A Queer’s Guide to Starting (and Sticking with) the Gym
The gym can be a scary place. It is shrouded in mystery and, from the outside, can seem like a masculinist hell-hole (no matter how much effort gyms put into their all-smiles advertising campaigns). The gym can be an even scarier place for queer people who have learned to avoid perceptibly masculinist hell-holes as scenes of homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and other forms of violent, hurtful disqualification and judgement. Taken together, this can be a recipe for debilitating gym anxiety.
Gym anxiety or gymphobia is real. I would know: the very thought of going to the gym a couple of years ago used to break me out into an anxious sweat. On my way to the gym, I would sometimes have panic attacks so severe I would have to abandon the mission and head home again. This anxiety was, of course, compounded by my own struggles with my body image: I wanted to go to the gym but felt utterly unable to. A predictable cycle of shame and self-loathing.
What I lacked was any pragmatic guide to starting out at the gym that would speak to someone like me; something that would help to demystify the gym experience, help me to challenge some of the irrational thoughts I had developed and maintained about gym-going, and help me to understand how to make the gym into a pleasurable and sustainable habit. The available material seemed to fall into a frustrating (gendered and sexualised) dichotomy. It was either geared towards presumably cis-heterosexual men — dripping in bro-y language and masculinism, with a lot of technical language and lacking in much empathy for those who disliked the gym — or, I found, too wishy-washy — emphasising that I did belong in the gym, but with little guidance about how to sustain a routine or what a routine that might lead to results might actually entail. I found myself, not for the first time, in a queer hinterland.
I’ve been going to the gym in a sustainable way for just over a year now and, having worked through gymphobia and well over a decade’s worth of body-image issues, have put together the guide to starting out at the gym that I wish I had been able to read a few years ago. It is borne out of and speaks to queer experience. I hope you find it helpful.
A Guide to Reading This Guide
Firstly, I am not a personal trainer or a psychotherapist (though I have benefitted from the disseminated knowledges of both professions!). This guide is rooted in my first-hand experience and a year’s worth of careful and studied reflection on how I went from being unable to step foot into a gym to enjoying lifting regularly.
Secondly, in part because I am not a personal trainer, this guide is not an exhaustive to-do list. Think of it, rather, as a therapeutic tool — something you might find helpful to start working through any kind of panic or distress that the notion of gym-going induces in you.
Third, because I have written this guide from my own experience, it is primarily geared towards those who are interested in or have anxieties about lifting weights and wish to develop their strength or muscles. As a result, I think, this guide should be generally extensible to any kind of gym-related anxiety, since the weights area tends to be the least accessible and most daunting part of the gym to begin to approach.
Fourth, because this guide is rooted in my experience as a cisgender, white, able-bodied, gay man, there may well be many aspects of gym anxiety and the gym-going experience I have neglected to or been unable to address. If that is the case, feel free to add any helpful addendums in the comments. For instance, please do share any tips that I have not covered here or that cannot be extrapolated from this document that helped you to overcome gym anxiety and maintain a habit.
Finally, if there is any part of this guide that you don’t like or find triggering or harmful in any way: please, disregard it and stop reading. I know full well, as someone who has recovered from a lifetime of disordered eating and body-image issues, that it is very difficult to account in advance for what might make one person feel distressed about the sensitive topic of the body (though I have tried as hard as I can to write this guide empathically).
Starting Out/Overcoming Gymphobia:
The first thing to say — a message that will overarch all the advice I give — is to take your time. Don’t try to go from 0–100 in two days. Trying to get into a routine in the gym, finding a fulfilling space for it in your life, is a really worthwhile endeavor — but for a lot of people (including myself at the beginning), it can be a Herculean task to go from doing nothing or relatively little to trying to train 5 days a week. Start slow: set yourself realistic goals (e.g. 2–3 days a week for the first few weeks) to get used to the gym environment and work from there. Time is on your side and it is better to build up your confidence first.
