Outdoor runners have got their euphoria. In every other setting, exercise unleashes a load of more complicated emotions, many of them very strong. To be a novice in a class or at the gym is to be in an extremely vulnerable state: one mean look can send you home, a clique of friends can make you feel like an outsider. When you know what you’re doing, it fills you with a powerful self-satisfaction, but when you have an environment in which half the people are poleaxed by insecurity, and the other half are much too secure, there’s a lot that can go wrong. Nobody can change that, but etiquette does help. Here are the experts’ rules on the etiquette of fitness environments.
In the gym
If you don’t know how to use it, ask someone
Anna Jenkins, 51, is the founder of We Are Fit Attitude, with decades of personal training experience. She asked her clients and trainers for some gym etiquette tips. One woman said: “I was too proud to ask questions about how to use certain equipment so I just avoided it. In actual fact, I probably should have just asked the bodybuilders as I am sure they would have been happy to show me.” You get shy around the equipment, and then you resent the people hogging it, and then you go home. That is not a fitness journey.
Don’t hog the machines
If you’re doing it right, you’ll be resting between sets anyway. “Instead of just sitting there, scrolling on your phone,” Jenkins says, “why not get up and help Janet set up so she can do her set? People think because they’re sitting there, that’s their space now. But most gyms aren’t big enough for that.”
Don’t correct other people’s form
Even if you think someone is doing something so wrong they’ll hurt themself, it’s much kinder to discreetly inform a member of staff, so that they can deal with it. It sounds like a small thing, but it’s part of a beginner’s paranoia to think that everyone’s watching them, so it would be bad to be seen to be doing exactly that.
Be noise aware
“You only have to have four guys around the weights talking and it would be intimidating,” Jenkins says. “People would scurry off to other parts of the gym and that’s not fair.” It’s a mixed-use environment – in a bar, everyone would be chatting, and on a train, everyone would be silent. It doesn’t mean that you can’t talk, but you have to be mindful that people can’t help but eavesdrop on you. Some of them will enjoy that, but a lot of people would hate to overhear a personal conversation, or a boring one. So if you want to talk, keep it low, intermittent and interesting.
It’s fine to sweat, but carry a towel
Some people set out to sweat, thinking, wrongly, that it means they’re losing weight. Sweating will reduce your weight in the short term, but you’re just shedding water. Some equate sweating with achievement, which is fine. In a boxing gym you have to sweat – but if you get it on the equipment and don’t wipe it down, people around you will be disgusted.
If you’re listening to music, stay aware
“If someone comes up to you to ask you something, you have to listen,” Jenkins says. “They could be asking if you’ll spot them, or share the bench with them. Gyms have to be seen not as a solo space but as a shared space. We’re humans, we have to be supportive.”
Guard against an air of entitlement
This is tricky, because when you’re in there all the time, you’re living your best life. The staff all know your name, and it can feel a bit like you own the place. But keep the voice of one of Jenkins’ newbies in your head: “I have no issue with the bodybuilder types but sometimes there can just be a lack of self-awareness that everyone is equal in the gym. Everyone pays their membership and has an equal right to be there and to use the equipment.”
Don’t take selfies
Another client of Jenkins has said they find it a little sad that gyms have become places to ‘be seen’ and take selfies. This came up a lot – gym-goers acting as if it’s a fashion parade, pouting, making the people in the bobbly old yoga pants feel bad about themselves. Obviously wear what you like, but don’t preen.
You’re allowed to wear makeup, though. “There’s a certain element of feeling quite vulnerable and needing your war paint,” Jenkins says.
For God’s sake, don’t video yourself
At the extreme end is the woman filmed writhing suggestively along the hand bars of a machine, in a hilarious and brilliant video that was intended for her OnlyFans account. It’s not uncommon for people to video themselves to post on the socials, but it’s more or less impossible to keep other people out of the background, which means you’re intruding into their privacy.
