Going to the gym for the first time tonight. I don't know what I'm doing, what do I bring...

Going to the gym for the first time tonight. I don't know what I'm doing, what do I bring? How do I not look like an idiot? Any tips appreciated

No one cares about you, read the sticky.

Whatever you do, remember to tip the gym receptionist generously. It's important to make a good first impression, and if you stiff her you'll always be remembered as "that asshole".

Bring your squat plug.

Don't overthink things. People aren't paying attention to you, even if they look at you. Just do your workout, then roll out. If you have to wait for something, just wait. Standing around waiting for weights is perfectly normal.

do you have enough quarters for the plate dispenser? My gym's coin machine has been broke for months and i get stuck using dumbells if I forget

Remember to bring coins for the plate dispenser

Also, if a girl grabs the bench next to you, it's a sign that she wants you to approach her.

lol, that is so fucking true

If you feel you're about to go spaghetti mode then just stand still and stare at the person next to you and pretend to spot them

If you want to get anything done, there are two basic ways to get yourself to do it.
The first, more popular and devastatingly wrong option is to try to motivate yourself.
The second, somewhat unpopular and entirely correct choice is to cultivate discipline.
This is one of these situations where adopting a different perspective immediately results in superior outcomes. Few uses of the term “paradigm shift” are actually legitimate, but this one is. It’s a lightbulb moment.
What’s the difference?
Motivation, broadly speaking, operates on the erroneous assumption that a particular mental or emotional state is necessary to complete a task.
That’s completely the wrong way around.
Discipline, by contrast, separates outwards functioning from moods and feelings and thereby ironically circumvents the problem by consistently improving them.
The implications are huge.
Successful completion of tasks brings about the inner states that chronic procrastinators think they need to initiate tasks in the first place.
Put in simpler form, you don’t wait until you’re in olympic form to start training. You train to get into olympic form.
If action is conditional on feelings, waiting for the right mood becomes a particularly insidious form of procrastination. I know that too well, and wish somebody pointed it out for me twenty, fifteen or ten years ago before I learned the difference the hard way.
If you wait until you feel like doing stuff, you’re fucked . That’s precisely how the dreaded procrastinatory loops come about.
At its core, chasing motivation is insistence on the infantile fantasy that we should only be doing things we feel like doing. The problem is then framed thus: “How do I get myself to feel like doing what I have rationally decided to do?”. Bad.
The proper question is “How do I make my feelings inconsequential and do the things I consciously want to do without being a little bitch about it?”.

The point is to cut the link between feelings and actions, and do it anyway. You get to feel good and buzzed and energetic and eager afterwards. Motivation has is the wrong way around. I am utterly 100% convinced that this faulty frame is the main driver of the “sitting about in underwear playing Xbox, and with yourself” epidemic currently sweeping developed countries. There are psychological problems with relying on motivation as well.Because real life in the real world occasionally requires people do things that nobody in their right mind can be massively enthusiastic about, “motivation” runs into the insurmountable obstacle of trying to elicit enthusiasm for things that objectively do not merit it. The only solution besides slackery, then, is to put people out of their right minds. That’s a horrible, and fortunately fallacious, dilemma.Trying to drum up enthusiasm for fundamentally dull and soul crushing activities is literally a form of deliberate psychological self-harm, a voluntary insanity: “I AM SO PASSIONATE ABOUT THESE SPREADSHEETS, I CAN’T WAIT TO FILL OUT THE EQUATION FOR FUTURE VALUE OF ANNUITY, I LOVE MY JOB SOOO MUCH!” I do not consider self-inflicted episodes of hypomania the optimal driver of human activity. A thymic compensation via depressive episodes is inevitable, since the human brain will not tolerate abuse indefinitely. There are stops and safety valves. There are hormonal hangovers.The worst thing that can happen is succeeding at the wrong thing – temporarily. A far superior scenario is retaining sanity, which unfortunately tends to be misinterpreted as moral failure: “I still don’t love my pointless paper-shuffling job, I must be doing something wrong.” “I still prefer cake to brocolli and can’t lose weight, maybe I’m just weak”

. “I should buy another book about motivation”. Bullshit. The critical error is even approaching those issus in terms of motivation or lack thereof. The answer is discipline, not motivation.There is another, practical problem with motivation. It has a tiny shelf life, and needs constant refreshing.Motivation is like manually winding up a crank to deliver a burst of force. At best, it stores and converts energy to a particular purpose. There are situations where it is the correct attitude, one-offs where getting psyched and spring-loading a metric fuckton of mental energy upfront is the best course of action. Olympic races and prison breaks come to mind. But it is a horrible basis for regular day-to-day functioning, and anything like consistent long-term results.By contrast, discipline is like an engine that, once kickstarted, actually supplies energy to the system.Productivity has no requisite mental states. For consistent, long-term results, discipline trumps motivation, runs circles around it, bangs its mom and eats its lunch.In summary, motivation is trying to feel like doing stuff. Discipline is doing it even if you don’t feel like it.You get to feel good afterwards.Discipline, in short, is a system, whereas motivation is analogous to goals. There is a symmetry. Discipline is more or less self-perpetuating and constant, whereas motivation is a bursty kind of thing.How do you cultivate discipline? By building habits – starting as small as you can manage, even microscopic, and gathering momentum, reinvesting it in progressively bigger changes to your routine, and building a positive feedback loop.Motivation is a counterproductive attitude to productivity. What counts is discipline.

Don't forget to tip the girl at the front desk

Read the sticky and make sure to bring extra change for the plate dispenser and tips.

