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Why many gymbro & self-improvement spaces are right wing (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 2 weeks ago by Teknevra to c/queer_defense_front
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[-] wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 61 points 2 weeks ago

Simply put - the right has coopted the message of self improvement. Being vegan isn't self improvement, it is improving the world around you. Building giant pecs is self improvement and you hang out with gym bros who help you do that and share their already poisoned political beliefs. You want giant pecs so you can look like you're wearing football pads so you'll ignore the subtle political leanings but over time you let them in.

It's straight from the cult leader handbook. Take a positive message and make it your own so it becomes a recruitment tool.

[-] Photuris@lemmy.ml 46 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

This is true. I’ve seen it in the CrossFit, Jiu-Jitsu, and Olympic weightlifting spaces a lot. And as a straight cis male who likes being strong, it’s a constant upstream swim to counter these sometimes very subtle right-wing narratives.

I do so by simply asking a lot of questions and playing the Socratic method with them. It takes a lot of time, patience, and energy, but it works, more often than not.

Like, there’s nothing wrong with masculinity, self-improvement, stoicism, achievement, strength, hard work, prosperity, or competition. But people sometimes need reminding what all this self-improvement and achievement is for.

I try to remind my friends that one gets strong so that one can protect and bolster the weak, not in order to dominate and exploit them. With masculinity I try to embody “firefighter” values instead of “police” values, if that makes sense.

If you’re in these spaces, please speak up without being preachy or combative out the gate. Be curious and ask genuine questions - people just want to be seen and heard first. Even when they have misguided or even hateful opinions, it does often start as a seed from legitimate complaints (that’s what the right exploits). People are often more open-minded than you think, it’s just that they don’t have as much personal exposure to lefties who value them (mostly working class and petite bourgeoisie white guys) as people with inherent value and default decency. Interact with them in person, without disdain by default, and find things about which you can agree, and you’ll break their Fox News-inspired demonized stereotypes of you.

That’s how you un-cultify a person, one at a time. Like, when they find out I’m very much not a Trumper, but also not a screaming blue hair soy boy satanist furry or whatever, it cooks their noodle.

So often we just turn our noses up, and our backs on, these kinds of people. And they in turn hate and resent us for it when the right swoops in and gives them a sense of belonging and purpose.

The right is really good at this shit. We kind of suck at it. We’re too busy doing purity tests and fighting each other over language.

Anyway, this isn’t my space, I’m just offering my 2¢.

Edit: look, I hate Fascism, but I try to remind myself that many of these working class folks have been tricked and manipulated by very powerful well-heeled interests. I try to reserve my ire for the specific billionaires and politicians who have architected this shit. I often fail at this (as my comment history can attest), and feel very angry at my neighbors for their stupidity. It’s a daily battle.

[-] Pronell@lemmy.world 16 points 2 weeks ago

I have a nephew who is really pushing his own landscaping/plowing services, working his ass off and making bank.

I was riding with him the other day and instead of music he's listening to self-improvement stuff. He's recently sober and taking life seriously.

So I started chatting with him and he said it's Jordan Peterson.

I warned him that while Peterson has a lot of good points, he will get political in weird ways. All I can do is help him open his eyes a little and be aware of what he's consuming.

He's always been right-leaning but when my wife and I break down a topic we disagree about, he really tends to get it.

Pronouns, for example. A couple years back we told him it's just basic respect to refer to someone how they want to be referred to. Whether you agree or not with their how they deal with their underlying issues, it's their issue that they have to live with 24/7.

And we saw a little light go on behind his eyes. It was a nice moment.

[-] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 13 points 2 weeks ago

I do so by simply asking a lot of questions and playing the Socratic method with them. It takes a lot of time, patience, and energy, but it works, more often than not.

Everything I've read supports this. You have to spend a lot of time and effort to reach someone. People change their beliefs because of their peers, not because of facts. You have to get them to see you as trusted, as in-group, before they'll listen.

It sucks, especially when there's mass media promoting toxic messages that people can just go wallow in.

