There are few places filled with more hope than the gym floor: the hope of building a better body, regaining health, and building strength for life’s challenges.
However, anyone who has ever set foot in a gym can tell you that hope dies quickly. Progress is slow. Conflicting commitments take precedence, and showing up once is not the same as exercising regularly.
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If you’ve fallen off the training car, you’re in good company. Various studies have found that 40% to 65% of people stop exercising within the first five to eight months after joining a gym (Middelkamp, et.al., 2017). In some cases, almost a third of the participants stopped going to the gym after one or two visits. (Radhakrishnan, et al., 2020)
Even though there are more than 64 million gym memberships and 32,270 health clubs in the US (IHRSA, 2021), there is a disconnect between aspirations and reality. With the promise of greater health and well-being at all times, why is it so difficult to exercise consistently?
Barriers to exercise
There are financial and cultural barriers that cause men, in particular, to fall off the exercise bandwagon: lack of time, money, and education on how to use the equipment. A lack of diverse membership also makes many fitness spaces unwelcoming to people of color.
But even gyms that try to move beyond the predominantly white, straight norm must grapple with a legacy of isolated, individualistic notions of the body as an object to be manipulated rather than lived and cared for.
In fact, the word gym comes from the ancient Greek term “gyms” meaning “naked” or “bare”. In ancient Greece, only adult male citizens could use gyms. It was a public place built specifically for male performance. Many gyms still carry the legacy of male supremacy and aesthetic appreciation of the male body.
What about working out outside the gym?
One solution is to forgo the gym for other places and forms of exercise. However, only 26 percent of American men report enough activity to meet relevant aerobic and muscle strengthening guidelines for health promotion (CDC Physical Activity Guidelines, 2018). If it was as easy as putting on running shoes or finding a park to work out, more people would be doing it.
Clearly, we need more than threats of ill health, fancy studying, or outdoor exercise to keep us moving. We need to confront a deeper, often undiscussed barrier to working out: performative masculinity.
What is performative masculinity?
According to the British Science Association, performative masculinity is “a socially prescribed set of ideas about what it means to be a man, according to which men must act (‘act’) in certain ways in order to appear masculine” (Herr, 2011).
Many traditional ways of exercising are colored by performative masculinity. Just imagine a stereotypical weight room, with men grunting in displays of dominance, toughness, and competitive stances.
I didn’t fully realize this link between exercising and my identity as a man until COVID closed the gyms and I was forced to find new ways to exercise. For years, I would go to the gym, do a few sets, flex in front of the mirror and think, “I’m getting strong. I haven’t arrived yet, but I’m on my way.”
On the way to what?, you ask. To become a real man.
In hindsight, my younger self was chasing an idealized image of masculinity that could only be earned in the gym. All this effort to take care of my body could pass for “healthy”, but in reality it was so much about reaffirming my identity as a man.
Working out was essentially punching my “man card” – the gym made sure I had a body that could play the part.
Do “real men” need to exercise?
When life is already burdened with great pressure to play the role of provider, protector, and breadwinner, the added pressure to assert one’s masculine identity through exercise creates a real barrier for men who want to exercise.
This is what I call the double bind of fitness for men. Either you have to work incredibly hard to maintain a fort, athleticmuscular body to avoid the risk of losing your signifier of masculinity, or you feel inadequate in front of a male body stereotype that is out of your reach.
Either way, you feel like you need to try something that you never feel like you have.
The unspoken narrative of performative masculinity says that if your body doesn’t project power and command respect, you are somehow failing as a man. This creates enormous psychosocial pressure that hangs over every workout. Generates perpetual dissatisfaction and fear.
“It’s easier to not exercise and accept my inevitable ‘daddy body’ than to deal with the work of trying to live up to a masculine ideal that I’ll never win at,” one client told me. Unfortunately, he is not alone.
Why would any man choose to exercise when it causes body dissatisfaction, feelings of weakness, and an investment in an image that seems imposed and unsolicited?
The good news is that there is hope for men who have jumped off the training bandwagon. It begins with the audacity to break free from outdated notions that men must constantly earn their identity through feats of strength, and creates avenues for men to engage with their bodies on their own terms.
Hope for the men who have fallen off the training car
According to Snyder’s cognitive theory of hope, there are three main components that separate hope from despair (Rand & Cheavens, 2009).
- Goals: mental goals that guide your behavior.
- roads: creating multiple routes to your desired targets.
- Agency: the ability to initiate and maintain movement along those paths.
training goals
Instead of doubling down on old approaches that reinforce the need to perform, win, and appear dominant, ask yourself what you really want for your body. If you just want to dance, then dance. If you just want to play, go for it. Shift the goal of the exercise from the future realization of an idealized body to a present moment experience of being with your body, experiencing pleasure and discomfort, and moving to feel good.
The challenge is to maintain this goal in light of social pressure to conform. Even if you don’t aspire to look like The Rock or David Beckham, conceptions of the desirable male body are in the air we all breathe. Accept it and move on. The more you find goals that are intrinsically rewarding, the more likely you are to exercise for the joy of having a body rather than playing a role.
paths to exercise
We live in a Golden Age of exercise, with a variety of classes and workouts available online. However, a large number of these exercise classes are still very gender-differentiated.
If you’ve never seen a man using a Pilates reformer, dancing in a Zumba class, or doing Barre, it may be due to stereotypes about what constitutes a “real man” workout.
Ask yourself what you’re really risking by going beyond notions of gender fitness. Shame? Reputation? Imaginary judgments of others? Is it worth denying them their own health and happiness?
Although there are real biological differences between male and female bodies, any exercise can be modified and tailored to you. For example, when I first did cardio, I was the only guy in the exercise class. I decided that I wouldn’t care what anyone else thought of me. I decided to risk having my masculinity questioned to experience something new. and i loved it
It is a shame to close paths of physical activity only due to social pressures. If a man is supposed to appear powerful, he would say that reconnecting with his body on her own terms is a radical act of personal power.
building your agency
It is difficult to become what one cannot see. Men need each other to mold new ways of being in their bodies. And we need this more than we realize.
The way forward is through connection and belonging. We need to build communities that support bodies at their best, regardless of gender social roles or expectations. We need to help each other get on the training bandwagon when we feel too weak to do it alone.
Go online, explore what’s on offer in your neighborhood, or start your own group if you see a need that isn’t being met. Take responsibility for modeling the type of exercise you want to do, even if you don’t see other guys around you doing it.
While there will be significant social, cultural, and economic costs to overcome, any man can rise to the challenge of leading rather than following. This builds his agency and empowers other men who have fallen off the training bandwagon to believe in themselves and follow their body. wisdom. We can only move away from performative masculinity through a collective transformation of what men can do with their bodies.
Reimagining the training cart
Letting go of unnecessary gender stereotypes of what “real man exercise” is doesn’t mean avoiding gyms or giving up weights. The goal is to expand the possibilities for each one to move his body as he wants.
Ultimately, we want to co-create more access to our human birthright: healthy, joyful, purposeful movement. Removing the pressure to perform or prove yourself can not only help you feel more motivated to exercise, but it can also benefit society as a whole.
This begins with reconnecting with your body and engaging in exercise that makes you feel liberated. It ends when a new generation of men feels free to exercise however they want, without fear of appearing vulnerable or unmanly.
