The Gym

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

The gym.

Possible psychological prerequisites for going to the gym have always interested me. I have analyzed more than once the reasons that make people spend money, time, and sometimes health, spending part of their life in the gym.

Loud music and a sense of danger. The thunder of iron and animal growls escaping in the form of groans from strained mouths. Testosterone is circulated in the air and with every breath I get more masculine. I went to the gym.

Trainer. I see him. A man closer to fifty, an experienced gray-haired leader, the leader of the pack, the master of the training schedule and fears of crap in front of him in training. The lord of the hall and my projection of the father I didn't have. Help and care, support and harsh criticism of weakness, he can afford all this, and I resignedly accept him into my growing arms. For me, he personifies love, recognition and power. He is God. He can do anything. He is my virtual father. The search for meaning is over, the projection did not work due to its unreality. I became stronger, I became more confident, I became a type of father for myself. Thank you coach.

Muscles grow, the nervous system gets stronger, nerves become steel. Aggression comes out with great efficiency. In our world of skinny jeans and fitted jackets, we can demonstrate our ascal of bleached teeth only with the front camera of our golden iPhone. Modern gladiators fight not in the arena of the Colosseum for the right to survive and gain freedom, but standing in a block frame and measuredly counting the times of repetitions. Squeezed into a social framework, we have lost the path to a natural outburst of aggression in hard physical work, in exhausting hunting and in battles with the natural elements. We have lost the path of realizing our strength, we have lost the natural part of ourselves. Dumping aggression became so compulsive that it became a routine.

My arms are tense, my hand is closed on the handle of the dumbbell. Inhale - exhale, inhale - exhale. The last repetition gives rise to a cry in the depths of my animal nature, I am almost like a lion king, well, almost like. This is already a ritual, we can say that this is my signature handwriting, this scream, it looks like a scream during orgasm, and it is just as deep, originating in the depths of my reviving soul. When experiencing peak stress, many people really have the opportunity to feel alive. It seems to me that only in such moments of incredible tension and a sharp release of it, feeling this sharp contrast, I feel myself. Feeling the pulsation in the temples or the spasm of overworked muscles, we get a part of ourselves, that lost in the gray routine of everyday life, when the background takes all our sensitivity, when we are unable to distinguish ourselves from the circumstances, when we are lost and cannot understand where we are. Today for many of us, feeling this way has become a kind of drug that is very difficult to give up. Switching to the natural version of sensitivity becomes a utopia. The more muscle, the smaller I am.

The hand with the dumbbells slowly goes down, I work out the negative phase. I look at myself in the mirror. I admire myself, I build myself. At this moment I am a builder, I am an engineer of my body. The path to excellence lies through the incline bench. Feeling the weight of the bar in my hands, I feel all the "weight" of my personality. I am strong and handsome, or so it seems to me. There is so much pathological narcissism in this that I hardly notice it. All I see is my reflection in the mirror, and I'm not gorgeous enough. My image could be better, the poster on the wall with the image of the winner Arnold Classic reminds me that I have to work harder, because I can be even better than I am now. The trap slams shut with the sound of the rod dropping onto the holder. I am a prisoner of my unreal avatar.

A lot of your personal dramas can be lived in the gym. Here you can run away from problems, and throw out anger and hatred on the iron, which will remain as cold and indifferent to our life. Here you can search for "mom" and "dad" and never find them. In the gym you can polish your image of yourself, your "ghost" which, like a shadow, haunts our wounded self. Here you can grow your defenses and become "iron" in appearance, putting on the armor of a warrior who fights with his reflections in reality. Here you can train your willpower in overcoming gravity, and still not gain strength in order to leave the gym to say "I'm sorry", or "help me", or "I love you, mom."