I remember how intimidated I was when I first walked into the gym a year ago.  It was an undersized space, crammed with equipment, and I couldn’t help the awkward feeling of everyone’s eyes on me.  I’m an average woman of 170 pounds, not necessarily overweight but certainly in need of some toning up, at least and, hey, shedding a few pounds wouldn’t have hurt.

It was a pretty typical scene with the men in the back, lifting weights, and the women up front on the treadmills, ellipticals and bikes.  I started out there, stretching and warming up with a ten minute bicycle workout.  I have to confess that, as someone whose only real form of exercise was working out with an occasional YouTube video, I knew next to nothing about the gym, much less a proper workout, but I did recognize that lifting weights was what I wanted to be doing.  I had read about the benefits of women lifting weights and was impressed by their results.  They weren’t bulky like I had imagined, yet their bodies were toned and defined.  I could see a noticeable difference between them and the women who only did cardio.

As a woman in her early forties, my aging body had crept up on me, almost without me noticing until, one day, I knelt in a store for something on the bottom shelf and struggled to get back up.  I knew that it would only get worse from there if I didn’t make a change.

I glanced back in the weightlifting area, from the cardio section, and saw a group of young twenty somethings playing music and talking sports amid their curls, chest flies and leg presses, and they all appeared to know one another with their comradery.  Needless to say, I felt intimidated and insecure about infiltrating their space in the small gym so I just decided that I would find a time when they weren’t in there to start the weights.  That didn’t happen.  Day after day that I returned, so did they, and I finally had to convince myself to just blend in, no matter how much I stood out.

I took a deep breath, put on the persona that I knew what I was doing and strutted back, pretending that I didn’t see their glances out of the corner of my eye.  Anxiety set in when I realized that I had focused so much on gathering my courage that I hadn’t even researched what exercises to do once I got there.  I had seen the types of workouts that they did but what were women supposed to do?  I had no idea so I pulled out my iphone for some quick exercises.

I made it through my hour long workout without even looking too unsteady and, when I got home that evening, I began to look up workouts online while paying attention to how the different pieces of equipment in the gym were supposed to be used.  Before I knew it, I had a routine and a schedule, and those guys became so used to seeing me there that they eventually stopped paying attention to me.

Since then, I continue my blend of cardio and weightlifting at the gym five to six days a week.  I’ve noticed a tremendous difference in my body’s energy levels, I feel healthy and I’ve built more muscle than I thought possible.