[-] pennomi@lemmy.world 29 points 2 weeks ago

Why? Well Fox News playing nonstop at my gym probably has nothing to do with it.

[-] Carnelian@lemmy.world 17 points 2 weeks ago

I’m not able to view the post right now ): can someone summarize?

For my 2c I’m a trans bodybuilder :3 and I actually have been dragging other trans people to the gym and they love it. It’s like extremely depressing to try and find fitness content that isn’t overtly transphobic tho. Sometimes you’ll be hours deep listening through someone’s videos and they’ll randomly say the most insane thing and it’s like ughhh

[-] A_cook_not_a_chef@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago

It is a two panel comic, the top panel has a person asking: 'Why are so many gymbro and self-improvement spaces right wing?'

The bottom panel has a second person responding: 'The seemingly "apolitical" values that are often reinforced in these spaces (individual success, hustle mindset, being the strongest etc.) align with common neoliberal and conservative talking points and thereby make it easy for people within these spaces to become more susceptible to classist, patriarchal, ableist, racist and other oppressive narratives.'

[-] Carnelian@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago

Tysm! Yeah I’d say I pretty much agree with that,

However I think it would be a bad idea to cede health and fitness as being inherently right wing. I believe they’ve basically “set up shop” there to install a pipeline, like they try to do to everything.

There’s a totally different perspective available for resistance training, one in which we build a supportive community that connects people from different backgrounds and disperses knowledge that can vastly improve people’s lives.

I think we should make it political, in other words

[-] A_cook_not_a_chef@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago

Very welcome!

I agree with you that we should not let them just have these spaces. Also, as you said, we can change the perspective of these spaces as something to empower people.

That's one thing that Crossfit did / does really well. It builds a community around health and fitness. Obviously there is other baggage with Crossfit that I do not like, but it provides a model for how we can come together to support each other in that aspect of health.

[-] peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 12 points 2 weeks ago

I don't get why gymbros need a gym.

I do a shit ton of working out at home. Like pushups, planks, and squats with dumbbells do a fuckton

[-] pishadoot@sh.itjust.works 19 points 2 weeks ago

Ok, so yeah you can do a lot with bodyweight and some kettle/dumbbells.

You can do a lot more at a gym. And almost by definition gymbros are doing more stuff that you can do with just dumbbells and planks.

If your goal is to stay fit and trim you don't really need a gym, you need a good diet and some exercise.

If you want to get jacked and lean and progress to where you are lifting 5x your body weight across the three big lifts (bench press, deadlift, squat) you need more stuff than dumbbells.

Different goals. Cool for you to be satisfied with whatever you have in your living room but people that are really dedicated need a LOT more equipment.

[-] Whirling_Ashandarei@lemmy.world 9 points 2 weeks ago

Gyms also provide a social aspect that you don't get at home. When I was wfh full time, it was one of my only social outlets on a daily basis.

Not to mention if you want to get "big" it's immensely difficult / impossible to do so without lifting a lot of weight. Obviously, you can get in great shape without equipment, but building size is what a lot of gymbros are pursuing.

[-] peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 2 points 2 weeks ago

So, wait, the actual weight influences muscle growth? I thought it was reps and weight.

Might be why I plateaud then. I don't have anything heavier here.

[-] Whirling_Ashandarei@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

It's a variety of things, but yes to increase size and strength you do need to eventually lift heavier things, with the best method of doing so considered to be progressive overload. There are much better resources than me but to give some basics: while bodybuilding is not a direct translation to strength (see strongman competitions and their body types), it absolutely does correlate and bodybuilders are actually quite strong, their goals are just usually way different than strongmen. Anecdotally, I have done both, and prefer strength training mentally, but my body prefers bodybuilding as I tended to get a lot of minor injuries with strength training because it is a little more risky (assuming proper form across both disciplines).

Basically, you need to continue "overloading" what your body can lift over time, and you do this by increasing reps, sets, and weights. You don't need a ton of weight to do this for your upper body, but legs and back you'll eventually want some plates and whatnot. You can also overload in different ways, higher reps and more sets will help increase both your endurance and strength, though moreso the former. Over time, you will be able to add weight, add reps, add sets, and you will absolutely gain in size and strength.

