It starts with cruel jokes in the changing room about looking at the other lads (and why was it never the fit ones who thought we wanted them?) and invariably ended with humiliation at not being good enough at whatever sport was the torture of the week.
So I keep putting off going even though i’ve had the membership for about 6 weeks.”įor most of us, our first experience of fitness was PE class at school, which for those who didn’t fit in with the rugby boys or the tennis girls, was hell. “I get anxious over not knowing what a space is going to be like, how to find things, where to go, etc. “I joined this year and have just been really scared to go,” he told us. I asked knitwear designer Daniel James how he felt about signing up to a gym, and he echoed my own initial reluctance. For queer people that journey can be even harder because there are extra layers of anxiety and fear around entering a space that is normally reserved for traditional masculinity. Joining the gym is something on a lot of people’s to-do lists, but as a beginner even after you’ve signed up it can still be difficult to go for that first workout. For a lot of gay men, the gym is either a place of extreme anxiety or passionate obsession.
