Pain Into Progress — When You Can’t Change What Happened, Change What Happens Next

The gym has always been a strange sort of constant in my life.

I’ve said before that I think gyms should be far easier for people to access, and I still mean that. Not because I think a gym fixes everything, because it obviously doesn’t. But I do think having somewhere to train, clear your head and feel part of something can make a much bigger difference than people realise. For me, those are some of the benefits of exercise beyond building muscle that matter most.

I know that because it has done exactly that for me.

I’ve had periods of my life where everything felt like it was falling apart, and without really planning it, I always ended up doing the same thing. I went to the gym.

Why I Keep Going Back

I lost a relationship that lasted 14 years. I’d been with her since I was 13, so when that ended it wasn’t just losing a relationship. It felt like losing a massive part of the life I’d known.

I went to the gym.

Later I lost my best friend, Joe. On the day he died, he actually rang me. I was busy doing something else and I didn’t answer. I never got another chance.

I don’t dress that up with some big life lesson because there isn’t one. I still wish I’d answered the phone. I probably always will.

Again, the gym was where I went.

And while I’m writing this, I’m going through heartbreak again. I’d bought an engagement ring, booked a holiday and arranged a private trip out to an island because I planned to ask her to marry me.

Then life went in a completely different direction.

Eventually I had to hear something I really didn’t want to hear: she didn’t love me anymore.

There isn’t a clever sentence after that. It just hurts.

So, once again, I train.

It Isn’t Only Where I Go When Things Are Bad

The funny thing is, I probably make the gym sound like some emergency shelter I only use when life goes wrong. It isn’t.

I’ve gone there after some of the best days of my life as well.

When my children were born. When something I’d worked for finally went right. When I had good news and wanted to tell the lads I trained with. I’d walk in exactly the same doors, only that time I’d have a smile on my face.

That social side has always mattered more to me than I probably realised when I first started.

I’ve never been massively social. I’m not the sort of person who can walk into any room and immediately feel comfortable. But the gym has always been different.

In there I know what I’m doing. I know the language. I know the people. I feel like I belong there.

That matters. I’ve written before about when the gym is the only place you feel like yourself. That feeling is real for me.

Some Days I’m Not Even There for the Workout

There are days where I couldn’t care less about progressive overload, PBs, sets, reps or how I look in the mirror.

I just need somewhere to go.

Sometimes your head is so full of stuff that you need one simple thing in front of you. A barbell. A machine. A number of reps. Something that doesn’t need a conversation.

That’s one of the things I like about training. Twenty kilos is twenty kilos. It doesn’t change its mind about you. It doesn’t say one thing one day and something different the next.

You either move it or you don’t.

And if you can’t move it yet, you train until you can.

When other parts of life feel completely out of your hands, that simplicity is actually quite comforting.

I’ve been crying all the way to the gym before. I’ve walked in with my head absolutely fucking scrambled. Then an hour later I’ve walked back out still having the exact same problems, but feeling a bit more able to deal with them.

Nothing has magically disappeared. I’m just calmer. My head is quieter. Sometimes that is enough.

Training Stopped Feeling Like a Hobby a Long Time Ago

People pick hobbies up and put them down all the time. Nothing wrong with that. Someone plays golf for a year, starts cycling, joins a club, gets bored and moves on.

The gym has never really worked like that for me.

Once it got hold of me, it stayed.

That doesn’t mean I love every session. I don’t. Some days I can’t be arsed. Some periods I’m flying and training feels brilliant, other times I’m just dragging myself through it.

But I always end up back there.

At some point it stopped being something I did and became part of how I live.

One Day I’d Love My Own Gym

I’ve always had this picture in my head that when I’m older, maybe around 50, I’ll have my own little gym.

Not some massive shiny commercial place either. I mean a proper backstreet bodybuilding gym.

Heavy dumbbells. Good old machines. Plates everywhere. Equipment that looks about 30 years old but somehow feels better than the brand-new stuff.

I can genuinely picture myself sitting behind the desk, moaning because someone hasn’t put their weights away, while watching people come in and slowly change.

Because anyone who has spent enough time around gyms knows the person behind that desk ends up being more than the person who takes membership money.

You end up listening to people talk about work, relationships, injuries, money, confidence, grief, good news, bad news and everything else that has nothing to do with training.

Then five minutes later you’re helping them adjust a bench or telling them to put another plate on.

That mix of things is what I like about gyms. They’re full of people trying to improve something, even when the thing they’re really trying to improve isn’t their body.

I’ll Probably Still Be There When I’m Old

I can already see the future version of me.

I’ll be the old bloke in the corner telling everybody, “Back in my day I used to lift this,” while nobody believes a word of it.

I’ll probably have a massive belly, dodgy knees and still be giving someone unsolicited advice about their squat.

To be fair, that sounds alright to me.

If I’m still walking into a gym when I’m old, still enjoying training and still encouraging somebody younger to stick at it, I’ll be happy with that.

I don’t really see the gym as a phase anymore. I think it will just be part of my life until I physically can’t do it.

Maybe What I Like Most Is Having Something I Can Control

I’ve thought about this a lot, especially recently.

There are things in life you simply cannot force.

I can’t go back and answer Joe’s phone call.

I couldn’t force a 14-year relationship to keep going.

And I can’t make somebody love me because I wanted a certain future with them.

You can argue with reality as much as you want, but eventually you still have to live with it.

The gym is different.

I can walk in and do something.

I can add weight. Improve my technique. Get fitter. Get stronger. Lose fat. Build muscle. Learn something. Even if the progress is tiny, I can still move something forward.

That’s probably why training has always made sense to me. When life feels messy, the gym gives me one area where effort usually has a clear answer.

Pain Into Progress

I don’t believe in pretending pain is automatically a good thing. Sometimes something bad happens and it is simply bad.

Losing somebody hurts. Heartbreak hurts. Grief hurts.

The gym doesn’t erase any of that.

What it can do is give you somewhere to put some of the energy that comes with it.

Instead of sitting there going round and round in your own head, you can move. You can train. You can have an hour where the only thing that matters is the next set.

And strangely enough, sometimes that hour becomes the start of something else.

You originally go because you want bigger arms or a smaller waist. Then you realise you’re sleeping better. You’re more confident. You’ve met people. You’ve got somewhere to be. You start taking a bit more pride in yourself again.

That’s really what Beyond the Gym is about for me. The gym was never just about muscle.

That’s what I mean when I talk about pain becoming progress.

Not pretending what happened was good. Not pretending you’re suddenly grateful for it.

Just deciding that while you can’t change what happened, you can still choose what you do next.

For me, a lot of the time, what I do next is walk through those gym doors.

It hasn’t fixed every bad thing that has happened in my life.

It has just always given me somewhere to go while I figure the rest out.

And hopefully, many years from now, I’ll still be doing exactly the same thing.

Just slower, fatter and telling everyone how strong I used to be.