Cultural Degradation
The Past, Present, and Future of Gym Culture, and what we owe it
I had made a post on Instagram sometime back about modern gym culture titled “cultural degradation” about how gym culture has evolved the past 10-20 years. It was one of my best posts engagement wise but more importantly one of my favorite posts to write, because something went off inside me to write those words almost off-rip from something I had seen. Below is what I wrote and the original post;
I still agree with just about everything said here now, and wanted to explore a bit more on why I think this way. But now, I offer some personal insight I had put some forethought to in as far as where we take it from here and possible solutions, dare I say, to steer away from this kind of culture.
The first time I had first ever laid hands on a barbell and weights was in the basement of my parents house. I “learned” how to perform a bench press. It was on a bench set up that was built sometime in the 1980’s that was still in good shape (and to this day is still down there), courtesy of my father wanting to have it down there. The exact year escapes memory but I want to say it was the mid 2000’s, when I was just barely 10 years old or so. He had pictures down there too of golden age bodybuilders on the walls of our decrepit basement that reminded me more of a dungeon more than a room in a house at times with no actual walls, pipes, steel beams exposed on the ceiling and a really strange “bump” if you call it on the concrete floor that I to this day don’t know why it’s there or what it is.
I remember being down there and looking at these mysterious, superhuman like figures and wondering how long it would have taken them to reach that level of physique. My dad then handed me old bodybuilding magazines to look through (if I had known where these are I would gladly share them, relics in the purest form) and looking through what they did, what exercises they would do for a certain adaptation and what programs they were running. Looking back now from what I vaguely remember of those magazines, one thing sticks out to me; they had pure love of their craft and were fully indulged in their from of art.
At the time those magazines were published, and my impression of when I was exposed to gym culture at at a younger age and even up until the past few years is that there wasn’t necessarily this type of ego-driven, self-gratifying standard that seems to be more commonplace in todays day in age compared to years past. And yes, I won’t sit here and say that there wasn’t those kind of people that had existed but it seems it was less rampant than it is now.
It seems as if people are doing things or striving towards things that win the approval of others, and not someones true inner desires. We could very easily well place this blame on the behavioral feedback loop of social media; post something we know will gain the attention and attraction of others, (even if its something that doesn’t sit well with us), have the feedback of engagement (likes, follows, comments), seethe in it’s “reward” (reward of exactly what, we need to ask ourselves), and then chase that itch again.
But I think it’s hard to not notice it. I think a big part of it is people think they need to act in certain ways to get attention, get those followers, build a brand or business or whatever it is they desire. And I think this leads to a whole other issue in selling yourself out to be someone your truly not, trying to maintain this caricature of someone you truly don’t want to be that eats away at the core of your true character until you hardly recognize yourself. Something I’ve thought a lot about myself, maybe I can expand on later.
Then there is this underlying tone in the new age fitness space where it seems the need to display borderline behaviors of narcissism. Always needing to be the center of attention, shaming people for being in their way or looking in their direction for even a split second. Acts and behaviors that, had the camera not been there, none of it would have taken precedence in the first place. It seems people often forget how the gym/ training culture is, or should be, one of the foundational pieces of self-growth, not self absorption.
I wonder where we go from here as a community and culture. The fitness space has always been the wild west, let alone social media intertwined with that now, in as far as there seems to be no code of ethics or an underlying theme of having a general sense of professionalism. And I get it, we wear shorts and a t-shirt (usually) at our jobs, many people can now work purely remote doing this, so maybe there’s always been this underlying tone of not being able to take any of this seriously or it’s just a “hobby”, compared to other other fields of profession. ( And I don’t use the word hobby disparagingly, I understand for many that’s exactly what it is). That may be exactly the problem; many people don’t understand how this field or career choice can be anything more serious than a hobby.
I think as fitness, strength training, health & wellness become much more standardized in everyday life among people, so too does the need to have more talking heads in the industry to be relatable, genuine, and trustworthy. We’re seeing it now, at least with some of the people I’m running into, where there is more conversation of experimentation, training philosophies, disputation of methods, debates and exchanging of ideas, rather than absolutes, debilitation, defamation of character and closed-mindedness. These talking heads of the industry are still running rampant of course, but I have personally noticed they’re being slowly kicked off to the wayside in favor of these industry leaders that possess these traits of “physical culture enlightenment”, dare I say in better taste too.
Whatever the case is, a new period of the industry is coming upon us very soon, if we haven’t already entered it. I sense a shift in the tide of the status quo happening and becoming more prominent in the later half of this decade. Times are changing, and as I’ve said before, this is one of the most exciting times to be involved. Share good insights, talk with others, gain perspective and bring the collective consciousness of physical culture to a higher level. Talk soon.