My roommate and I have recently ventured into the world of weight lifting. Each of us knows that lifting is good for you and wanted functional fitness that we don't achieve by just carrying our textbooks around.
My roommate has a boyfriend who wrestled throughout his schooling years and who serves in the armed forces, so she has a bit more of an advantage than she already did by participating in sports her whole life and generally being more fit than I am. We typically don't work out together, but do on occasion to keep each other accountable. I have been a treadmill enthusiast for about a year now and want to run a 10K (6.2 miles) before the end of this semester. A bit more backstory: I went from a completely sedentary desk jockey in an obese weight range to a person with a healthy BMI classified as one of the "fit" people on campus who runs for enjoyment last year (holla at MyFitnessPal).
Neither my roommate nor I enjoy trying to push ourselves or making ourselves vulnerable around more capable strangers, as most people don't. If we see other people in the small weight room, we have to double-check our motivation to see if lifting was really that important that day. Even when I go to the university gym by myself to run and decide to round myself out by hitting the weights makes me even more self-conscious than when I started running. Every time, I need to psych myself up, saying that I have every right to use that equipment as the most athletic person on campus and any fun they try to make of me is their putting me down for trying to fix the problem.
But that doesn't always work.
Yesterday, my roommate and I went to the Plex. We ran for a little while, but we mostly do other fitness things together since running isn't her favorite thing. She showed me this "hidden" weight room that had more barbells and serious bodybuilder equipment than I knew existed on campus. She guided me through some bench-presses while a guy beside us dropped his weights that probably weighed more than each of us between his sets. It was a little distracting, but I figured more serious lifting required more serious relinquishment, so I let it go. Another person came in and did some deadlifts right next to us, the girls bench-pressing a nearly unloaded bar, and he dropped weights so hard that it shook the bench I was laying on. The earthquake-maker took out his phone and began shuffling through different kinds of music without headphones- one of my greatest pet peeves. I finished the rest of my set, and we left for the normal weight room.
The normal weight room had several guys in it—athletic guys. An older man that appeared to be a coach was going through some sort of self-constructed circuit as he spoke words of wisdom to a guy in a baseball uniform. This would not have been such an intrusion if the pair hadn't left three or four sets of weights around half the benches and claiming that territory for themselves. What also didn't help was that the older man would change stations every minute or two while the student flanked him. The two buzzing around the small weight room left virtually no personal work-out bubble. Not long after I managed to weasel some barbells of my caliber and sat on a bench not suitable for what I had planned on doing, a few more weight room frequenters came in and set their water bottles next to the bench my roommate was using and waited quietly. The didn't say anything, but neither of us knew if this was common gym etiquette, equivalent to lining up quarters on a video game in an arcade, or if it was more intrusive. Despite the meaning, my roommate finished her set and put up her weights and retreated to the machines.
I was over in the corner, trying to remember some of the sets I had done the other day that I enjoyed. Seeing all of these guys do their thing casually, without planning and with exceptionally loud grunting only distracted me more and withered whatever confidence I had walked in with. There was a point where I needed to switch weights, but that would have required walking over to the coach and baseball guy, which I was not willing to risk. I put up my weights and saw my roommate get off her machine at the same time and, with a look, we knew we didn't want to stay.
As soon as we were outside, she confessed to me that she didn't want to make snap judgments, but couldn't help feeling that they didn't want her there. She emphasized that she imagined the older guy thinking that he was in a man's place- that there was an unspoken rule that a gym, especially the weight room, is a man's domain. It wasn't that women were technically not allowed to use the gym, but more like they didn't belong there.
My discomfort came from their ease. The fact that these people could so comfortably flop themselves in any spot and claim it only made me feel less welcome. The fact that they knew what they were doing made remembering my plans that much harder. I had felt as though they were chuckling at me. Not that they were outright laughing, but found it amusing to see an "outsider" or "noob" trying to figure things out.
I know that I don't usually think those things about others, so I shouldn't fear others doing it to me. Even if they did, I know that I should have enough confidence and resolve to push through, be the bigger person and succeed regardless. But that's not always what happens. It's hard to be proud of your first 10-minute mile and not notice the person running two mile and 15 minutes, especially when they're right next to you. It's hard to defend your tiny little mound of newfound confidence. Even if you’ve powered through and made it up the ladder and see people starting from the beginning where you were, like I sometimes do on the treadmill, the tension is palpable. There is a visible hierarchy of achievement that’s almost impossible to ignore, especially in terms of athletics and fitness.
I’m not sure how to bypass this feeling of inadequacies. It seems that the only two options are to power through or to avoid them entirely, neither of which are very appealing. I don’t know if there’s a cultural awareness that needs attention or if there’s something I need to change about my mentality, but I feel as though that instances and encounters like these are part of an all-too-common reasons that people give up on their fitness goals.
