The uni gym is the Mean Girls cafeteria of Newcastle

As always when the new year begins a whole host of resolutions and promises form in our heads.

Why not use our overpriced gym memberships this year and become fit? And yet, as always, a month has passed and most of us have yet to pick up our trainers.

But maybe this is because the uni gym is a daunting place. Venturing down the road, already intimidated by gloomy Ricky looming on your left, the familiar heart quickening feeling kicks in. Is this really a good idea?

When you actually make it to the gym there is definitely a hierarchy in place: gym girls, flexible girls and the rest of us: the normal girls.

Whether it’s the fitness freaks, the weight room girls or the ones who always stretch – each of them scream “you can’t sit with us!'”

Here is every girl you’ll find in the gym:

Gym girls

Gym girls strut right into the Sport Centre, skip up the stairs and start their perfected workouts. The rest of us walk in awkwardly, hoping to dodge that £2 fine for missing the exercise class that we couldn’t face hungover after a night out on the Toon. If the stairs weren’t already enough of a work out, the view at the top will definitely give you a heart attack.

You’re greeted with the expansive glass windows, letting you see the hundreds of girls in there ahead of you working out. They are beautifully toned and glamourous, the girls modelling the Victoria Secret catalogue. The girls who pull off that tight, neon lycra, making a fool out of your baggy, old school kit.

The exercise machines are the territory of the super fit gym girls. Set up in battle formation there are always an army of these girls working out across the room on the treadmills and cross trainers. These girls flick their perfect plaits and high ponytails as they run and type on their pink glittery phones as they cycle. But of course, no effort is made. These gym girls are so fit and flawless that none of their perfectly put on make-up even sweats away.

These girls are the ones who own NutriBullets and fit in early morning classes of Total Tabata before their seminars without any trace of a hangover. How do they do it?

Gym girls really are just too athletic. And hats off to them, normal girls are insanely jealous. We are mere mortals in this new gym pecking order.

Flexible girls

Around the edge of the downstairs room are the jumping, burpee-ing and stretching flexible females. Perfectly structured ab routines and calf raises are demonstrated in front of the mirrors. Some of these stretches have never before been seen my mankind and take minutes for an observer to work out how the body can even form these shapes. Every other gym goer is jealous of this level of the hierarchy – you may be able to run marathons, but can you plank  for minutes on end? Most of us can’t even touch our toes.

Normal people

The rest of us slouch into the gym, trying to hide from familiar faces and begin nervously on the machines. After five minutes, seeming like a lifetime, us laughable people try (and fail) to hide our rasping breath and red faces.

This is where it becomes embarrassing – the gym people live for maximum resistance, whereas most can’t make it past level five without spluttering. Even more embarrassing when the cocky among us try to match their resistance, before giving into the humiliatingly quick defeat.

With that twenty minutes of exertion us inadequate people end the work out and reach for the lime green towels to wipe away the moisture of our failure.

Normal people have the good intention of boosting our abs, but when it comes to lying on the mat next to the flexible people we collapse in a ball while they pompously do the splits. One lift of a medicine ball and one sit up is our lot, no fifty push ups for us thanks.

Weight room girls

All of this is before you even think about the terrifying territory of the upstairs room – the myth and the legend. It’s not a place for most girls, it’s not a place for most people: only the super fit are welcome here. Those with powerful bulging muscles and nerves of steel are the ones to enter the infamous weights room. Most of us don’t even know what it looks like.  At first I am told it is scary and intimidating, but then you become an equal. You soon are welcomed into the top tier of the gym pyramid. A rare and strong diamond in the midst of the fake and feeble.

Do not fear the gym. There may be a hierarchy in place, but  hierarchies are there to be challenged. You may not be a gym person YET, but go and try: at least you are there. You never know you, could be the next person to climb the gym ladder. The weight room is your limit.