Gym lads are more than just dumbbells and protein shakes

Gym goers often get a bad rep, quickly labelled as part of a sad phenomenon of narcissism and protein shakes. So it felt necessary to give the honest gym lad, or lass, a voice – to show that the majority of us have a little more substance to our ways.

There are those out there, curling a couple of dumbbells, gulping that protein shake, and envisaging themselves in that stringer in Ibiza in July, and quite frankly, they are an embarrassment to the gym. We can practically smell your insecurity through your fresh Gymshark tracksuit and £17 shaker cup your mum bought you for Christmas.

There is, however, a line between these jokers and those who embrace the gym as part of their lifestyle. Curling a few dumbbells does not miraculously turn you into a bodybuilder overnight, it’s years of commitment and discipline; a marathon not a sprint. The gym for many people is a release, and if anything, a more productive way to procrastinate with that essay than sitting there in bed watching Breaking Bad through for the third time.

Just let us live

Take that guy from sixth form, labelled as nothing more than skinny and nerdy. Nice, but “normal”. Who really wants to be any of those things? So why is it any surprise when he finds the gym as a way to better himself, and feel like he’s actually achieved something greater than completing GTA 5 for the fourth time? After all, you don’t achieve arms like double decker buses from repping out cheat codes for unlimited guns.

That’s where the problem lies, people actually trying to workout get confused with the twat in the tank because they’re in the same setting and it’s easier for people just to tarnish everyone with the same brush. Going to the gym doesn’t automatically make you a clone, there isn’t some magical relationship between bulking and douchebaggery. But I get where all this comes from, it’s hard to for some people to challenge themselves, so why waste time trying to get in shape or achieve any goal when they can just level the playing field and settle for a level of mediocrity that makes them look better by comparison without even having to try? It’s why the Dad bod tragically became so popular.

Now, there are also plenty of guys around rocking the Dad bod lifestyle whom have intellect, ambitions and substance, just as much as there are guys in shape whom are the same. But what the Dad bod craze idolises is not anything to do about a guy’s body type. It’s an attraction to the physical manifestation of normality. The king of Netflix and Chill for one, at the ripe old age of 20, who is there simply to remind other people that their own normality is adequate. His lifestyle choice away from the gym, drinking and eating without a care for anything apparently makes him seem more natural and human. In other words, literally just a person, a human ugg, the trackies of people, someone who’s comfortable and easy to use.

We’re not all clones

The guy with the Dad bod might have no qualms about occasionally drinking heavily and eating a large pizza on the weekends, but who doesn’t love that?! Not even the twat in the tank is so self-obsessed with rocking that stringer in Ibiza that they’d say no to that. Ultimately, if you want to continue being your idea of normal with a two litre bottle of Pepsi welded in one hand and the TV remote in the other, go right ahead. But don’t degrade people as tragic try-hards for actually attempting to better themselves, just because you’re intimidated seeing people achieve what you can’t be assed to. Always strive to be better, and don’t envy those who do.