*THIS WRITER IS NOT A HEALTH PROFESSIONAL AND IS SPEAKING FROM HER OWN EXPERIENCE*
It’s 2024, and for whatever reason, you have decided to touch grass, go to class, and grow your ass. In other words, you’ve made a few New Year’s Resolutions, and taking charge of your physical wellbeing is one of them.
However, you can’t help noticing that your 2024 New Year’s Resolutions are oddly similar to that of 2023 — recycled from the year prior, overly ambitious, and all too soon forgotten. You begin to wonder if your sudden motivation to become a better person is all for naught, and if this resolution business even works. I mean, it’s February, your screen time is just as high as ever, school is still hard, and your abs are still soft…no matter how many Chloe Ting videos you watch.
If this is you, fear not. Despite having experienced many of the misgivings I listed above, I truly don’t believe that New Year’s Resolutions are in vain, especially when it comes to something as important as building your physical health. Still, to assuage my lingering doubts, I decided to do some research. So, I went on a quest. A journalism quest, in which I interviewed several college students who are taking their fitness seriously — gym bros, if you will — to find the secret sauce to actually gaining and sustaining some semblance of physical fitness. What I found was deeply encouraging, so I’ve taken it upon myself to share these findings with you. However, before I get into the interview portion of this article, I first want to briefly go over the psychological origin of New Year’s Resolutions in general, so that you may be reassured that your desire to set one is rationale and legitimate.
the psychology behind new
year’s resolutions
Swiss Psychologist Carl Jung believed in the collective unconscious. That is to say, he believed that there were some motifs and archetypes so central to humankind that they have and will continue to occur across all time periods and cultures, as such patterns are an intrinsic part of self-individuation and the psychology of man. The cycle of rebirth is one such pattern. The belief of this cycle is demonstrated in Hinduism through reincarnation. In ancient Egypt, it is reflected in the myth of the Phoenix. In Christianity, it manifests through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Naturally, the rebirth cycle is reflected in New Year’s Resolutions, as well.
In all of the above examples, mankind has agreed that life is difficult and full of pain. The Phoenix must burn, and the Christ must die. Yet, behind that pain, there is potential for new beginnings. This gives us hope.
In layman’s terms, the idea that we can be a better person tomorrow is what gets us through today. It is for this reason that Orphan Annie sings of brighter tomorrows, and novelist Fredrick Backman writes “[w]e need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.”
“We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.”
Fredrick Backman, Anxious People.
This means that as glib as the saying “new year, new me” may sound, there is actually some merit to it. While it is true that you have entered into 2024 with the selfsame physical body, with the aid of your New Year’s Resolutions, you permit yourself to be psychologically reborn. Consequently, the opportunity for self-improvement is limitless.
Still, if you would like to take this opportunity of psychological rebirth to turn your mindset into a grindset, it is probably in your best interest to do some research first…luckily for you, I have completed said research already by interviewing multiple select college individuals from all different walks of life on how they stay fit in college.
So, without further ado, here are five college gym bros’ advice on getting fit in 2024.
advice from a math teacher
As an education major, I’ve always dreamed of becoming a buff high school teacher. There is something comedically pleasing to me about being incredibly fit in a line of work that requires little to no manual labor. I don’t just want to lecture on Shakespeare, I want to look like I could bench press every piece of literature he’s ever written. More seriously, I want to inspire students to exercise both their minds and their bodies. Far too often, the public school system underscores the importance of physical health and encourages students to lead academic, albeit sedentary lives, and I want to change that.
Now at the present moment, I am neither buff nor a high school teacher, but I can say otherwise for my friend Benji.
Benji is an education major in his sophomore year of college. He’s pursuing a teaching certification in secondary mathematics, but that is far from his only goal. He also wants to be a competitive bodybuilder. Now, he’s always been a physically active individual, having played soccer for virtually his entire life, but he didn’t start taking weightlifting seriously until 2021, after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I used to go to the gym about two to three times a week,” Benji explained to me over the phone, “but after Covid hit, I started to go about five times.”
Despite amping up his fitness routine significantly over the past few years, Benji assures me that this kind of commitment doesn’t require as many tradeoffs as people think, especially in college. College is the perfect time to start getting into fitness, Benji explained to me, because college routines are so incredibly flexible.