Secondly, try to find a gym with a layout that is comfortable for you. This often doesn’t even occur to people as a factor to consider when starting out at the gym — they think that they simply have to get used to the first gym they walk into, no matter how it is laid out and how that makes them feel. When I first started working out, I went to a really small gym with a horrible layout. It was a very small and narrow gym. The cardio machines were right by a window facing the street and the weights area was tucked behind a corner, hidden from view (though you could hear the clank of metal and occasional noise from the weightlifters). This made the idea of picking up weights terrifying to me; it meant having to walk round the corner into a hidden but sometimes audible space, unsure of what (and who!) I might find there. As soon as I moved to another gym with a better layout — a much more open space, where I could see the weights area from the treadmill and have it demystified — I felt much more comfortable. Don’t feel you have to settle for the first gym you find — find one that is right for you!
Thirdly, a lot of queer people — myself included — have hang ups about the gym because they consider it to be a hyper-masculine space where the threat of homophobia, transphobia, judgement, misogyny etc. lingers. It can feel like a space that is marked out from the outset as somewhere you don’t belong. There are several layers to unravel here. The first is that this simply isn’t true: you do belong in the gym. It is not a space that belongs to anyone more than anyone else (you are all paying members, after all!). That said, this simple affirmation is often the line that gets repeated in order to make people feel better about an exclusionary space and, crucially, it often does very little to make people feel better about going to the gym for the first time. (Although this is a critical ingredient, if only anxiety were as easy to conjure away as this; if it were as simple as simply thinking, “I am welcome here”). The second layer is possibly more helpful to address — and less often discussed. While it is true that a disproportionate number of people in the gym adhere to a stereotype that people perceive to be masculinist — and therefore anti-queer — in practice, a majority of these people are genuinely friendly and welcoming (even if they look severe while they are sweating during their workout). Gym culture from the outside does appear to be a terrifying and exclusive space. However, the more you go to the gym, the more that you will find people, for the most part, to be friendly, welcoming and kind. It might be helpful to remember that a lot of the biggest guys at the gym are queer themselves(!) and while this doesn’t necessarily make them any less intimidating upon first entry, it should be enough to steel you against fears about homophobia or queerphobia. If you are still concerned about this, try talking to a member of staff at the gym about their policy on harassment in the gym or telling them that you are concerned. I have heard people doing this before in the gym and was touched to hear personal trainers telling gender non-conforming folk that they had their backs and wouldn’t put up with any intolerance in the gym space. Just hearing this from a member of staff might be enough to reassure you.
Moreover, in the right gym, some of the intimidating-looking/more established guys might (might — this really happens so rarely, but I think it is worth priming you in case it does) take it upon themselves to try and help you with your technique, should you be starting out lifting weights. At first, this might seem like an affront or evidence that you don’t belong in the gym. However, it is important that you try to reprogram as far as possible how you register these encounters. When someone offers you advice about your technique when you are a beginner it is not because they are telling you, “You don’t belong here.” In fact, it is just the opposite: it is a way of trying to help you with your exercise, to prevent you from hurting yourself, and to make sure that you can continue to go to the gym in good health, with good results, in the long-run! Someone helping you with a movement or a machine can often be a way of saying, “Welcome to the gym!”
That said, I have definitely had a couple of experiences in the past where some irritating guy has offered unwelcome advice in a way that felt rude or condescending or belittling. In the past, this was sometimes enough to put me off from trying the weights again for months and months. I know my female friends who go to the gym have also had experiences where men have used giving advice as an excuse to harass or flirt with them. Once again, because I want you to feel able to sustain a gym habit (and not let these idiots get to you), it is important you try and reprogram how you register these encounters. Rather than taking them as evidence of the fact that everyone in the gym is rude and hostile (and that the gym is therefore an unfriendly and hostile space), try to remember that one asshole is simply that: one asshole. If someone speaks to you in a way that you find rude or upsetting or even harassing, it is probably because they are not a nice person — the kind of not-nice person you would find absolutely anywhere (the supermarket, a hospital, a train, a club etc.). If this ever happens to you (and I am absolutely sure it won’t — these moments are so rare) try to remember this and just repeat “fuck off, you prick” in your head until you feel better about it.
