Its 8am on a random Tuesday, and the local university gym is already full, someone’s
filming a workout, someone’s dry scooping pre workout and at least 3 people are
taking mirror selfies between sets. A few years ago, this might have been excessive
but now. It feels normal. Somewhere between deadlines, side hustles and existential
career crises, us as university students have collectively entered their “gym era”. So
why does it feel like more and more people are entering their gym era, and more
importantly, should they be?
- The gym is really just therapy
As students, and anyone with pressures of deadlines or job anxieties, it’s easy to fall
off the bandwagon, to let things pile on top of you, the gym is one of the only spaces
we have to fully de-center these stresses for even just a couple of hours, it gives us
something to work hard at that doesn’t come with the same anxieties as uni work
and leaves me feeling a sense of accomplishment. For me personally it’s pretty
much the only hour that I’m not thinking about the mountain of tasks I must
complete. I was one of those people that didn’t believe the gym could improve
mental health, but ever since I’ve started being consistent with my gym routine I’ve
never felt happier or more accomplished. Huge change for a girl that used to wake
up midday, bed rot for 2 hours and then doom-scroll on TikTok for the rest of the day
and wonder why she was stressed. - Gym as reinvention
This period (our 20s), is a period of reinvention for the majority of us, finding ways
that we cope with things, the ways we want to present in the world and most
importantly, image. Being honest, most people don’t start the gym for fun, well at
least that’s true for me, it starts out of a want to change, whether that be mentally or
physically, and the gym is something we are able to fit into our daily schedules,
around uni, if we work on balance and focus. Its worth it. The gym is something we
can measure and control, where effort leads to visible results, in an environment
where there is so much change and uncertainty. I genuinely believe that putting more
effort into things that benefit your mental and physical health, helps all aspects of life
and that includes productivity.
The gym has (obviously) been a thing for a while, but more and more recently it feels
as if What has changed is that once the gym was just a place to exercise, and now it
has become more of a space for self-improvement, identity-building and even social
validation. We are living in a time where social media influences a lot of the things
we do, however I can safely say this is one section of social media that can be a very
productive and inspiring thing.