Since early in 2020, I’ve been away from the gym, for a number of reasons.
I’ve been very diligent during that time in keeping a high step count, which has surely been a benefit to my health. I also went through a phase of nearly a year when I was doing a lot of calisthenics.
But now that I’m back at a university, paying for classes, there’s a gym I can go to anytime. It’s been good to be back.
One of my favourite things since I’ve been back, that I had forgotten how much I appreciated, is getting to see people at different stages of their fitness journey.
You see some people like me, who haven’t been in a gym for a while. We have the smaller weights, the flabbier bodies.
But then you also see a diversity of people who have been at this for some years, lifting big weights and moving around with developed musculatures.
It’s inspiring. I perhaps can’t exactly say why I think it seems desirable to be strong and somewhat bulky. Is it something I’ve learned from the society I’ve grown up in? Probably that’s part of it. Is it something we’re born with or something we learn naturally without encouragement? There’s probably some of that, too.
But there’s nothing like seeing people in real life who are having success in these precise goals to remind you of what you do admire and what you do wish for yourself.