There's nothing worse than trying to do a job that is too big for us - and beginning a new gym membership is right up there as one of the hardest new directions to take in our life.
I personally have always found it stressful because in the public space of a gym, it always seems that I am the weakest in the room whereas everyone else is coping just fine with it all.
But then I learned a trick about how to take onboard a new gym membership with a great deal more likelihood of success, and the trick makes great sense when you think about it.
The reason the workouts are difficult at the beginning are that we don't have enough testosterone in our system.
And it is because our testosterone level is too that we have lost most of our muscle mass and therefore decided we need the gym work to get back into shape.
What we need to do, before we start going to the gym is to boost our testosterone levels back up to somewhere within a normal range so that when we do start our gym-routine that we can cope with it easily.
What we need to do at home for a few weeks before joining the gym is to do about 7 minutes per day of hard and muscle-burning lifting which will tell the brain to make more testosterone.
Certainly these short-burst type heavy weights at home will grow some muscle too - but the real point is to get the burning muscles message to the brain to begin increased production of our hormones.
Even after just a few weeks of this preparatory work, we find that when we do go to the gym we are more highly motivated, have already gained some muscle mass and best of all, we have a solid testosterone level to put into our gym workout.