Exercises
As I have already suggested, my biggest piece of advice here is: lower yourself in gently. If you try to start on your first day in the gym with a really intensive work out routine that includes a lot of movements and machines that you aren’t comfortable with you will, like me, find it completely overwhelming, unpleasant and nerve-wracking and never want to go back to the gym again. The essential thing to try and remember is that, contrary to popular belief, exercise can and ought to be something you enjoy! Obviously, you will want to try and push yourself and break a sweat — but finding enjoyment in exercise is a crucial way of sustaining a routine. It’s much easier to drag yourself to the gym before or after work if you enjoy the process and the way it makes you feel.
Lowering yourself in gently would, to me, mean starting your gym routine with a 50/50 split of weights and cardio just for the first few weeks. Familiarise yourself with some machines and where the dumbbells are. Demystify the gym for yourself first and don’t try to do everything at once.
It also means prioritising, once again, exercises you enjoy and feel comfortable doing. If you find a workout plan on the internet that you want to follow (there are plenty out there) but there is a movement in the routine (let’s say… squats!) that you really don’t enjoy doing and find intimidating: don’t do it! Supplement this with something else. Here is a confession: for the first year and a half of my time in the gym, I never used a barbell — only dumbbells! I personally didn’t feel confident enough using barbells from the outset (even when I was pretty muscular). Other people are the opposite: they feel way more confident with barbells than dumbbells. So, whatever you enjoy doing: build a routine full of that and in no time you’ll find yourself with a sustainable habit of going to the gym (so that eventually you might be able to face, with confidence, barbells, dumbbells, squats, the treadmill, or whatever it is!).
You might find it useful to know that when I started working out, I used the beginners’ routine here. It has helpful advice about terminology and is both simple enough and challenging enough that I saw results over time without getting completely overwhelmed: https://www.theo.fit/blog/beginnerlift. Once I was confident in the gym space, I started doing this routine 5 days a week. That might sound like a lot but, as I said, after lowering myself in gently and choosing movements I enjoyed (dumbbell exercises instead of barbell ones), I actually grew to love the whole process.
Food
This is a difficult subject for many people, myself included. Food is deeply personal and it can be hard to recalibrate eating habits to achieve desired goals overnight. Once again, my advice is to start slowly. Don’t try to overhaul your diet (if this is something that you want to do) overnight. Rather, week-by-week try to change something about your diet in line with the goals that you want to achieve. I can’t and don’t want to tell you how to do this or what to eat — it will depend on what you want to achieve (weight loss, weight gain, muscle gain). I can tell you, however, a little bit about what I did.
When I started at the gym, I wanted to gain weight and muscle. To do this, I knew I needed to eat a lot more protein than I already did (and at the time I was eating a pretty much strictly vegetarian diet). To start, I began drinking whey protein shakes (with just one scoop) twice a day — once before and once after my workout. I would also have a protein bar as a snack. Otherwise, I kept my diet pretty much as normal.
After a few weeks, now I was in the habit of drinking the shakes regularly, I decided to focus on my meals. I tried to make sure that at lunch and dinner I was eating at least 20g of protein. The final hurdle for me was trying to eat a high protein breakfast. After I was accustomed to everything else, I switched up my breakfast and started eating 4 eggs every morning.
Over time, as my training has ramped up, I have increased the protein intake and calories steadily. If I had tried to start eating what I eat now back when I started in the gym, I would never have stuck with it and would have hated the whole experience.
Final Tips
One final thing I can advise that helped me stick with a routine was to take progress pictures. Once a week, at the same time on the same day, I took a picture in the mirror in the same pose. Little by little, I was able to see results that weren’t necessarily perceptible to me day-to-day. Doing this was a really helpful way of keeping me calibrated. It meant that even when I felt that I’d had a bad week at the gym (e.g. if I had been unwell and not able to make it in that week), I had a record of all the progress I had already made. (If this sounds like a horrible idea to you and fills you with dread — it’s not imperative! It’s just something that helped me stick with and form a habit).
Progress is slow but I promise you it does happen. The amount you can achieve in a year at the gym is really astonishing. Best of all, it can become something you grow to love and enjoy (the benefits to your mental health, in this sense, are priceless).
I hope you found this guide helpful. Once again, if you have any more tips you think others might benefit from, please feel free to comment them down below. Feel free to share this guide far and wide.
Luck, love, and solidarity to you!
