The Gym Is the Great Equalizer

Actually now that I think, any sort of fitness activity is.

I have been going to the gym on and off for about 2 years now, and it's embarrassing how little progress I have made. There have been people in my 2-degree connection who I know have gone for about half that time and are easily 50 percent more jacked than me.

But I have managed to not completely abandon it. The last months I have been consistent, but still the gains are weak, lol.

So a couple of reasons why I am not jacked as shit right now are:

1/ I don't eat very well – I either don't eat, or I eat too much, that too not even that healthy

2/ I am super inconsistent if you look at it yearly. In the last year, I have gone to the gym for about 6 to 8 months.

I started July with gym till about August, because I got bored then, exams were there, took a break and never resumed.

Then October I started again, which went till the end of December, but then I went to Goa, accident happened, then Kashmir happened.

Then I finally went to the gym post-Kashmir, for about 3 months, from Jan till mid-March I guess. And then exams, too much bonding with friends because last month of college, and one more break. Till about May beginning.

And then finally fully consistent for the entire month of May that it made me not want to go to Mumbai, because I was finally seeing time that I could do every day.

And then again Mumbai, another month's break, and here we are, a little over a month consistently. This weekend is probably the first time I took a 3-day break, I mean if I don’t go today, it would be 3 days. Let’s see what happens.

Strength is back to the peak I have ever been on, I think at least.

And this weird thought came to my mind.

The gym might just be the only place where things feel fair. Or like not fake or overly manufactured.

Like, hear me out.

You can talk your way out of a lot of things in life. There are hacks. Loopholes. Networking. Some jugaad. You can get by with just knowing the right people or saying the right things. But you walk into a gym, and none of that shit matters.

There’s this one 20 kg dumbbell just sitting there. Doesn’t care how much privilege you carry, how productive your week’s been, or if you cried in the morning and showed up because you were trying to turn your day around. It’s just there. It just accounts for that 1 hour, nothing else matters.

And I kind of like that.

(Okay, I know sleep, food, stress, whatever affect your gains or shit, but that doesn’t take away from the effort that you put in day in and day out, I am thinking from that context.)

Because most of life doesn’t work that way. You can put in effort and still lose. You can half-ass something and somehow win. You can be overqualified and overlooked, or underqualified and still rewarded.

But in the gym, the reps don’t lie. The sets don’t lie. You do the work, and you get a result.

Eventually.

And that’s also what’s kind of brutal about it.

This is the reality. I know a kid who is starting his 11th grade and he is double my size. He started a year back, has been consistent and his mom’s a dietician, so advantage he does have. But that doesn't take away from him coming in every day, giving it all he’s got.

And I have been super inconsistent.

You skip a day? You feel it. You slack off for a week? You feel it. You can’t manipulate your way into strength. There’s no shortcut to stamina. It’s just boring consistency. And I don’t know, I find that weirdly comforting. That for once, the result actually has a direct relationship with the work.

I’ve had phases where I went to the gym just because I wanted to feel like I was doing something productive. Especially when other things felt like they were falling apart. But over time, it became this space where no matter how shitty the day is, I know exactly what to do. Like, go in, lift, leave. No thinking. No spiraling. No guessing what mood the world is in. The weight stays the same.

And some days I suck. Like fully suck. The warm-up itself feels like a workout. The weights feel heavier than usual. The number of times I have thought, “let’s just go home” because I don’t feel like it right now.

(Today if I go, it’ll be one of those days)

And I still keep going. Because I’ve started thinking of it as practice more than performance. It doesn’t have to be good. It just has to be done.

The duality of gym to other things in my life, oof.

But yeah, it’s wild how neutral the gym is. Nobody’s going to do the work for you. No amount of good vibes or productivity podcasts are going to lift that bar for you. You either show up and lift it, or you don’t.

The results on you.

In most of life, I’m constantly wondering if I’m doing enough, or if I’m just doing it the wrong way altogether. But in the gym, I know when I’m cheating. I know when I’m pushing. It’s all pretty visible. No overthinking required. No one clapping or booing. Just you versus the weight.

And weirdly, that’s where I think the “equalizer” part comes in. Because outside, we all have different starting lines. But inside this room, with these weights, none of that helps. You start where you are. And you go from there. You lift what you can today. And try to lift a little more tomorrow. That’s it.

There’s no performance review. No algorithm deciding if your rep counts or not. You can’t trick your way into strength.

That’s what makes it fair. And also, kind of punishing.