Get a personal trainer

I've been meaning to post this some time ago, but I guess a certain question on AskTRP motivated me to finally post it.

This is meant for a specific type of individual, who I believe to be a pretty large portion of TRP's readership. You'll know if this applies to you: you're fairly new to TRP, or perhaps you've been here some time but haven't gone very far in your journey. You work in tech, and though the chance of circumstance have found yourself with a pretty substantial salary compared to most of your peers. You're not a complete idiot with money, so after rent is paid and your student debt reduced, you still have a reasonable discretionary amount to buy your tech toys.

You like reddit. You were on reddit before you discovered TRP. That's not surprising, you're working in tech, so you might have another slew of social media and news aggregator sites you check daily. You might even be slightly addicted to them. I mean, not addicted addicted or anything like that, but you know, that's your goto impulse whenever you're idle. That's what you do at work when the code is compiling. That's what you check on your phone when you go to the bathroom. That's the first thing you do when you wake up and the last thing you do before going to bed.

And finally, you're not exactly happy with your physical appearance. You could be overweight or underweight, point is you look at yourself in the mirror and you think you're not quite what you could be. TRP keeps reminding you to go out there and lift, so that's what you do. At least, that's what you're trying to do. You got a gym membership, and you go there with variable regularity. You think you're working at it, and you've seen some improvements, but the whole damn thing is going so slow, you sometimes get discouraged. You keep reading motivational quotes to try to dispel some of that.

If you are that person, I have one piece of advice for you: get a personal trainer.

Find one at that guy you sometimes go to, or better yet find a private gym near where you live, and make that call. Schedule at least two, preferably three sessions with him a week. Yes, that can get expensive, you'll pay more for one session than a whole month of membership at the gym. But if you can afford it (and like I said, I think you can, because you have a good job and you're not an idiot with money), you'll get more out of that one session than that whole month at the gym because, let's be honest, you're not exactly doing a month's worth of lifting at that gym.

Yes, you lack discipline, and it's not entirely your fault. The universe has conspired against you and thrown you into an age where not only were you told bullshit about what it means to be a man since you were out of your mother's womb, but also an age with a virtually limitless stream of distractions, and every time your current activity is interrupted by that notification on your phone and you tap on it, you move one inch away from your potential disciplined and fulfilled life. And the tragedy of it all is that your line of work prevents you form going cold turkey on this stuff.

Well there's at least some good news. Routine is a powerful force, and while those external forces have successfully trained you to shrink your attention span to that of a goldfish, you can use other external forces to train you to be disciplined. It is easier to get out of bed at 5 to make your 5:30 appointment than it is to willingly get out of bed at 8 just for yourself. Likewise it is easier to press 200lbs when your trainer is there looking at you than it is to press 150lbs by yourself. And that's really the most important part, the spotting, the education on the proper technique come as a bonus. So when you look for a trainer, be sure to pick someone who appear disciplined, diligent and consistent. It's time to take fable of the Tortoise and the Hare seriously.

I'm not going to go over the benefits of lifting again, this has been done a thousand times. You know you need to do it, so trade that money you made for professional help, for external discipline. And that's true of anything else you feel like you want to do in your life but lack the discipline to follow through. Want to learn to play an instrument? Sign up for a class instead of trying to do it on your own. The combination of external pressure and the cost of investment will force that discipline out of you so quickly, you won't even recognize yourself.

Obviously, if you find you truly can discipline yourself and pump that iron just as hard by yourself every day, this post doesn't apply to you. Congrats, you have achieved self mastery, you're probably drowning in pussy and powerful social connections. I'm not sure what you're still doing here to be honest. But if I have described you in the first few paragraphs, then for you, getting a personal trainer is probably the best investment you can make.