Now, I’ve heard people say this before, and as a freshman going through her first semester of college, I was initially very dubious. I knew people pulling all-nighters to study for their exams, knew a guy who went to the hospital after a caffeine overdose, and even knew people who struggled to schedule time to eat between classes. There were even times when I seriously doubted my own capability to get through the day unscathed, and I was barely involved in any extracurriculars or social events.
Still, hearing about how Benji succeeded in his classes, maintained his friendships, kept up with his physical fitness, and still found the time to work twenty hours a week at a part-time job besides, I was inclined to believe him. You can make time for your physical health in college, but…how?
The answer is time management, a skill I was definitely not utilizing during this past semester of college. I was new to the college scene, and there were many days when my sole and primary goal was to succeed in my classes. I managed to maintain a pretty good GPA, even making the Dean’s List (humble brag), but at what cost? I was perpetually staying up until two thirty in the morning to do so, meaning that I barely got enough sleep, and when I did catch a break between classes, I just wanted to go back to bed. I’d stopped going to church, gave up looking for a part-time job, and left all of my hobbies neglected, choosing instead to scroll on my phone or watch pirated movies online. I even lost my Duolingo streak. Suffice is to say, I was on a low, and I was constantly pressed for time. Not because I didn’t have the time, per se, but because I was throwing it away. Me, and a good portion of my inexperienced freshmen friends, as well.
Benji, on the other hand, was using his time wisely. He was making sure to follow through with the goals that he set for himself. He attributes his ability to do this not to an infinite supply of time, or motivation, but to a strong sense of discipline.
“I was able to stay motivated in the gym for the first year and a half, but last year I started to suffer from burnout,” Benji told me. “I still make sure I go to the gym. There are days when I don’t have the motivation to go, but I do have the discipline to tell myself I want to go.”
In other words, sometimes you just have to lock-in. There are days where you will feel discouraged, but that is not an excuse to give up. You have to push through.
Fortunately, you don’t have to do it alone, because the gym is full of people just like you.
“The fitness community is one of the most sincere communities I have ever been a part of,” Benji said, when asked how he felt about his fellow gym junkies. “I met a lot of my friends through the gym. No one’s worried about what anyone else is doing or judging anyone. We’re all just there to get better.”
I wondered if people like Benji felt this way because they “fit” the conventional stereotype for who might belong in the gym, and if beginners might have a different experience, and face criticism and judgment for being behind their peers. Benji assured me that that wasn’t the case.
“When it comes to the ‘Gym Bro’ stereotype,” he explained, “it’s kind of true that a lot of guys make the gym their personality, but no one I know has been disrespectful to me. You might feel a little bit out of the loop if people are making jokes about creatine or steroids, because that’s not really something that you know a lot about, but that’s pretty much it.”
Listening to Benji talk about his gym buddies really changed my outlook on the fitness community as a whole. I went into this interview assuming that my interviewee was an outlier, a “safe” person to talk to in an otherwise judgmental world. What I slowly began to realize, though, was that the gym wasn’t the gated community I thought it was. It’s actually a very supportive space, and people want to help you succeed.
So, don’t be afraid to find your community.
advice from a content creator
I’m pretty convinced that we all have at least one person in our lives with whom we are perpetually crossing paths. For me, that person is Adriana Rofrano.
I first met Adriana in elementary school, during which we attended the same church. In seventh grade, we took Pre-Algebra together at a homeschool co-op. A year later, we both enrolled at a Christian private school for junior high. She left the school, I didn’t, and we wouldn’t see each other again until my senior year of high school, by which time she was a completely different person than the girl I first met. Way different. 17,000 Instagram followers, an inspirational podcast, and a black belt different. Yet, despite all this, Adriana would maintain that the greatest difference in her life is a difference of mentality. Adriana Rofrano won a battle I never knew she was fighting and came out stronger on top. Today, she is using that strength to help others do the same.
Similar to Benji, Adriana’s fitness career started off through a multitude of sports. Over the course of her childhood, she participated in ballet, track, and even volleyball. From an outsider’s perspective, she was leading a happy, healthy, physically active life, but on the inside, she felt far from that.
