A gym is a place where people come to lift weights – essentially, well-polished rocks. Moreover, they pick up these rocks and put them down right after, and they keep repeating the same rock adjustments over and over again for an hour or even more. In addition to this, they are paying a fee to get permission from, essentially, the owner of the place, to pick up the rocks owned by the owner. If you have never gone to a gym in your life, you may think that this is nothing but craziness. I know, it probably sounds like an unhinged cult when you get a description like this. But let’s not judge the book by its cover, and instead, let’s try to find out what this gym culture is really all about.

In the mad world we live in, there are an infinite number of concerns that people have. Whether it be about your boss firing you, or your parents getting divorced, or your girl-/boy-friend leaving you, or you failing in your science class, or you getting beaten up by some dudes in the street, or your favorite band retiring, or world war 3, or something else. The times have changed. Most of the people no longer need to worry about getting food to eat or having a roof to sleep under. Many old concerns like these are gone now, and instead, people have to worry about other problems, some of which are artificial and made up by humans purely for drama. In contrast to the old times, people now fight for things that are less concrete in nature and more abstract. If you saw a guy a thousand years ago running down the “street”, you would know that the guy is probably hunting a deer or something… something tangible. However, if you face the same situation nowadays, the guy might say things like “you know it’s my colleague’s birthday, and although I hate this person, I still need to be present because otherwise, people wouldn’t think of me as a good person”. What a big deal, huh?! This is why softer times like the one we are living in right now have unlocked a new mechanism, a new era if I may: the Great P$\cup$ssification.

In the era of the Great P$\cup$ssification, one needs to remember what really matters the most and stay grounded to the only reality that matters in order to avoid becoming a loser and living a miserable life. This is where the weightlifting comes in to save us. This is what the gym culture is all about. It is about the growth mindset, learning to pick yourself up even when you have kept falling over and over again, building a disciplined mind to do the difficult and to do the unwanted, becoming healthy and boosting your physical capabilities, building confidence, bravery, and risk-taking, helping you advance in other areas of life alongside. It is not always about being the most shredded or the biggest dude in the room. It is about the things you have endured to make a significant change in yourself. Whether you are a high school student or a university professor does not really matter when you step into a gym. The only thing that matters is putting everything you have into growing and even helping others grow.

Most people start going to a gym because they feel motivated at first. After 2-3 months, the motivation fades away quickly, and those people stop going to the gym afterwards. These people are not part of the true culture because they did not learn to endure the difficult, the unwanted. The real deal begins when there is no motivation left in you to go to the gym and push yourself, but you decide to do so regardless. Not only once, but you keep doing this over and over again until it becomes your lifestyle. At this point, it no longer feels like too much of a burden, as it used to, but rather a part of life and something like going to a dinner table to eat something to feed your hunger, even if you were lying down on your bed, texting with a friend. The gym culture is about pushing your limits even when no one is watching you, which makes you become a bold person deep down. That’s why my experience in different gyms, even if it was the first time I was going to a particular gym, was very similar to one another. I am not French, and I don’t know many things about their culture and lifestyles in general; however, I have had the same experience when I used to train in the different gyms of Strasbourg during my PhD years.