Imagine you’re standing in the middle of a gym. You don’t know where to go, so you hop on the nearest machine. Immediately, the thoughts start: Am I doing this right? Is my technique good? Is it heavy enough? What if I fail this rep? How do I bail? Oh gosh, are those people looking at me?
Gymtimidation, or gym anxiety, is a phenomenon that plagues many, and it’s no wonder why people are afraid to start. Setting foot into an unfamiliar environment with unfamiliar equipment can trouble even the most frequent gym-goer.
Third-year history student Savindya Mudadeniya did not believe in the phenomenon at first, saying that she thought she was just being shy. She said she used to always stick to the treadmills, and needed someone with her when she moved into the weights section.
“Even though I’ve been working out well beyond one and a half years, I still feel a little bit of intimidation,” she said. “I feel like I don’t blend in with the people who are frequent users, even though I am a frequent user.”
Similarly, fifth-year cognitive systems student Sharon Ho is all too familiar with gym anxiety. She decided to start going to the gym just after the pandemic, but became intimidated learning “to put together some kind of workout routine.”
“You have goals that you can set, but you also need to figure out and learn how to put together a plan that can bring you there,” she said. “You still have to figure out how to use the machines properly, how to do the exercise correctly, even [the] tiniest things of keeping your back straight, having the right angles of your arms.”
One of the bigger drawbacks to going to the gym is the culture and the learning curve that newcomers associate with the space.
Jasmin Ma, kinesiology assistant professor of teaching, said this experience with gym language tends to be a barrier for people who want to start going to the gym, especially when using weights.
“When you hear things like sets, repetitions, tempos — there's this exercise language, where you don't actually have a uniform language to name all of the exercises,” she said. “You might hear one person call an exercise something and another person call it something completely different but mean the same thing.”
Ma said that people tend to overcomplicate working out, especially strength training, but said that if the goal is overall maintaining or improving general strength, there is a lot of flexibility in prescribing exercises.
“For example, you're in exams and you're really tired, maybe today's not the day where we're working with really heavy weights. We're looking for something [with] higher repetition ranges and something a little lighter with, say, bodyweight.”
Mudadeniya said she never had an “a-ha” moment in realizing the gym wasn’t intimidating. In her own experiences, her goals and confidence levels contributed to her slow and gradual process of becoming comfortable in the gym.
“You just sort of get numb to these things. You get used to the gym and you start to focus on your workouts and your physical experiences with them, you stop paying attention to other people," said Mudadeniya. Thinking about other people doing the same thing helped her.
According to Ma, the first step to overcoming gymtimidation is to start working out. She said that even she feels intimidated starting in a new gym, despite teaching exercise and strength training.
Ma said online, pre-programmed workouts can be good places for people feeling nervous to begin.
“People can start from the comfort of their home … sometimes those classes or online exercises can be a nice starting place just to give you that time to learn the technique in a safe space,” she said.
She also pointed toward group classes for those who want a little more accountability and the social aspect of working out.
“There’s something that keeps it sort of light if you go with a friend. If you're messing things up and you haven't got the technique down, you can laugh together.”
Both Ho and Mudadeniya said that having people around them helped ease their anxieties. Ho enrolled in a fitness program with a personal trainer to get her journey started, while Mudadeniya started going with her friends before being fully comfortable with her own routine.
Ho says that her anxiety “is never gonna go away,” but that knowing that everyone around is most likely feeling the same way, and are also learning to deal with it, eliminates the anxiety.
“[The gym] is not that serious, to be honest,” said Ho. “There are definitely some hardcore gym girlies out there, but you don't have to be them. You could also just come for vibes. Get a good workout. I think that really helps.”