“My motivation to work out came from a negative view of my body,” explained Adriana, “which wasn’t ideal. Thankfully, I now work out because of a love for my body.”
I relate to Adriana strongly on this one. The very first things I took into account when I began my fitness journey were my weight and my appearance. I used to skip meals as punishment for perceived weight gain and wear baggier clothes when I couldn’t handle looking at my body. I was repeatedly told by friends and family that I didn’t have to worry about those kinds of things because I was skinny, but those words were far from comforting. They placed more emphasis on the necessity of remaining skinny, when what I really needed was to realize that having a slender appearance was never the goal to begin with (I’ve written additional material on this topic as it applies to eating disorders available here).
Adriana realized the detrimental effects of this mentality, too, and shared with me how her fitness goals evolved over time to promote both better physical and mental health.
After dropping her childhood sports, she took up martial arts. Training for a black belt was intensive and led her to lose a lot of hours of sleep, but the lessons she learned during her training were valuable. Rather than focusing on what she looked like, Adriana was able to focus on what she could do — how she could use explosive movements to generate power, but also how she could push herself to achieve her best, even on days when she didn’t feel like it.
“If you wake up and feel unmotivated to continue with your training and make some excuse as to why you can’t train that day, ask yourself if this a true statement or an excuse,” said Adriana. “If you do find that it’s an excuse, remind yourself why you started, and make sure to have a strong why.”
For Adriana, this ‘why’ is no longer about aesthetics. Her motivation has shifted from looking better to feeling better, and ensuring that as she gets older, her body will be able to keep up with the demands of life, and even the lives of her future children. Through this new motivation, she’s gotten a lot stronger than she ever would have with her old motivation, and her life has truly changed for the better. While it’s true that there have been aesthetic benefits to her workout routine, she is adamant that aesthetic motivation should never be the primary motivation to step into the gym.
I think a lot of women start working out with the intent of looking a certain way, especially when it comes to losing weight. While everyone’s health goals are different, and there are definitely times when weight loss is a legitimate goal to have, I think we are progressed enough as a society that women shouldn’t feel like they have to channel all their energy into becoming smaller, when we can be pursuing happier, healthier, and stronger as well.
advice from an actor
If you’ve known me for even a short length of time, you probably know that I will always find an excuse to boast about the accomplishments of my siblings. Genuinely, they never fail to inspire me to try harder in life, but when it comes to physical fitness specifically, none of them have inspired me more than my older brother, Logan Weisberg.
Logan is a film major at LMU in his junior year of college. He makes short films for his YouTube channel, enjoys cooking, videogames, and cooking videogames (for those of you who don’t get my wordplay, I am talking about Overcooked), and has recently reentered the world of theater. Adapting his physique to the characters he plays, Logan has taken it upon himself to start going to the gym and building up some muscle…but his fitness journey actually started long before his acting career, under far less glamorous conditions, in in middle school boys’ P.E. class.
“I was in middle school P.E. class, and this kid named Jake runs up to me and wraps his whole hand around my bicep,” Logan recalls. “That was kind of the start of everything.”
I tried to put myself in Logan’s shoes. As a girl, I’d had people make unsolicited remarks about my body all the time. One boy at my middle school stopped me at the bus stop to tell me that my hair was greasy. An (allegedly) well-intentioned friend from my freshman year of high school once told me that I was pretty…in spite of my “really big nose.” Another girl told me that I looked just like my sister, except fatter. Never, however, had someone shamed me for being skinny. I didn’t really think about skinny shaming at all growing up, because I wanted to be perceived as skinny so badly. After hearing this story, though, I began to see that some people might be fighting the reverse battle.
A few months shy of twenty-one, I think most people would be hard-pressed to wrap their hand around Logan’s bicep today. Gym routine or no gym routine, the body changes a lot between early teen hood and adolescence. All that to say, measuring the diameter of one’s various limbs is not a sustainable metric for tracking one’s gym progress, so I asked Logan what he does to track it nowadays.
