We asked members of KeyFitness for their top reasons to join a gym. Here are their responses...

REASON 1

Before I joined, I thought I hadn’t got the energy to exercise – but guess what? Exercising actually gives you energy!

"The less you do, the less you want to do; The more you do, the more you want to do."

REASON 2

It makes you feel better – the last couple of times I’ve been I really didn’t feel like it, but once I started exercising, I felt much better. You also get a real feeling of accomplishment when you reach / beat a personal goal.

REASON 3

Exercising reduces your cholesterol – well that’s not entirely true. It actually increases your HDL, which is your good cholesterol – which is linked to protecting you against heart disease. It also lowers your LDL (bad cholesterol) and triglycerides (which is a good thing!) (This is if you do cardio exercise – i.e. exercise that raised your heart rate (approx 90% of your peak heart rate – the machines at the gym will have settings to find the heart rate you should be aiming for though so don’t worry about working it out for yourself.)

REASON 4

You build muscle – which is even more important than it sounds. We’re not all going to have biceps like Arnie, But that doesn’t matter, because we don’t need to. What we need is to increase lean muscle mass - which helps support your frame (abdominal muscle is particularly important for this), and the more muscle you have, the more fat you burn - even when you’re not exercising. That’s right, by having more muscle, you burn more calories per day without any extra effort. Great!

REASON 5

You feel better about yourself – as you exercise your figure will improve and so will your body image. I’ve also found that it helps me to improve my posture, which has been a big problem for me for years. Muscle aches and pains are also decreasing rapidly.

REASON 6

It helps your immune system – exercising aids your body’s natural defences against cold and flu viruses among other things.

REASON 7

Helps you believe that you can make a difference to the way that you look and feel – until you start, you don’t really believe it’s possible (at least, I was sceptical).

REASON 8

You can keep a track of your progress easily by seeing how long /what pace / what level you can sustain on different machines. It really gives you such a good feeling to see that you’ve made strides in the right direction.

REASON 9

You work muscles you never knew existed – that might not be something you enjoy at first :-D, but after a while you’ll appreciate it.

REASON 10

You look better naked!