Top 10 Disadvantages of Women’s Gyms

Let’s put it at the top first – all the “disadvantages” mentioned in this article are not inherent flaws of the gym itself for women. They are all avoidable risks created by “industry chaos, cognitive biases, and operational errors.” The list is not to advise you not to go to the gym, but to help you put the brakes on in advance. After all, if you really step on these pitfalls, it is really not as comfortable as lying down at home.

Last year, I accompanied my newly employed sister to a shopping mall near my home to apply for a card. She weighed 165 and 98 pounds, and her size S was always loose. After the physical test, the personal trainer surrounded her and said that her fake hips were 4cm wide, her mother's buttocks were severe, and her rectus abdominis was separated 2 She pointed out, "If I don't adjust now, it will be more difficult to recover when I get married and have babies. No matter what skirt I wear, my hips will appear wider and I will look shorter." I told my little sister that I was confused on the spot. She hugged me when I got home and cried for half the night, saying that it was the first time in my 24 years that I knew that my figure was so bad. Later, I accompanied her to the rehabilitation department of a tertiary hospital for a check-up. The doctor said that there was no problem with her rectus abdominis. The so-called false hip width was a normal bone structure. It was purely a personal trainer to create anxiety in order to sell classes. Really, when you encounter such a low-quality personal trainer, you don’t go to the gym to become more confident, but simply to make yourself unhappy, and your good self-acceptance will be shattered first.

A more real pitfall than the emotional shock is the inexplicable loss of money. Looking through my circle of friends, there are at least seven or eight girls who are transferring idle fitness cards. Most of them are two-year or three-year cards. They have gone less than five times in total. There is also a 30% handling fee for transferring cards. Calculating, some of them have lost thousands. What’s even worse is that I bought dozens of private lessons, only to have the coach run away after two months. The gym said it was the coach’s personal behavior and had nothing to do with them, and I’ve seen too many examples where the money won’t be returned. Of course, some people say that they have strong self-control and go every day, and it is very cost-effective to apply for a card. However, the vast majority of girls who have just started working out have no idea whether they can persist. They spend money when they get excited. In the end, the money is wasted, and they blame themselves for "lack of perseverance", which makes them feel guilty.

To make matters worse, the money was spent and the body was injured. A while ago, I saw a post from a girl who was born in 1998. She said that she had read online about deadlifting buttocks. She followed the tutorial and practiced blindly without anyone to guide her in the wrong movements. After doing it for half a month, her waist protruded. She lay down for three months and was unable to go to work. She spent less than 20,000 on medical expenses. She failed to achieve a buttocks lift and suffered a waist injury first. There are girls around me who squat with the coach every day in order to lose weight quickly, and they buckle their knees inward without realizing it. After practicing for more than a month, their meniscus is worn out, and now it hurts even to climb three floors. Some people say, "If you just find a reliable coach, you're done." But how can a girl who has just started to tell whether the coach really understands it or just recites words? Wasn't there news a while ago that some personal trainers started working after seven days of training? The probability of falling into a trap is really too high.

There are also some invisible discomforts that only girls who frequent the gym understand. Who knows, you are sweating profusely while practicing the glute bridge, and when you look up and find a man staring at you diagonally from behind, it feels like you have swallowed a fly. There are also public yoga mats. I don’t know how many people have stepped on them and sweated on them before. I have a friend who used the public slippers in the gym before. His athlete’s foot was cured for half a year. Now he brings all his own things to the gym, and it’s like moving. Of course, there are also girls who are big-hearted and think that it is okay to disinfect the gym every day. This completely depends on personal acceptance. There is nothing right or wrong, but it will be really annoying if you mind.