“The main thing that I focus on is [increasing the weights] and getting stronger,” said Logan. “Your body is a bad metric to track progress, because it fluctuates a lot depending on the lighting and time of day. Soreness is also a really good sign of progress.”
Similar to Adriana, Logan started his fitness career with the intent of changing how he looked. While it might’ve been nice to say that looks no longer matter to him, the reality is that, in the world of actors, they still do. The key difference between his old and new mentality, however, is that looks are not the primary goal. As a result, his ability to meet his primary goals is a lot more attainable.
Whether you’re an actor or not, this is pretty solid advice in an appearance-focused culture. With the recent rise of mewing and looksmaxxing, it seems that the entire internet is hyperventilating over the possibility of becoming the hottest version of oneself. Perhaps you yourself have entered the new year hoping to achieve a 2024 glow-up. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to look better, but if you hyperfocus on your looks, you may find that this approach to your physical health is strongly discouraging. Whether you’re a guy or girl, your body is going to fluctuate between the hours of the day and the days of the week, but this shouldn’t be taken as a sign of losing progress. Instead, progress should be measured by the development and growth of your physical capabilities, something that can actually be objectively tracked, and definitively attained.
advice from a musician
Music takes discipline. So does physical fitness. Perhaps that is why my musician friend Ava is thriving so well in the fitness world. As with most things having to do with causational case studies, there are too many confounding variables to know for sure. What I do know for certain, however, is that Ava has been a huge inspiration to my fitness journey over the years.
Ava started working out during her junior year of high school, pursuing weight loss goals alongside her coworkers at Panera Bread. She has always loved going to the gym, but that doesn’t mean that it’s always been easy. She is very transparent about the fact that maintaining a consistent gym schedule is oftentimes an uphill battle.
“I recently skipped the gym for three weeks,” Ava admitted.
I had recently skipped the gym for three months, so I felt where she was coming from.
Fortunately for Ava, when demotivation strikes, she has a plethora of remedies.
“Some days are just really bad, and I need to put on a huge t-shirt and just workout,” said Ava. “Other days I need to put on a cute outfit, do my hair, wear makeup, eat a snack beforehand, or work out with a friend.”
As a fellow fashion enthusiast, I can relate strongly to putting on a cute outfit to help me motivate me to go work out. A new pair of leggings with a matching sports bra can do a lot for my gym motivation, even if I’m working out at home, where no one will actually even see me. I asked Ava if she had any specific clothing brands that she recommended for athleisure.
“Okay, so gym clothes can be really expensive,” said Ava, “and I am not going to spend thirty-five dollars on shorts, so I’ll typically look for cheaper options online, but Gym Shark is really nice if you can afford it.”
To get an idea of Gym Shark prices, I googled their online store. Most of their tops and bottoms cost between thirty and fifty dollars, which, while expensive, is half the retail price of most Lululemon products (which only reach the thirty-dollar range on their sales page). That being said, it’s definitely in the lower price quartiles of name brand fitness wear. If you’re looking for something still name brand but even cheaper than Gym Shark, though, I’d recommend looking at Fabletics.
Another obstacle that Ava and I mutually encountered in the gym was that of feeling judged by guys. While we both want to hit weights and work on strength training as well as cardio, it can be intimidating to be strength training at a public facility where most of the bodybuilders and weightlifters are men.
“I can get really intimidated by guys,” Ava informed me, “so it helps to go with a friend. Fortunately, though, most people are friendly. I’ve never really had a bad experience with going up to somebody or having somebody come up to me.”
There were isolated incidents that Ava could point out in which guys had treated her unfairly or made unkind remarks about her gym habits and fitness goals, but those experiences were heavily outweighed by her positive encounters. The reality is, though, that every community has a couple of bad eggs, and that isn’t a reason to avoid that community entirely. It also isn’t a reason to stop pursuing your goals.
Ava’s fitness journey has faced a lot of adversity over the years, both by the callous opinions of others, and her own self-criticism, but she hasn’t allowed that to get her down. She continues to pick herself (and her weights) back up no matter what.
To close our interview, I asked Ava what piece of advice she would give someone who was just starting out their fitness journey, so that they might overcome the same difficulties that she did.
