Dog Gone It

For the first time in years, I have decided to join a gym. Actually, in 2010, a friend who was a professional boxing trainer took me under his wing and had me working out at a Muay Thai kickboxing gym. It was hard core and tucked in a warehouse gym that was training MMA fighters. I enjoyed it despite the hard work, but I had to give it up for medical reasons.

Those reasons no longer exist, so with the new year I was faced with making a resolution – that being to join a gym and start working out. My wife was encouraging me to do this as she remembered how much it improved my overall health. So I went on a quest to find a place that could accommodate both my work and home-life schedules.

The other week I found such a place. It’s five minutes away from my office, so inconvenience can no longer be an excuse. I was pretty pumped about it, since the proximity allowed me to go before or after work and even during my lunch break.

My first week, I didn’t know anyone, so I wanted to make the best impression possible. One day I geared up to go during lunchtime. Before I left the house that morning, I grabbed a T-shirt off the clean laundry pile and threw it into my gym bag, which already had my athletic shoes and some sweatpants.

There’s no way I’m going to work out in my office clothes and return to work, so a change was mandatory. Everyone saw me walk into the gym, and I went to a small changing room to suit up. When I pulled out the T-shirt, I saw that I had taken one of my daughter’s. It was oversized for her, but I could probably wear it despite it being really tight on me.

The problem was that on the front of the shirt was a huge picture of the head of a golden retriever puppy. So I walked out of the changing room wearing a skin-tight shirt with a puppy plastered over the front of it.

I jumped on a machine and the two guys on either side of me moved to machines across the room.

I had a serious workout spurned on by the fact that others were probably making fun of me. So, in a way, I found a new way to motivate myself.

I’m checking with my daughter to see if she has any shirts with kittens on them.