>Didn't tip the plate boy last week
>He hid all the 2.5lb plates and said they must be in use today

A tub of peanut butter is a good pre workout

>Going to the gym for the first time tonight
Me too bruh, we got this shit, sampler fi.

Don't go and just randomly use machines. Get a routine off Internet and know exactly what you are going to do and make sure you have multiple lifts so if something is busy you aren't that guy who asks to work in.

This a pasta? It's a good one, and it's spot on.

Absolutely saved. thanks man

Decide what you're going to train. I wouldn't train more than 2 muscle groups on a set day. For first day, I would do chest & biceps, but it's really up to you to determine what your plan is going to be. What are you training for? Strength, aesthetics, endurance, fat loss etc
For what you should bring, I would bring a towel in case the gym doesn't provide wipes because nobody wants to be sliding around on your ass sweat. I would also bring your phone because you can keep track of the exercises you plan to do and keep time of your rest periods.
If you've got a long drive home I would also bring your protein shake along so you can take advantage of your broscience proven metabolic window.
Wear flat shoes if you're going to be lifting; this means no running shoes, basketball shoes, etc
If you plan on squatting or laying on a bench while wearing shorts, please for the love of god wear underwear.
Most guys at my gym wear t-shirts, but I personally like a lot of mobility and don't like the shirt bunching up in my armpit, so I like to wear oversized sleeveless shirts but it's up to you. Godspeed OP

Best thing I ever read on Veeky Forums

I've screencapped it, AND copied it and sent it to all my normie friends pretending I wrote it.

thanks user

If you were a girl, this thread would have 200 replies with people telling you exactly what to do, offering to meet up with you and personally train you and buy your groceries, and complimenting you.

This board is beta as fuck, don't ask these autists for advice, just do you.

Yeah, it's pretty beta overall.

bring your headphones, also this

>chest & biceps

not chest and triceps? stopped reading there

If you're a first-timer without any guidance, stick to the machines for now. Try to do at least 6-7 different exercises. On each, do 8-12 repetitions (if you cant do 8, its too heavy. If 12 is easy, its too light) on each machine 3 times. Like, do 8-12 reps, wait about a minute, repeat for a total number of 3 times. That's all you need to know for a decent noob beginner-set

Literally the only actually helpful post in this thread

also good advice, but maybe tl:dr for a 100% noob. but yeah, dont overthink it. just wear whatever, and in some countries, its often customary to bring a towel with you to clean up after yourself

Chest stuff often hits tris passively, so I'm not able to hit tris as hard on chest days. I once made the awful mistake of doing my tricep extensions before db bench and ended up spilling my spaghetti all over the gym floor when my arm gave out and had me essentially flinging the dumbbell to the ground.
I like to target them as much as possible, that's why it's chest + biceps / back + triceps.

That's the point you dumb nigger. After you finish chest it only takes like 2-3 good tricep movements to hit them hard and get good growth. I do skull crushers, sometimes pull downs or behind the head raises, then I always finish with 3 sets of dips until failure. Huge tri's bro do yourself a favor and do it right or go back to Africa. Back/bis chest/tris

Don't do this. Practice doing the four main lifts, squat ohp deadlift and bench with just the barbell, no weight. Look up online tutorials by jonnie candito, alan thrall, and omar isuf to get a general idea. In general barbell training > machine training, so there's no need to beat around the bush with machines when you could spend your time learning the real thing.

This guy gets it

I've had good results doing it on a different day but god damn it I'll try it anyways

>stupid advice to give a complete beginner with no mentor/spotter/coach/guidance

Lol get real samefags. Day 1 is about machines and full body and learning about form and gaining stabilizer strength with dumbbells and learning how to nutrition properly and taking advantage of noob gains and improving cardiovascular health too. Once he has a foundation to work with of course barbells and compound lifts will be the next step towards making it. Hopefully he will find a friend to help critique form and spot by then so he can improve without slowing down.

>samefag
wrong

also
>machines
>teaching form and developing stabilizer strength
pick one

Dumbbells can but are probably more dangerous than barbells your first time if you are doing similar lifts. Again, no need to beat around the bush. Being a beginner is about learning proper form and building a base of strength, not diddling around on machines that build fucked up motor patterns.

fucking normalfags

forgot pic

Literally has no idea what he is talking about, please do not listen to this faggot.

>about machines
>somehow teaches form for totally seperate lifts
>using dumbells which are much more difficult to use than barbells on your first day

Are you trying to kill OP?

hardly.

Literally reads what he wants to read and not what's actually there

He learns about form for compound lifts via internet / observational learning while building himself a muscular foundation on machines. Preparing ahead. Something I doubt you did because you seem to be the skinny faggot who took up a whole rack on day 1 to do barbell training with zero plates and a complete lack of form. Thanks for wasting everyone's time and not sticking to where you belong during your first hour in the gym.

I'm also gonna assume you realize how stupid you are with the dumbells. He can improve stabilizer strength with them, low weight ones to gauge, AFTER he has already established ground on machines. It will not be his first day obviously, I expanded into his first couple weeks and even months hence the "proper nutrition/cardio health" remark. Oh u skipped over that too!

Such a tense faggot you are for cherry picking my post on a Qatari glass blowing forum.

if he's going to the gym in a few hours (or already has gone) and doesnt know shit, and noone is going with him to help him, the best-case scenario is he gets some good soreness. He's not gonna even remotely master squats & bench on his first day. He might even hurt himself.

Squat, bench, military press & deadlifts are obviously the dankest shit in the universe, but he's gotta spend some time studying that shit before even attempting

>waiting
>normal
Dafuq sort of poverty gym Jew go to?