Birth of a Gym Bro

Okay, let’s get to the point. I go to the gym. Shocker, right? I like myself like I like my jeans: ripped.

The gym is an intimidating place. For many people it is a medieval room where modern cavemen go to follow their primal instinct of picking up heavy things, putting them down, and then checking whether the mirror noticed. When someone says they go to the gym, the picture of a muscular man comes to mind, usually someone stressed because he is three grams short of his daily protein quota.

For the untrained human, the gym is terra incognita: a place where you pay a small monthly fee and slowly realize you cannot buy muscles, only humiliation in breathable fabric. I’m here to make this unknown region a little less terrifying for the common skinny man.

Suppose one day you get up, look in the mirror, and decide, “I look fat, maybe I should go to the gym,” or “Darlene isn’t with me because my guns are too small.” For the folks unfamiliar with gym lingo, guns refer to the biceps, the manly factor for a lot of people who have never read a book without pictures. So to address this issue, you decide to go to the gym one fine morning, hoping to look like Arnold by Thursday.

You wear your running shoes, reach the entrance, and open the door. A trainer walks toward you with a face that says, “Another brat who will quit before the season changes.”

He tells you to go to the machine that imitates running, also known as the treadmill. On the treadmill next to you is Mr. New-Year-Resolution, who has decided to become a new person this year. For the third time. Next to him is Miss Lululemon, who is moving with the calm confidence of someone whose warm-up is your entire workout. You immediately pretend to understand all the buttons on your treadmill so nobody notices you are walking at the speed of a cautious uncle crossing the road.

After you complete your warm-up, you proceed to the manliest exercise ever discovered: the bench press. Only thing is, it is Monday, also known as National Chest Day. Which means you have to wait for your turn before you even get a glimpse of the holy bench. In the meantime, you bump into a guy wearing Beats headphones and an invisible bandana that says “main character.” Beatboxing between sets is his favorite thing to do at the gym, apart from occupying equipment he is not using.

Next you hit a couple more body parts, which is gym language for “copy whatever the person beside you is doing and pray your spine survives.” Once again, you find yourself waiting in line to squat. This time, an eighteen-year-old is hogging the squat rack. You get annoyed, but only because the guy is doing biceps in the squat rack. There is always at least one person doing biceps in the squat rack. Their legs look like they were added later in a software update, but their arms have more cuts than a rejected breakup poem.

After spending an hour mostly looking at yourself in the infinite mirrors, you decide to head back home, hoping to see some change in yourself tomorrow, only to be disappointed. But you are hooked to sweating, at least for the first two weeks or so, so you can’t wait to come back tomorrow.

And that is how it starts. One day you are confused by the treadmill. The next day you are saying things like “bro, form is everything” to a stranger who did not ask.