Anxiety in the Gym and My Role as Your Personal Trainer, Part 1 – Developing Competence

My clients, who are mostly complete beginners, often bring up the anxiety they feel when venturing into the weight room on their own and without any guidance. As for myself, having been around gyms in some capacity for the last 20 years, that sense of anxiety has faded from memory somewhat. Nevertheless, I do remember that as my lifting technique and strength improved early on in my lifting journey, so did my confidence in stepping into the free weights area.

This speaks to an important element in establishing an exercise habit—namely, the development of a sense of competence. I believe that a large part of my role as personal trainer is to expedite the process of gaining basic competence in the weight room for my clients by ensuring that they know how to use the equipment safely and are able to perform basic lifts effectively. This is what I wish someone had done for me when I first took up lifting, saving me years of trial and error, detours and frustration. And it is also likely the most effective way of relieving anxiety when someone transitions to training on their own, which is an option I regularly remind my clients of (although I understand that this is not the eventual goal of all or even most people who seek out a personal trainer, I am a firm believer in the old adage of “teach a man (or woman!) to fish…”).

A very common source of concern is the sense of feeling observed and judged for awkward lifting technique or perceived lack of competence by other, more experienced lifters. While I tend to believe that most gymgoers are too preoccupied with themselves and their own training to care about what a newbie is doing or how much they are lifting, a surefire way of bypassing this concern is to first devote a few weeks to acquiring basic lifting technique with the help of a professional so that you can be confident in your abilities going forward. I promise that once you are capable of executing a squat variation, a deadlift variation and a couple of presses and pulls with good range of motion and efficient, repeatable technique—most of my clients have reached this point in the space of two to eight weeks of training with me—you will in fact be more competent than most commercial gym users (yes, I have seen self-taught lifting enthusiasts do rather questionable gym things in my day, and that fully includes yours truly).

So there you go, this is the first piece of advice I would give someone who is struggling with gym anxiety, regardless of whether the help you recruit is myself, another PT or just an experienced friend who can show you the ropes. It’s not the only advice, however. In fact, there are a couple more important things alongside competence that also happen to begin with a “C” – namely, connectedness and control. I will be writing about these shortly, so stay tuned😊