Many girls are anxious to get results when they first start working out, but instead they ruin their bodies. My college roommate was able to fit into a dress one size too small for graduation photos. He spent two hours in the gym every day, first ran 10 kilometers, and then practiced strength training for an hour. The total food he ate every day was less than the weight of a hamburger. As a result, I didn't visit my aunt for three months, and my hair fell so much that the top of my head was almost bald. I drank Chinese medicine for more than half a year before it came back. The doctor said that she was overeating and exercising too much, which caused her cortisol to soar and her endocrine system to be disrupted, which resulted in more losses than gains. Really, many people have been brainwashed by the idea that "self-discipline is freedom" and completely ignore their physical endurance. In the end, fitness turns into self-torture.

There is another pitfall that many people have not mentioned, that is, it is easy to be biased by the assembly line aesthetics, and the body you get after training is not what you want at all. Nowadays, the unified aesthetic in gyms is wide shoulders, thin waist, and curvy hips. No matter what body type or style you have, you should always aim for an hourglass shape. I used to know a girl who wears Japanese-style skirts. She used to look really good when wearing clothes with her shoulders slouched. After working with a personal trainer for half a year, her shoulders became 4cm wider. She couldn’t wear any of those forest-style skirts before. Now she looks like a strong man in everything she wears. I cried and said that I want to train my shoulders back, but it’s not that easy. Aesthetics are inherently personal, and not everyone is suitable for the same body shape. It is really easy to regret following the trend.

Also, the time cost is really too high. The gym I used to run is three kilometers away from my home. It takes 10 minutes to drive there, 10 minutes to find a parking space, 10 minutes to change clothes and warm up, 40 minutes to practice, 20 minutes to shower and blow dry my hair, and two hours of back and forth to practice for 40 minutes. I had just finished get off work overtime, and I was already exhausted. I had to drive to the gym. After going to the gym twice, I found it too troublesome, and my card immediately expired. Really, if there is no gym within walking distance of your home, this time cost will really wear away all your enthusiasm for exercise. Instead, it would be better to dance with Pamela at home for 20 minutes.

Invisible comparisons are disturbing enough. You go to the gym, and you are surrounded by girls who have been training for three or four years. Their hips are higher than yours, their backs are thinner than yours, and they are all wearing Lululemon fitness clothes. Your weight has not changed at all after two months of training, but you feel that you are particularly useless and have no talent. In fact, they may have to control their diet in private, and some even use technology, and you can't compare with them. I once had a friend who went to the gym for half a month and then came back and said he didn't want to go, "Everyone else is better at training than me, so I felt like a fool when I went there." Good exercise turned into self-denial, which was really unnecessary.

There is also a very real problem, that is, it is easy to encounter harassment. When I was practicing at the gym, a man kept coming over to talk to me, asking me how old I was, what I did for a living, and whether I had a boyfriend. I made it clear that I didn’t want to talk, but he kept walking around. Later, I went to the front desk, who said that he didn’t do anything and that they couldn’t control it. After that, I never went to that gym again. Of course, there are women-only gyms in many cities now, but they are twice as expensive as ordinary gyms and are not available in many small places. It is also a big threshold for ordinary girls.

The last pitfall is that it is easy to be led away by consumerism and buy a bunch of useless equipment. In order to go to the gym, I bought three to five sets of fitness clothes, three or four pairs of professional sports shoes, as well as yoga mats, wrist guards, knee pads, and fascia guns. In the end, the cards expired, and many of the equipment did not even have the tags removed. I spent thousands, which was a complete waste of money. I bought a fascia gun worth more than 2,000 yuan on a whim, but it is now gathering dust at home. It is quite handy for hitting walnuts.

In fact, after saying so much, you can also see that these so-called "disadvantages" are not problems with the gym at all, and can all be avoided in advance. If you can find a reliable gym and a reliable coach, practice at your own pace, without anxiety or comparison, the gym is definitely a good place to secrete endorphins. If you feel comfortable practicing at home, or you prefer other sports such as running or dancing, that’s totally fine—exercise is meant to be fun, and there’s no need to force yourself to go to any specific occasion, right?