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The ‘new’ gym culture and why I don’t like it…

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Posted on November 24, 2011 by graeme

It’s funny isn’t it how one day you realise you are starting to sound more and more like your parents? All of a sudden things just ‘aren’t as good as they used to be’ and ‘I used to go places when they were all just fields’. I’m only 36, yet already I can reflect on the health and fitness industry and see changes that I am not so sure represent the so-called progression and innovation that everyone blathers on about on fitness websites and blogs. Every year we hear about emerging trends or how fitness is ‘evolving’, yet I don’t see this transferring to the average gym user. In fact, I see some stupid shit being done now that years ago didn’t exist and for a good reason.

I grew up in gyms, mostly dirty, messy, weights rooms. One of which was at the back of my dad’s coal yard and the other at Bury St Edmunds sports centre. They were a long way from the plasma screened, functional zoned, cardio packed, health chains that are on every corner basement here in London now. There were no BOSU’s or ViPR’s and terms like ‘core stability’ and ‘functional training’ hadn’t been invented yet. I’d sit and watch my dad lift weights with guys who had mostly all finished a day in a physical job, lifting coal, bricklaying, or digging, and see the camaraderie that ran among them. People would share training routines, spot for each other, encourage and motivate, and take pleasure in seeing others achieve. They would squat, bench, row, and overhead press, typically rotating a few key exercises to build size and strength. Newbies to the gym would be given guidance freely by those who had been lifting longer and were keen to share their knowledge. Sure, it wasn’t always the best advice, after all we all know that being REP’s level 3 makes you competent these days right? Heck, you can have never lifted a weight yourself and still get insured to ‘teach’ others how to do it. Is that what we consider evolution or progression?

Meanwhile, the gym culture of the past five to ten years has moved to iPods and ignorance. Gym banter is practically non-existent. The proliferation of stupid information and advice that is so complex that the general public misinterpret or misapply it to their own detriment has led to many people getting hurt at worst or seeing little or no results at best. Training with barbells and dumbbells in the movements of squatting and pressing has become pejoratively termed as being ‘old-school’, ‘non-functional’, or too ‘sagittal plane dominant’ while advocates of more ‘modern’ training methods, albeit unsubstantiated by evidence or any real anecdote position themselves to look down on those they consider too stupid or ignorant to understand their methods.

It seems a lot of the time now that the acquisition of ‘training knowledge’ is used more often as a tool to mock others than it is to actually help them. I’m not sure this is a positive improvement in gym culture, or whether this trend is being driven by a demand from the consumer or by the marketing of the equipment suppliers and procurers within the health clubs? Either way, I miss the weight room culture of old where it was less about impressing or having a laugh at others expense and more about helping and inspiring others to achieve. Am I looking at it with rose-tinted glasses? Maybe so, but then it’s just my opinion after all.

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