it is full? Well, you will quickly think of an alternative.
Other unexpected skills you pick up is organising, the actual act of, not only, planning a workout but Also planning your food. Meal prepping and much more can help you become a very organised person. Bulk cooking, bulk planning. Finding out the best ways to plan and organic will all spill over into your daily life. You won’t know it until it happens and you will think “I planned that well” or “wow, I managed to organise that well”. A personal example is I cooked a meal for family and I managed to plan and organise the entire meal, cook it and serve it. This might not seem like much to some people but to me, this is a huge thing. Especially on the organisation side of things. The first of many handy gym skills.
PERSONAL CARE
This is a big one of all the unexpected skills, most people tend too overlook this, but not us fitness types. Personal care. When getting into the gym you want to get the best results possible. This means optimising a few things. You will make sure you are getting enough sleep, eating the right foods even things like getting your steps in all count towards your health. These are all minor tasks we do to help us reach our goals, but they also help us keep healthy and well.
Also, while doing all these exercises and lifting weights we become very aware of joint pain and muscle pain. Which you could argue everyone does, but where people that are into fitness differentiate is that we actually try our best to improve it. Buy a set of knee sleeves or maybe take time off or even change our form. We actively seek out to make our bodies work better. We get to know our bodies very well. What pains and aches we should worry about and what pains might be DOM’s (Read our article to help prevent DOM’s here) or lifting pains. One of those handy gym skills which will help you live a pain free life.
FOCUS
This seems like such a small skill but can be useful in so many areas in your life. Work-life for example. Being able to switch off and focus on a workout. Zone out for a specific lift. You get good at this and will be able to use it in other areas of your life. Being able to zone out at work and focus in on the task you have to do is something I have found myself having to do almost every day.
I would also say that the gym can give you a lot of grit and determination. Nothing builds character like being at the bottom of a squat not knowing if you are going to be able to lift it back up, but yet you do! You power through. Think about how many times in life you have wanted to give up and haven’t? I would say that the gym is at least helped in that area. This is one of those unexpected skills that remain unknown until you release you are doing it. Very useful!
CALORIE GUESSING
We mentioned this briefly in our New year blog (Give it a read here), but the more you track your calories the better you get at estimating your food calorie content. You get pretty good at looking at meals and food and working out the calories and protein that are in them. This becomes very useful when you go out to eat or even if you just want to stop tracking and eat more “freely”.
Obviously, nothing will be as good as weighing and tracking food, however, for some people they will be able to get by just by estimating and guessing. Takes a while to get this skill so we tell people to always start off weighing and tracking using an app. Especially if it is your first time tracking. If you haven’t ever done it before you will massively underestimate how many calories are in some foods. However, the more you do it the better you will get and eventually be able to stop tracking and just know what your body needs and know roughly how much you are eating.
Another side note to this point is portion control. You learn to say no to seconds or maybe not to order that extra side. You become mentally aware of calories and what it will do to your progress. Very minor skill but useful none the less. Especially for the wallet as well.
SELF CONFIDENCE
This is by far the most important one! Working out will help you with your self-confidence! This isn’t an “It might help you”, it will! 100%. Why does it help you with your self-confidence? Well, it is a result of many things that you do within fitness that affect it.
First one being the most obvious. The way you look. As you progress through your fitness journey and hit certain goals, your body will change shape. Hopeful it changes in the way you want it. This will help your confidence because you will be able to wear clothes you want to, look the way you want etc. Is it vain? Of course, but being vain is part of the reason for going to the gym, and it isn’t a bad thing at all.
The second thing is milestones and lifting goals. Your confidence will improve when you hit a certain number on a lift or run a certain distance or even hit a certain time. Now, we have said in many blog posts that your goals are your goals, you shouldn’t compare yourself and this couldn’t be more true, however, knowing that you beat your Squat Personal Best is a great feeling and will not only push you to beat it again but also make you feel better, and raise your self-confidence.
The last main reason is interaction. Believe it or not, the gym can be a good social place (if you want it to). I have made loads of friends in the gym all because I plucked up the courage and asked them for a spot. From there you start chatting and making friends and getting to know people. This will help make you more self-confident in a social aspect. A very important life skill!
CONCLUSION
As you can see there are many unexpected skills that you learn from fitness and the gym that you might not notice but do have a huge impact on your life. Did any of these ring true to you? Now you have read them can you think of a scenario where they applied to you? I am sure there are many more that we have forgotten about if we think of more we will do a follow-up article.
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Written by Kieran Blacker
Kieran is the CEO and Founder of Sets & Reps. He decided to make an application that helped people get a gym workout when not at the gym. He designed, Coded and built the application himself.