Daily Dose of English 27
Going to the Gym
Daily Dose of English 27
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to talk about going to the gym. That's when you go to the gym, typically to work out, but technically, just going to the gym to do something else would count as going to the gym. But I'm specifically going to talk about going for exercise, to go to a workout. Because I've never been much of a person who goes to the gym. I think there's maybe three times in my life, three periods, where I've regularly gone to the gym. And that's counting right now, because I started about a week ago. So I'm still very fresh with going to the gym. But I wanted to talk about it a little bit, because I think there's some useful vocabulary, and it's a relatively common thing to talk about. And plus, it's fresh in my mind. So going to the gym is something that not a lot of people do. I don't think it's that common, but most people agree that they should. That it's a good thing to generally do because getting enough exercise is just a nice thing. You feel better and you often look better if that's something that you care about. And that's one of the reasons that I'm going, but I generally just want to feel healthier, to not be as tired. And I think it's also just a good habit to have because if you do want to specifically get better for something or whatever, it's a nice just general habit to start with. And that's kind of the way that I'm approaching it. Currently, I'm not doing that much, but I'm going every single day and that's what I'm counting as important. I'm only really working out hard, maybe three times a week. And they're not even that big of workouts. They're, I'd say sort of medium level workouts. But the other days I still go because it's relatively close and I wanna build a habit. And I just do a simple 10 minute body weight workout that helps me to stay consistent with everything and get in the habit of going every single day. A bodyweight workout, by the way, is when you use your body as the main weight, I guess. And so that's doing simple exercises that you can do right now, right? So things like jumping jacks, that's where you make a star with your body and you close and you jump out and in and out and in. Or pushups, which are when you're on the ground and you push all the way down, all the way up, all the way down, all the way up. Um, sit-ups are sort of the opposite of that, where you're laying down on your back and then you sit up and then you lay back down and you sit back up. That's what they're called sit-ups. There's lots of different, um, body weight exercises that you can do, but I'm not going to list them all here because that would not be a very interesting episode. But if you are into exercise and going to the gym, I highly recommend that you do some, not research, but you watch some videos about going to the gym in English and learn some new vocabulary that way. I'm sure there's a lot of great words that you already mostly know because you know how to do it, you know the exercise, we just don't know what we call it in English. Or maybe you call it the same thing except with a different pronunciation. I know that happens in Spanish as a couple of, um, exercises that are almost identical, but they just say it with Spanish pronunciation. Um, which I think is sort of funny, but, um, going to the gym though is a new-ish thing for me. Cause like I said, it's not like I've really only gone to the gym three. Times in my life. So not literally only three times, but three sort of periods at my life. Um, one of, one of them was when I was fairly young and I was still playing organized sports. So I was playing on a sports team. Um, and it was required to go to the gym a couple of times a week and to work out. And that was easy to do because it was required and we had the coach there to tell us what to do. So I never really had to choose how to work out or, or form my own workouts or whatever. The other time I went was only for about a month. It was mostly to, it was sort of a bet, right? My mom didn't think that I could go to the gym every day for a month and I did. And so I won that bet, but I didn't actually really build a habit out of it. And I wasn't doing anything that crazy. I was doing really simple stuff, treadmill, simple weights, squats, rowing, sort of very simple stuff. I didn't really make a plan or have anything in mind when I was working out. But now this time, that's the main difference. I want to actually understand and get better at building a workout for myself to achieve my own goals. And so I've been trying to learn more about how do you make a workout? How do you choose what to do? And right now I'm mostly just listening. I'm really not trying to do anything on my own yet. I'm just sort of letting other people say, hey, you should do this. Hey, you should do this. And following that advice because I just don't want to give myself the extra pressure of having to choose what to do. Because I'm also not very comfortable in the gym. I don't really know what to do, I guess. And especially if there's a lot of people, I feel like I'm just in the way. I feel like I look ridiculous. And I don't know what to do or how to necessarily share, I guess. What's the etiquette? That's a good word. Etiquette is sort of the unwritten rules that a place might have. So what is good gym etiquette? For example, don't drop the weights. Put the weights back when you're done. If you're working with a partner who uses heavier or lighter weight than you, take it off for them or put it back on for them so that they don't have to do it themselves. There's a lot of little etiquette things. that you can pick up on in the gym or really anything like that. Any public space, there's a lot of etiquette that goes on. And it's important to learn that to not make anybody upset. But like I said, I don't really know what to do. If it's filled with people, I just don't feel super comfortable yet. And that's the part of the reason I'm trying to go every single day is to build up that comfort. I know in my head that nobody cares. Nobody's looking at me. Nobody's trying to like judge me or anything like that. They're just trying to get their own workout in, but it doesn't necessarily always feel like that. And so it's this weird, like feeling where I know that it doesn't really matter, but at the same time, I'm like, what do I do now? I just feel like I look stupid standing around here. So I have to figure that out, but then it's going to be totally fine. One thing that I really like about this gym that I've been going to is how close it is. It's probably takes me four minutes to get there from where I'm sitting recording this right now. Um, if I'm already having my clothes on and whatever. but if I have to put my shoes on, let's say six minutes total, I can be at the gym, which is really nice because there's no friction. I think I've used that word a couple of times, but that's when there's like resistance or something in the way of you doing something else. And so it's been really easy to start building this habit because I can just be there almost instantaneously. Obviously not literally, that'd be really, really cool, I guess, but it's nice to be so close to a gym. I also like that it's not too fancy because I've always thought that those really big, like super clean, fancy gyms are just really weird. They, I don't know, they feel like fake or something like that and it just feels uninviting to be in. Sure, the spice is smaller and dirtier than all those are, but it feels more real in some way. All the weights are pretty old, and they're just metals. They don't have to be that fancy. You're just lifting heavy things, right? And so I actually like that sort of charm that it has. It feels more human, I guess. And so I know it's in some ways less inviting, but I also really kind of like that charm that it has. It's also been pretty hot recently, and so I'm definitely learning how to adapt to the heat and working out, which is something that I haven't really had to deal with before, especially in bigger gyms that have air conditioning and they're super cold inside. But it's another thing, it also just feels more... Like the people that go there are there to work out. It's a lot, almost more serious in a way. And it just feels, it's more of an inviting environment that I quite like. And so I'm really hoping that I get more used to it and I get more comfortable going every single day to the gym to build up that habit and also to build up muscles and be stronger and be healthier and that sort of thing. I personally don't really have any goals right now in terms of how much I can lift or what I can do other than consistency. That is the main thing. I also like endurance sports like running or swimming. I'm not very good at them, but I would really like to be. Those are the things that I think are more interesting because there's something sort of magical about like running for an hour straight. rather than trying to just lift something really heavy. I'd like to be able to do that. I'd like to have that ability. But we'll see what happens, honestly, in the future. I'm not trying to set myself any specific goals right now, except I would like to do things that help me with jujitsu, which is the other exercise that I enjoy. But I'll make a whole other video or video, a podcast episode on that later on. And so make sure that you subscribe to hear that. But that is my episode on going to the gym. Again, a little bit of rambling happening, but you know, that's what I'm here for. I'm here just to talk about a random topic for 10 minutes and see what happens. But thank you very much for listening today. I hope that you enjoyed and learned a little something. And I'll see you again tomorrow for another episode. Have a good one. Bye.
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