The first week of January is almost over, which means you’re almost a week into the “new you” if you’ve decided to reinvent yourself for 2023. What were your resolutions? Mine, as usual, were saving money, writing more, and going to the gym regularly, after giving up exercise altogether in December.
If you’re asking certain corners of the internet, unfortunately I’m not allowed to. Well, not the storing and writing parts. But the training frenzy in January makes me unbearable for some.
January 1st was only seconds old when gym regulars on social media started whining about the “disengaged” who were about to fill “their” gyms and “their” spin classes and “their” weight rooms .
A video from a successful Twitter account titled “Gyms on January 1st” kept reappearing on my various timelines, showing clueless and frail people trying unsuccessfully to use tricky gadgets.
Even real gyms echoed this rhetoric. The US luxury fitness center chain Equinox, which costs around $160 a month to join, banned new members from joining on June 1.
Who cares if my life starts in January?
Her poorly received campaign read, “You’re not a New Year’s resolution. Your life doesn’t start at the beginning of the year.”
To which I say: What does anyone care if my life begins in January? And why am I, a paying gym member, less worthy of getting on an elliptical machine in January than someone pumping iron like it’s a religion?
I grew up skinny, small, uncoordinated and petrified from all physical exercise. I was so afraid of people laughing at me if I couldn’t score a goal or catch a ball that I would use any excuse not to play sports. I did this to the point that, unbeknownst to me at the time, I had a panic attack when I was told we were going to learn camogie. I even decided to take an additional Leaving Cert exam because the courses for that subject clashed with physical education.
Then I hit my late 20s, couldn’t run a mile, was painfully inflexible, and suffered from back pain. I went to the gym and realized it wasn’t an exercise I hated; It was group activities that made me nervous. I didn’t want to be compared to anyone and always thought the skinny, strong athletes would laugh at me.
Everyone else at the gym was too busy with their own training to care what I was doing
Although I was still terribly unfit and uncoordinated (and still am to this day), I actually loved getting stronger and breaking a sweat, and everyone else at the gym was too busy with their own training to care, what I did. Unfortunately, all of those fears come back as January rolls around, when brutal gym snobs start poking fun at the fair-weather trainers.
Gyms are intimidating enough as it is, especially if you’re a newbie or taller than a size six. It’s scary trying new gear when you feel like you’re being judged by territorial beefcakes, and it’s hard to attempt harder lifts when there’s a risk of someone you don’t know mocking your form.
But guess what? We—the weak, the sweaty, the breathless, the confused, the clueless—own the gym as much as the boys who grunt as loud as we can at a weight rack.
Take as much time as you need on the rowing machine. Ask the staff how to use the Stairmaster, use the lightest weights you want. If you appeared on January 1st, for everyone else it doesn’t matter if you go every day or decide not to come back until March.
Smash your targets and get a candy bar on the way out. Don’t let anyone take away the space you deserve.
https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/pay-no-attention-to-insufferable-gym-snobs-as-you-sweat-away-the-excesses-of-christmas-42265908.html Watch out for insufferable gym snobs as you sweat away the excesses of Christmas
