Gym Theory: Preface
context, argument, stipulations
Winter Training Arc
Riffing on some anime trope, the gym bros on Instagram started referring to these months as their winter training arcs. I saw the phrase cropping up around the time I deleted the ’gram in December. I’m not sure of the specifics, but I liked the shape a winter training arc could offer these short days and long nights. I bought a dumb chain necklace off Etsy that my skin may or may not be allergic to, and grew a shitty beard to cope with the body dysmorphia I get in my face when I’m bulking (RIP central European cheekbones). I reviewed the list of Huberman protocols and started staring out my window for fifteen minutes every morning to, like, do something, idk. Optimize my shit.
I have wanted to write about the gym for some time. It seems ripe for some kind of cultural analysis, given that it appears everywhere in the same way that therapy does. And though we seem to have therapy figured out—what fantasies encircle it, why people advertise their use of it, what it has come to signify and justify—we haven’t parsed the cathexis of lifting, which seems to do similar but distinct cultural work, beyond mere issues of “body image” in the age of social media. This cultural side is important; nobody lifts anymore just to have Brad Pitt’s abs in Fight Club.
Indeed, what has interested me is the way that lifting has become an ethic or maybe even a philosophy of life in certain parts of the internet, bleeding into the offline world through TikTok, Instagram, and podcasts. Lifting has become a moral imperative to yourself, to others, and, for some, to God or maybe just Captain America. It isn’t so much about health or sex appeal—it’s about strength, defined broadly but increasingly internally. The strength to overcome mental illness, internet compulsions, sexual impulses, heartbreak, loneliness, societal fractures, career failures, etc. It’s a method for coping with a society experienced as decadent, for disrobing feminized, feel-good neoliberalism and replacing it with winner-take-all, muscular libertarianism. Few believe in future stability anymore—only the death spiral and self-control.
I was unsure how to write this piece. Exercise outside of sports almost always resists narration. At best, you end up with steely, masculinist narratives of heartbreak and self-overcoming. But the YouTube cult followings of lifters like the Squat Everyday Guy and Sam Sulek (we’ll get to him), who narrate their workouts, have changed my mind. There’s something to say, and people want to hear it.
What follows, though, is less of a straightforward argument than a collage of the personal, the anonymous, and the algorithmic. The thread I want to follow is one of nihilism and self-destruction, but my pursuit is ultimately one of life-affirmation.
Provisos
I should issue a few provisos at the outset:
I’m primarily investigating an understanding of lifting that’s theorized and negotiated online. Yes, that guy at your gym is probably just there to get big fuck bitches make money. This isn’t about him. And yes, I’m primarily writing about men. The spread of weightlifting to women is deeply interesting to me, but I don’t know enough about it to give it proper nuance.
I came to the gym long after the glory days of men’s bodybuilding forums, so what follows is short on that history.
I’m not always going to make the case for the best arguments, but rather, what I find to be the most intriguing ones. This is Substack, not an academic journal. I’m methodologically free-balling it; my chief obligation in the attention economy, as I see it, is to be interesting.
Following from that point: I won’t cover everything. I don’t find discussions about men’s body image or orthorexia very stimulating—not a lot of new ground to break. Overlooking such topics would be negligent in other contexts, but here, I’m just playing around in the sandbox of the zeitgeist, which is to say, the algorithm. Nothing more.
Series outline
Because people get pissy when you drop a 12,000-word article on them, I structured this foray into five parts, each held together thematically. Though some threads develop between them, I imagine they can be read in any order or in isolated parts.
Transformations: the fall of long-distance running, Nobody Grows Up Anymore v. coming-of-age narratives, male-to-male transgenderism, that one internet guy I don’t want to talk about
Death Drive: right-wing political culture, n e o l i b e r a l i s m, nihilism, David Laid v. Sam Sulek, online death cults
Post-Sexuality: incels v. gymcels, misogyny, post-heartbreak self-destruction, falling rates of friendship, loneliness
Jock Oppression: nerds v. jocks, vaccine refusal, anti-intellectualism, toxic masculinity, normiehood
Whitepill: Jesus Christ Powerlifter, nihilist off-ramps, WAGMI, the chump effect, “potential suicides,” coda
Chapters will post every Sunday to keep your inboxes from flooding, but if you would rather read the whole thing at once, just message me and I’m happy to send you the full copy via email.
Contact info
To that end, my email again. If you send a progress pic, please don’t censor your dick print; it’s bad etiquette.
excited for this, thanks for taking the time