Over the years, I’ve had so many people come to me who have a fear of being judged at the gym. Jason’s story is one of the strongest reminders i have of why nobody should ever feel embarrassed about where they are starting.
Some have lost their confidence. Some are naturally shy. Some haven’t exercised for years. Some don’t feel comfortable in their body anymore. Others simply worry that they won’t fit in.
But whatever the reason, there is one fear I hear again and again:
“People are going to judge me.”
And that has always made me incredibly sad.
Nobody should feel embarrassed about trying to improve their health, fitness or strength. Nobody should feel as though they have to reach a certain level before they have earned the right to be in a gym.
A few years ago, I experienced exactly why that matters so much.
My husband, Jason, had been an athlete all his life. He had competed at a high level when he was younger, cycled through the Pyrenees and was someone who had always been incredibly fit and physically capable.
Then his life changed almost overnight.
Jason suffered a brain aneurysm and subsequently contracted meningitis.
He lost a huge amount of weight and strength. He couldn’t properly feel one of his legs, was almost blind in one eye and had partial hearing loss.
The athlete was still there.
But for a while, his body simply couldn’t do what it had always been able to do.
Just two months later, Jason decided to start working towards his personal training qualification. The plan was that eventually he could take on some of my work and also teach t’ai chi.
When you understand what had happened only weeks earlier, even getting himself into that gym was an achievement.
I remember being there with him while he was studying.
He was lifting very light weights because that was what his body could manage at the time.
And then I looked across and noticed a couple of the bigger, more muscular men in the gym smirking at him.
I can still remember how angry it made me.
Because they had absolutely no idea what they were looking at.
They saw a man lifting a tiny weight.
I saw an athlete who had spent his life being strong and capable.
I saw somebody who, only weeks earlier, had suffered a brain aneurysm and meningitis.
I saw somebody who couldn’t properly feel one of his legs.
Somebody whose sight and hearing had been affected.
Somebody who had lost an enormous amount of his physical ability and was fighting to get it back.
And yet, for that one moment, he was being judged as though the weight in his hand somehow represented who he was.
I caught their eye.
The look I gave them stopped the smirking immediately.
But I have never forgotten it.
Because if somebody who had been an athlete all his life could suddenly be looked at as though he was weak, incapable or somehow a failure simply because of what people saw in that particular moment, then it showed me exactly how meaningless those snap judgements are.
They were seeing a snapshot. They weren’t seeing his story.
And that is exactly what I think about when somebody walks through my door and tells me they are nervous about exercising.
The person lifting the smallest weight in the gym may once have been the strongest person in the room.
They may be recovering from illness, surgery or injury.
They may be rebuilding themselves after something that completely changed their life.
They may have lost their confidence.
They may be dealing with something nobody else can see.
Or they may simply be taking their very first step into fitness.
None of those things makes their effort worth any less.
Sometimes the smallest weight in the room represents the biggest achievement.
Jason continued rebuilding himself.
He completed his qualification. He returned to teaching full time teaching something the doctors said would never happen.
. He also taught t’ai chi to older adults, and those classes became incredibly popular. They were full, people loved them, and he got enormous satisfaction from giving something back to others.
Eventually other work commitments meant he had to give the classes up, which was a real shame because they had come to mean so much to him and to the people he taught.
But whenever I think back to that day in the gym, I remember the contrast.
The men who smirked saw somebody struggling with a light weight.
They had no idea they were looking at a lifelong athlete rebuilding his life after a catastrophic illness.
And that is one of the reasons I feel so strongly about the environment I create for the people who train with me.
You do not have to be fit before you come to me.
You do not have to be confident.
You do not have to lift heavy weights.
You do not have to look a particular way or prove that you deserve to be there.
You simply have to start from wherever you are now.
Because you are only ever seeing one moment in somebody’s life.
And you have absolutely no idea what it took for them to get there.