“It’s actually written on my mirror right now: Consistency is worth way more than intensity. Two weeks forms a habit,” she explained. “Take it by halves if you have to.”
Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither were Ava’s triceps, and neither will your ideal physique be. But don’t let that intimidate you. Even if you find yourself taking two steps forward and one step back, and your progress is a lot slower than you hoped it would be, slow and steady wins the race.
Advice from a political science major
If there’s one thing you should know about David, it’s that you probably already know him, because David knows everyone (Okay, maybe not everyone. My journalistic integrity prevents me from making such a momentous claim, but quite a lot of people). David is that friend who will run into five other friends on his way to meet his other, other friends. He is also quite the academic (an “academic weapon” as he likes to call himself) and can oftentimes be spotted forming study groups for his upcoming exams. With all these social and academic responsibilities, one might wonder if he has any time left to dedicate to the gym. The answer is yes, but also no.
David started working out in high school, during which he participated in both JROTC and his school’s P.E. team. He randomly decided to join the team one night while lying in bed, and immediately launched himself into 5AM workout sessions.
“I used to throw up every single morning,” David recalled, “but things got better over time.”
Better, however, does not always mean more rigorous. During his junior and senior year of high school, David’s workout routines became less intensive. He considered getting a gym membership but ending up just buying a few bar bells and calling it a day. For a while, he stuck to barbell exercises and calisthenics.
“It was a good way to destress,” he explained. “I could just become a robot and pick things up, and not really have to think about things.”
Hearing David talk about his fitness journey, I realized that perhaps I was viewing this journey as way more intensive than it had to be. Not everyone who goes to the gym has extreme fitness goals or crippling insecurity. Some of us just want a way to pass the time and take care of our bodies, without overly stressing about “progress” beyond some level of consistency.
By the time I reached my senior year of high school, I had gone through a million different sports and levels of physical training. Basketball, P.E. camp, ice skating, ballet, tennis, horseback riding, weight training, even gymnastics, and I’d dropped them all. The only physical activity I did consistently was weightlifting in my dad’s garage. It wasn’t a formal gym, and I didn’t track any of my exercises. Still, I reached my peak fitness that year. When I came to TCU, I expected my fitness to skyrocket. How could it not, with the amazing rec center only a five-minute walk away? If I had reached my peak physique in my dad’s garage, how much more could I do with unlimited access to high quality equipment and machines?
As it turned out, a lot less than a thought, because I don’t know how to use those machines. When David started working out at TCU during his first college semester, he didn’t know how to use them, either.
“When I first started going to TCU’s gym, I was unfamiliar with the machines, and felt very shy. It can be embarrassing. To get over that, I would look at the stickers on the machines to try to figure out how to use them, and sometimes even asked people nearby how to use. Everyone I talked to was super nice and friendly. Recently,” David recalled, “somebody even asked me how to hit chest. That felt nice.”
When I first told David about the fact that I was writing this article, he told me that he didn’t really think he was the right person to talk to for this kind of interview. He was newer to the gym, he informed me, and not as intensely involved in the fitness scene as some of the other guys on campus. At the time, I didn’t know what he meant. If anyone was a gym bro, surely it was David! What I began to realize, though, is that there is no singular point in one’s fitness journey where they transition from being a newbie to a veteran, no Creatine King who descends from the heavens and knights you as a bona fide member of the fitness community, no official membership card to the Gym Bro world. Some days David asks for advice in the gym, other days, people look up to him. The line between the inspired and inspiring becomes blurred…we are all learning and growing alongside one another.
I started conducting my interviews with the perspective of an outsider looking in. I scouted out individuals who “looked” like they went to the gym, and very quickly realized that going to the gym doesn’t have just one “look.” I thought I needed to talk to people who were already talking about fitness all the time, but I later learned that some of the most physically disciplined individuals are very private about their fitness journey, and usually don’t talk about it out of humility. Eliminating my stereotypes and biases, I had to re-ask myself, what is a gym bro? Well, the rules are a lot simpler than I thought.
Everyone has a body, and everybody needs to take care of their body. So, really, a gym bro is just a bro in the gym, doing exactly that.
Understanding that, the path to becoming a gym bro in 2024 is actually very clear.
Just go to the gym.