Expensive Gear You Need Before Exercising

You haven’t exercised in years and you’ve eaten pure garbage for as long as you can remember. Obviously, the first thing necessary to getting back in shape is buying a bunch of expensive knick-knacks. Here's the first three must haves.

Running Shoes

If you are going to be hacking up sixteen minute miles, you need a shoe that looks like it’s from the future. After a thousand years of footwear, what you sweat in for an hour a week should be the most advanced toe technology ever crafted. It should be NASA grade materials, passed rigorous wind tunnel tests, have a famous athlete endorsement, and, preferably, a bright neon color. This is what you deserve for your first jog in years. Whatever those insane marathon runners wear is what you need to wear. No exceptions. Sure, they run 26.2 miles in the amount of time it takes you to heat up a Digiorno Pizza, but other than that you’re both on the same level. It’s like learning to drive using a Bugatti, and you need the technological power high enough to match your delusions so you can walk every other lap in style. Ultimately, you’ve bought the shoe version of a Dyson Vacuum: you paid five times too much for something you can’t tell from the basic model, but your buyer’s remorse will be the highest motivation of all.

Smart Band

Everyone knows the three Ds of working out: Diet, Dynamic Exercises, and Data. If there is one thing that modern society has told us it’s that mass collecting of data always pays off with little to no repercussions. Your flesh is filled with data and you need to get it all. Whatever the FBI did to the iPhone, you need to do to your body. So go on and track your steps, your heartrate, your bowel movement. Track your mouse clicks per minute, your ingrown hairs, your favorite forum posts. Then track your tracking. It doesn’t matter if you have a use for it or not. Bundle all that data up, plug it into a shiny interface and then look at it. Wow. It looks like you’ve done a lot and you didn’t even have to work out. Before your smart band how would you have known that the walk between your car and your desk is exactly 72 steps? Now look at you, nearly 5 calories burnt off. How can you expect to make progress if you don’t have minute updates of trivial information?

Supplements

At your entry level shape, you really only need to do two things to get healthy: 1) Drink more water. 2) Eat less shit. But that’s a little too simple for someone with the exercise plans you’ve imagined. Where is the science? Where are the nanomachines? If you want to start your workout with a bang, then nothing is as explosive as a bunch of unregulated supplements coursing through your veins. Supplements of what you ask? Doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you’ll be ingesting powder and pills at the same magnitude of an EDM show. A portion of your life should be spent mixing concoctions until you’re part Harry Potter part Harry Potter with really gross farts. You can carry around a milk jug of water with you if you want but only if you’re matching it sip for sip with milkshakes so thick with protein they taste like pennies.Once your hair starts to fall out, you're ready to hit the track!

– Ian "Salmon Season" Golding (@iggolding)