After stepping through the doors of a new gym, you cautiously eye the bulky machines feeling awkward, lost, and shy in a room full of people. While you think of a game plan for your sweat sesh, you silently pray that everyone in the room is minding their muscles and paying no attention to yours.
The beginning of your fitness journey can be intimidating, as are most things when they are new to you. A survey of over 3,000 people conducted by My Protein found that almost 90% are worried about how others perceive them at the gym, and over 30% experience performance or appearance-based anxiety.
The first step to overcoming your fear of judgment is knowing that everybody belongs at the gym. Never allow anyone to make you feel otherwise. Next, understand that most people at the gym are there for a self-serving reason: to get fit, improve their mental health, find a community, or have other health and wellbeing-related intentions. They are primarily focused on themselves, not you.
Anxiety caused by working out in public can derail your goals, leaving you with an inconsistent stop-and-go routine and no progress. Here are our tips for overcoming gym shyness to help you stay centered and be a self-assured fitness baddie.
Research and create a plan you can stick with.
Thanks to the internet, there is a vast library of fitness information. Search for professional and science-based articles and videos on why and how to do different exercises and safely use machines. Then plan a personal program and save it as an easy-to-access list on your phone. Your programming should include specific exercises, how many reps and rounds of each, and which days you'll do them.
With a plan, you'll feel more at ease and won't have to figure it out on the fly. If you're still feeling queasy at the thought of working out in front of others, start at home to practice the movements.
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Get familiar with your gym's layout and policies.
Learn the lay of the land and find which spots in the gym help you stay in a flow, whether that's a quiet corner or a row of equipment that isn't front and center. Learning your gym's policies and general gym etiquette will also help you feel like a regular. If possible, train during off-peak hours when the gym is less crowded.
Wear an outfit you feel comfortable and confident in.
Don't break your budget, especially in this economy, but having a few cute, buttery soft, and nonrestrictive workout leggings and tops can boost your confidence and allow you to move freely.
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Listen to music or a podcast to stay in the zone.
Create a playlist of songs that keep you moving and make you feel powerful. Or throw on one of your favorite podcasts or an audiobook, and use that time to fire up your body and stimulate your mind.
Start with a personal trainer, gym buddy, or group class.
If going to the gym solo makes you uncomfortable, other options exist, such as teaming up with a friend or family member or working with a personal trainer to teach you exercises and correct your form. You can also sign up for a small beginner's class to level the playing field and maybe even make a new gym friend.
Taking various classes can also help you discover which activities you like best, whether Pilates, strength training, yoga, cycling, dance, boxing, or something else.
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Go at your own pace.
You're in the gym to create a sustainable fitness practice tailored for you, not to keep up with everyone else. If you're new to working out, avoid going from zero to 100 because you’ll risk getting burnt out or injured. Challenge yourself, but go at your own pace.
Remember your "why" and focus on your goals.
Folks at the gym were once beginners too. Instead of comparing yourself to people around you, use the presence of others to serve as motivation and turn that into discipline. Being consistent is a result of discipline, more so than unreliable motivation. Focus on your why to give you the strength to stay on track. The more you show up for yourself at the gym, the less daunting it will feel.
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Those rumors were more than laid to rest when Jodie and Joshua went to the 2023 Oscars together earlier this year, and even more recently, when they celebrated her birthday together last month during the September unveiling of the Lotus Emeya.
Jodie Turner-Smith celebrates her birthday with husband Joshua Jackson at the unveiling of the new fully-electric Lotus Emeya on September 07, 2023 in New York City.
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Despite seeming particularly happy and in love, perhaps the writing was already written on the wall even then. In the past, Jodie has been very celebratory publicly about her love for her estranged husband, even boldly recounting their love story for the books in a 2021 interview with Seth Meyers.
When Jodie and Joshua met, it was while at his birthday party in 2018. Their relationship was hot and heavy from the start, with Jodie openly noting that they began as a "one-night stand." During her 2021 interview with Seth Meyers, she jokingly referred to their love story as a "three-year one-night stand." She shared:
"First of all, I saw him before he saw me and when I saw him, I was like, 'I want that.' And then when he saw me, I just pretended like I didn't see him. He had to yell across the room to me, and I was wearing this T-shirt from a movie called Sorry to Bother You and [actress] Tessa Thompson plays a character called Detroit, and she has this T-shirt that says, 'The Future Is Female Ejaculation.'
"And so, he shouts across the room, 'Detroit!' He comes over and… does this really cute, charming thing that he does and just all night -- he just basically followed me around the party."
The couple were together from that moment forth, and even made things "Instagram official" less than two weeks later while on a dinner date. Joshua would later clarify to Insider that the night they met in 2018 was not a 'one-night stand' or a 'three-year one-night stand' like his then-wife joked but instead, it was "technically a three-night stand."
"It was sealed with a kiss that night and then we didn't leave each other's sides for, well, three years now," Joshua continued at the time.
In a July 2021 interview with Jimmy Fallon, Joshua dropped more details about the why behind getting married. He revealed that he didn't know he wanted to get married to Jodie until "the moment she asked me."
"She asked me on New Year's Eve. We were in Nicaragua. It was very beautiful, incredibly romantic, we were walking down the beach and she asked me to marry her."
He added, "I did not know [she would propose], but she was quite adamant and she was right. This is the best choice I ever made."
Joshua Jackson Reveals Jodie Turner-Smith Proposed To Him
Jodie received quite a bit of flack for proposing to Joshua because it goes against tradition and what society sees as acceptable for a woman to do to a man, and proposing isn't one of them. No matter how much time has passed, the viewpoints around who should do the proposing and who should be proposed to are still very traditional.
After being on the receiving end of such backlash, Joshua would later clarify to the media in a separate interview that it wasn't just Jodie's proposal to him that sealed the deal of them getting married, he proposed to her too. She might have initiated it, but Joshua followed through.
"I accidentally threw my wife under the bus because that story was told quickly and it didn't give the full context and holy Jesus, the internet is racist and misogynist," he explained to Refinery29 that same year. "We were in Nicaragua on a beautiful moonlit night, it could not possibly have been more romantic."
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He continued, "And yes, my wife did propose to me and yes, I did say yes, but what I didn't say in that interview was there was a caveat, which is that I'm still old school enough that I said, 'This is a yes, but you have to give me the opportunity [to do it too].'"
"She has a biological father and a stepdad, who's the man who raised her. [I said], 'You have to give me the opportunity to ask both of those men for your hand in marriage.' And then, 'I would like the opportunity to re-propose to you and do it the old-fashioned way down on bended knee.' So, that's actually how the story ended up."
Joshua and Jodie would eventually marry in December 2019. Shortly thereafter, Jodie gave birth to the couple's first child, Janie, in 2020.
In a recent interview with Elle UK, Jodie shared the ways becoming a mother to Juno helped to heal her of her wounds from colorism she experienced in the past. "It's interesting because I had a lot of resistance to becoming a mother and, throughout my life, I always said if I were to have children, I wanted to have Black, Black babies so that I could affirm them as children with the love that I felt I needed to have been affirmed with by the outside world," Jodie shared with the outlet.
She continued, "Then I fell in love with my husband and we talked about having kids. I did have this mini pause, where I was like, 'She's going to be walking through the world not only having an experience that I did not have, but looking like people that, in a way, I'd always felt a little bit tormented by.' Now that I've got this little, tiny, light-skinned boss, I feel like it’s the universe teaching me lessons. I've been given a daughter who looks this way to heal my own conversations around colorism."
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