Competitive gym culture off-putting

I think I’m getting fat.

Well, not really. But I am gaining weight. Over the past couple of… I think I’m getting fat.

Well, not really. But I am gaining weight. Over the past couple of months, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some development in the belly region, and to my great dismay, my girlfriend partially confirmed it. It took three years for the freshman 15 to catch up with me, and it’s probably only like the freshman 5, anyway, but still. I don’t want a belly.

This is problematic, though, because if there’s one thing I’m really terrible at doing, it’s motivating myself to take care of my body. I’m extremely lax when it comes to fitness and eating healthily. Furthermore, I hate when other people try to give me advice on how I should be taking care of myself or eating better.

Part of this is compounded by the fact that I don’t really like going to the gym, either. It’s not that I don’t like working out – I played sports all through high school and was in pretty darn good shape then, thank you very much. And I like the feeling of accomplishment that you get when you finish a successful workout. Your muscles hurt in a good way, you’re tired but also sort of energized, and you feel like eating an obscene amount of food could be justifiable. It’s great!

What isn’t so great, though, is gym culture. What I mean by this is that I dislike the kind of atmosphere gyms tend to have. People don’t seem to work out so much as attempt to put on a show for each other, bragging about how strong and in-shape they are to all the other strong and in-shape people.

Meanwhile, I, along with the other people who actually want a workout to get into shape, kind of mope around the skirting boards like the nervous kids at a middle-school dance.

We kind of shuffle our feet, maybe nervously use a machine or two on a low-weight setting we changed with fumbling hands, looking around nervously to see if anyone is watching.

And chances are good that someone is. People check each other out at the gym all the time, which is another thing that I don’t like about it. If I’m going to go, I find myself wondering things like, “Is this shirt flattering enough? It doesn’t show off my arms very well,” or, “I should get running shoes that look nicer.” And then you get there and there are hundreds of guys with cannonball-sized biceps strutting around for all the girls on the ellipticals.

Some people even go to the gym specifically to meet people and use the working out as a pretense – like I don’t have enough on my mind trying to keep track of reps and calories and walking straight after getting off the treadmill.

Now there’s all this sexual tension, as well, and I have to wonder about looking good in a gym. That’s like trying to smell nice on a pig farm, but people still expect it.

All of this makes me very nervous, especially now that I’m so out of shape. I can hold my own on the leg-press machines and am pretty good on the treadmills, but I feel small and wimpy when it comes to doing anything remotely related to the upper body. Personally, I think this is really unfair because I don’t want to be unable to go to the gym just because I can’t work out as well as the people who go every day.

In a roundabout way, this sort of brings me to my point. A couple months ago, there was a hullaballoo with Harvard trying to segregate one of its gyms to benefit Muslim women who wanted to work out without having to wear their veils and heavy garments. I think we should do something similar and segregate a gym for people who want to work out without worrying about what other people think of their workout.

Think about it: You’d be able to work out in peace, without worrying if the weightlifter guys in the corner were judging your puny bench press or how far you could run on the treadmill. You wouldn’t have to wear cute clothing or three-sizes-too-small muscle shirts to feel adequate.

You could work out with complete security of mind, something that I personally have never felt able to do.

Of course, this could also be easily solved by having a home gym, but those things are crap.

I would much rather have someone else buy nice, state-of-the-art equipment and then promise not to judge me on how I use it. Wouldn’t that be great?

Sure it would. It would also be great if I could just lose weight without having to do any of the work at all, but that’s about as likely as finding a gym where people aren’t trying to pick each other up.

So, in conclusion, I think I’m just going to get a cheeseburger.

E-mail Richard at rab53@pitt.edu, if it’s not too much of a workout.