Gear Acquisition Syndrome

The scene is – I suspect – horribly familiar. You’ve popped into a fitness-related shop (either physical or online) for a single, worthy purchase. Let’s say, a new pair of running trainers. But you see the other sections of the shop, and well… why don’t we take a peek and see, right? After all, you’re already there; it requires almost nil effort.

Seeing all the new Shiny Things tempt you, as they’re supposed to. Say, the racks of gym clothes. Ooh, now that’s a funky-looking workout top. In my size, and can afford it too.

This is the point where you’ve crossed the line. You don’t need another workout top, but you want it. You swear you’ll love it and wear it all the time; but truth be told, if this was true it meant your current top selection was inadequate and chances are it would have been on your mental list, like the trainers.

You start to rationalise. It’ll allow you to make a cull of the older tops. It’s great value. It’ll help you work out better. It won’t be like the last time, no! You’re moving towards the checkout, performing the mental gymnastics and corkscrew logic to justify your purchase to yourself.

However, chances are it will end up like ‘the last time’. You get it, enjoy the ‘new Lycra smell / feel’ for perhaps three workouts. Then it gets lost in the jumble of your workout drawer along with the myriad of other exercise clothing you already possess. And if you’re like me, you’re more than not rummaging through it looking for that ultra-comfortable top which despite the fact it now permanently whiffs a bit you’re hanging on to because they don’t make it anymore.

It’s not your fault, strictly speaking. You just suffer from GAS – ‘Gear Acquisition Syndrome’. It’s a very common syndrome; in fact, the vast majority of us are sufferers, to some extent.

The Nature Of Your Problem

Is that you’re buying kit you frankly don’t need or don’t need enough to justify the price-tag. It’s a tendency which was – I believe – first noted amongst musicians, and having known a few, I’ll testify it’s completely true. But this syndrome is visible in almost all interests; from crafting to gardening, fishing to yes, fitness. Just go back a section and replace ‘workout top’ with say, ‘pasta maker’, ‘overdrive pedal’ or ‘camera lens’ and you’ll see what I mean.

The worst aspect of this syndrome is that it’s difficult to identify in a blanket manner. We can easily tell a person is a hoarder if their home is stuffed to the gills with decades of junk, or an alcoholic if you’ve often seen them drinking before noon. Not so with GAS.

Unfortunately, many interests and trades do require a ‘large amount of kit’ from an outsider’s viewpoint – to them ‘a saw is a saw’, while a skilled DIY’er will know different saws are for different materials. Even worse, ‘value’ is in the eye of the beholder; I would have near-nil use for a smoothie maker (not liking smoothies) but someone who had one daily would make good use of it.

This allows your GAS to hide in plain sight; knowing that you’re able to fob off outsiders with technobabble ‘explanations’ of why every object is required, or to simply say ‘you wouldn’t understand’. That in fact unless your GAS was at a critical level, the only other person who’d be able to diagnose you would be another within your interest, who probably has GAS themselves and would in fact make your situation worse (theirs too).

Selling Success

The primary culprit in development of GAS is from the businesses within ‘the interest’. As I’ve said before, the fitness industry is an industry and thus primarily motivated by the making of money. Therefore, their goal is to sell more product.

Unfortunately, there’s only so much kit a person really needs for their interest. In some, like fitness it’s actually pretty low; the only things I feel you must buy (if you don’t own already) to start off is a pair of trainers, tracksuit bottoms / leggings and a sports bra (if a gal) – everything else can be improvised. In fact, looking at some of the old athletes and bodybuilders back in the 50s you’d be shocked of how little kit they had to get to their peak.

Admittedly, kit can make your life easier. Weight-work goes much better when you’re lifting proper dumbbells, cardio more effective if you’ve got access to a cycling machine for those inclement days and so on. However, it’s a ‘law of diminishing returns’; you’ll get more ‘bonus’ from upgrading from makeshift dumbbells to vinyl free weights than when you upgrade from vinyls to cast iron.

What the industry does here is to artificially stimulate demand through advertising, sponsorship and so on. In short, it’s trying to sell you success. Good musicians own X, fit people use Y and so on. This then morphs in people’s minds to mean ‘you need to own X to be a good musician’. This is a delusion which the companies have no desire to dispel – for it shifts units.

This leads to the conclusion; the more kit you have, the better you must be. Which is patently stupid, for when it comes to fitness it’s judging folk on just one attribute – their wealth. A fat man doesn’t automatically improve their health by forking out ten grand for a full home gym, any more than an idiot can make themselves a genius by buying a few hundred books and leaving them in their front room.

Monuments To Failure

However, it’s an understandable stupid conclusion; after all, buying lots of new sleek gym gear is so much easier than y’know, actually spending that time in the gym. It allows us to develop some form of ‘status’; if a man owns lots of tools, it’s more likely he’ll be asked to play the guru (mistaking the possession of many tools for skill with them) than one without them. The well-appointed kitchen filled with racks of exotic ingredients and strange-looking tools will suggest the owner does ‘proper cooking’, even if in reality they only use the room to serve the takeaways.

We feel good about buying these things. We feel that this one more gadget is going to be ‘the one’ which gets us to our goal. Don’t get me wrong, I get this too, everyone does. Even the person who is completely ‘anti-GAS’ when in the shopping department often ends up simply accumulating gear almost unawares – I’ve done my best to fight the consumeristic corruption of fitness, but even so I’ve got a few items which I don’t really need but keep around because ‘it might be useful one day’.

It’s this which is why I call all this stuff ‘monuments to failure’. The piles of cookbooks and pasta-makers are testament to the people’s hankering to be able to make decent meals but can’t be bothered to put in the graft, like the bits of gym clothes at the forlorn corner of the wardrobe are reminders that you seemed to believe they alone would slim down your backside.

The Treatment

Is a relatively simple one – stop buying more kit. Close those browser tabs, bin the magazines. Remember the old adage; ‘the bad workman blames his tools (for their failure)’. That when you start out, get in the bare minimum – this Nerd Fitness article is pretty good (except I disagree with the kettlebell – I’d say leapfrog to a pair of vinyl dumbbell adjustables, on the basis the latter is more versatile) – and only get in individual pieces of better kit when you’ve clearly reached the maximum with your current stuff.

So, you’re in some ratty ancientness of clothing to workout in? Who cares? Look, if you’re in an environment where others are also working out, I’ll tell you we’re too damn busy to look and judge. Or should be. Though why the hell you’d care about the opinion of randos is a mystery to me. And if you’re on your own; who are you trying to impress?

Personally, I have the ‘three sentence rule’; that if I cannot explain why Item X will clearly improve my ‘fitness outcomes’ in less than that to another person and get them to agree, you don’t purchase it. Chances are, if you genuinely need a new item, you’ve realised long before you see one for sale.

Simply hoping that ‘you won’t buy that stuff’ won’t work, for the main point about GAS is you don’t buy the obvious crap, like say shake-weights or unsuitable trainers. Which makes it difficult to get rid of the GAS ‘accumulations’, as it can be argued that all the gear is needed.

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This Thing Of Ours should not be another outpost of consumerism; something which discriminates on the size of the wallet alone. And I salute any and all who make it without falling prey to the dreaded GAS.

And consider this; if you’re not forking out all that extra cash on pointless kit, that’s less work you need to put in to earn that money. Time which can be used more productively, like… working out.

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. I’ve not received anything for this review. Part of my ‘Frugality’ and ‘Essays‘ series.