The bright phone light flashes through the gym mirror. Posed, flexed arms and legs are rimmed with light, sweat-glazed muscles bulging from their figure; a shadow is casted over the face of this animalistic specimen of a man. How can one reach this peak physique? All over the internet, gym bros and gals post scientific articles, workout routines and continue to perpetuate diet culture. Over quarantine, a single video by Chloe Ting claiming to grow abs in as short as two weeks gained 568 million views. On tiktok, there are hundreds of shorts on protein shakes, carnivore diets, low calorie diets, supersets, mewing, lymph drainage, bloating, all achieved in ten weeks, five weeks, two, 10 minutes! People flock to this kind of content to change, to finally go through a “winter arc,” but how sustainable is this really?
While working out has many benefits, and it’s a good thing to want to improve one’s own health, many gym influencers tend to focus on achieving perfection, particularly in looks. The fast-paced video format of TikTok facilitates ideas like these; creators need to capture people’s attention before they scroll, and by showing them a posed and almost god-like beautiful body standard, or using buzzwords that say people can look exactly how they want to should they feed into a certain, paid workout routine, they can thus boost their engagement.  ”It depends on the type of gym influencer. Some people promote positive habits but others… make it seem like you need to be better than other people.” explained senior Michelle Zheng.
Going to the gym and working out multiple times a week is admirable on its own, as it requires an enormous amount of self-discipline and motivation that Gym Bros seem to ooze in overabundance; however, in order to see improvement, pacing oneself and knowing when to take a rest day is equally as important. Taking rest days allows muscles to rebuild themselves, and physical benefits aside, it’s also important to build a unique, sustainable routine to avoid burnout. Working out everyday of the week seems to only be sustainable for those with little to nothing better to do outside of the gym.
“Gym influencers make you out to be lazy if you don’t go to the gym. [To them], it’s something to be ashamed of,” noted senior Natalie Hsu.
Besides this corner of the internet that occupies gym bros and their unsustainable expectations, the entire community is said to be welcoming.
“I think that the gym community is probably one of the best ones because it doesn’t use a lot of editing. They just use lighting and poses. But the thing is there are some people that are so insanely muscular, and they get there because of genetics, so then people feel worse about themselves. They can feel like they can never get to that same extent,” said freshman Kelsey Anacker.
Even if there is a lot of unproblematic content showing off or providing good workouts, there are always those who compare themselves to online images. The problem then lies on the consumer to make sure they treat themselves properly, especially when it comes to physical activity and body image.
“There’s a bunch of buff guys on instagram and tiktok. You want to be like them, so you work really hard to achieve this dream. But I don’t let it make me do unsustainable workouts or dieting,” shared freshman Eldad Belayneh.
An important reminder is that working out is totally fine as a regular, casual way to keep in shape. High calorie and high protein meals, 50 minutes of pumping iron, gympasses, all these are unneeded on a daily basis. But for those who want to tread the path of a macho gym rat, they can do so healthily without the critiques of muscle men on the screen.