Don’t go to the gym while you’re ill
It shouldn’t need to be said, and yet it does. So many people think they’re demonstrating character, soldiering on with a cold, but all they’re doing is delaying their own recovery, sneezing on equipment – like sweating, only 10 times worse – and making everyone else anxious.
In the pool
Shower before you swim
“The water reacts to some deodorants and suncreams, and you get a terrible smell of something like Lynx above the water,” says Becky Horsbrugh, 55, a journalist and swim coach. You’d have to be a stunningly dirty person to put any dent on so much water, but the chemicals cut through.
Take stock before you get in
Swimmers are funny: almost every clash they have is about overtaking. Horsbrugh says: “Most swimming pools will have a slow, medium and fast lane, which vary according to the day. Have a quick look to see what the speeds are like and which is the fullest. Choose your lane carefully. Don’t automatically always go into the same lane.”
Don’t make a big fandango about getting in
It’s natural to shriek a bit when you’re open swimming, in fact the etiquette when it’s cold is that if you don’t scream, you’re being a show-off. But swimming pools aren’t such a shock, so you’ll look like a drama queen.
What to do if someone in front is slower than you
“It’s normal etiquette to tap them on the feet,” Horsbrugh says. “Obviously you don’t grab them or hurt them, just let them know you’re on their tail.”
What to do if someone behind is faster than you
Stop for two seconds at the end, and let them go ahead of you. Some pools have lanes wide enough to overtake, but many don’t.
There is a swimming version of the mamil (middle-aged man in Lycra), and people don’t much like him
“There is a tendency for your middle-aged man with all the gear to not like women overtaking them,” Horsbrugh says. “You’ll be faster, so you’ll start to overtake and they’ll start speeding up. You wouldn’t do that in your car. If someone’s clearly faster than you, just let them go in front, otherwise you end up with two of you side by side.”
If you want to chat to your friend, worry about the ‘where’ more than the ‘how loud’
“People have got swim hats and earplugs, they’re using their eyes a lot more than their ears,” Horsburgh says. “But if you want to chat, don’t do it so that you’re in the way of other swimmers. Just be aware of what’s happening around you.”
In a class
Do not be chatting with your friend
Thea King, 28, is a pilates and aerial yoga teacher. She says: “Teachers are thinking constantly. You need to be clear, to break it down for somebody who’s not quite getting it, and if you’ve got this constant hum in your ear, you find it so hard to maintain a train of thought.”
Don’t get too hung up about personal space
This is a particular problem with classes that are expensive to run: hot yoga, bench and tower pilates, aerial silks. People are wedged in a bit too tight, and some people’s legs are longer than others, and you might get a toe in your eye. You just have to wear it. Nobody did it on purpose. Particularly in hot yoga – where, since the energy-price hikes, there’s sometimes not even an inch between mats. You’re going to be swung at or sweated on. If you don’t like it, do something else.
In aerial – where you have a hammock made of silk hanging from the ceiling, and do upside down, trapeze-style work – King “almost encourages people bumping into each other, as it creates bonds.”
It’s not a competition
“If there’s a pace everyone’s taking, and someone’s like a Duracell bunny in the corner, it can annoy people next to them,” King says. “With group exercise classes, there tends to be more of a community feel. It’s not like the gym where you can have your blinkers on. You’re part of the room, whether you realise it or not.” So try not to get on people’s nerves.
Someone has to answer the teacher
There will always be a call-and-response element to a class, “How are you finding it?”, “Was everyone OK with that?” – and typically everyone thinks someone else will answer, and then no one does. It’s as if the teacher is calling into a void. King says that’s fine. “I don’t know what’s going on in everyone’s life, they could have had kids yapping in their ear all day. I wouldn’t take it personally.” I, however, think it’s rude. Take one for the team.
If you know you’re clumsy, stay at the back
It sounds a bit harsh, but not everyone can get a perfect visual on the instructor, so they’re relying on the people in the front row to know what they’re doing. If that’s you, and you don’t, you will feel the judgment of the people behind you. That will make you clumsy, until you have to walk out, except you’re too shy even to do that.