The other key items are hitting the weights frequently and diet. If you want to get bigger you need to eat a surplus of calories and gain weight, "bulking." You can do this either cleanly (eating healthy) or do a dirty bulk (obviously, not clean eating), and you'll gain either way, though typically you'll add more fat in a dirty bulk. Then, you can then lose some of the weight later while "cutting," the most miserable time for a bodybuilder, where you try to maintain your prior workout intensity, weight, etc, but now operating at a calorie deficit in order to keep the muscle while losing the fat.

Strength programs will typically call for fewer sets/reps and to increase the weight as fast as you safely can while bodybuilding is best pursued with higher reps, though I believe it usually caps at sets of 12 or so reps before you start adding weight for optimal size increases. In my experience, this makes bodybuilding more time consuming as well, but you can recover faster.

[-] peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

The diet part is challenging.

Luckily I hit 195 lbs 3 months ago, and while I haven't lost anymore weight (well, that's not true, I'm hovering between 190 and 193), my waistline has gotten smaller and I'm in a shirt size smaller. So I'm clearly doing something right. (Down from 290lbs at peak).

Protein intake is 70-80 grams/day. I tend to eat more fats than carbs, but I apparently need to be careful about this as sometimes I only got like a third of what I needed minimum.

The lower body weights make sense. Squats with 50lbs of added weight hasn't actually changed how many I can do, almost exclusively because of blood pressure related issues (it's very easy for me to grey out/pass out). Knowing that, I'll see if I can find a gym that's easier to get to at least for that.

I'm glad the upper body isnt too dependant on equipment. When I was in school, the most pushups I could do was 10 on a good day and that was mostly because I weighed 120lbs at 6'. After creating a pushup routine, I'm up to a set of 15, and a set of 10 (and I can definitely see making it to two sets of 15 in a couple of weeks). You can practically feel your body expand with those lol.

[-] Whirling_Ashandarei@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

That is amazing progress! Always try to remember it's a journey, not a destination, and you will have ups and downs along the way. For instance, I'm just getting back to serious gym pursuits because in the last year I got a new job with a commute that sucks (everything else is good with it tho) and lost my father, so I stumbled pretty hard on my journey while learning to cope with some major life changes. It can get depressing when you know you can do better but aren't for whatever reason, and you just have to try and remember that you will get there again if you keep at it. Giving up is easy, getting up is a hell of a lot harder.

Your protein intake seems very low to me, I believe the ideal protein intake is about a gram per pound of your goal weight. So, you likely need to at least double your current intake to allow your body to build more muscle.

If you have a blood pressure issue, squats are probably going to be risky, esp the more weight you add as your effort increases. Def talk to your doctor about what you can/should do, and maybe try to mix in other exercises. Weighted lunges are wonderful for you.

There's a 100 push up program you can follow if you want to keep improving there, it was a fun challenge that I did once upon a time, now as long as I can consistently do 30 or so I don't feel like like I've lost it entirely lol. But, make sure you balance it with back work or it can cause issues in your shoulders and back (big/strong pecs pull your back forward and round your posture if you don't have big delts to counter em). Back workouts are probably the hardest to do without some kind of extra equipment like a pull up bar at minimum. Kettle bells can go a long way in making up for a lack of other equipment if you don't have an alternative, a 10 lb and 30 lb bell were the first pieces of equipment I ever bought.

[-] peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Doc told me 1g per kilogram. He raised an eyebrow when I asked how I could possibly get 1g per pound and he said it would be terrible for people's kidneys if they had to consume that much.

[-] Whirling_Ashandarei@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

Been a while since I've looked into it, but looks like now it might be a bit less, at .8/lb: https://mennohenselmans.com/the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein-intake-for-bodybuilders/

It does seem to indicate you can likely get away with less than that, but I think a gram per kilo would be a bit under optimal.

Also if you don't already have kidney issues there's not really anything to worry about with consuming extra protein, other than that it gets expensive. Same myth that people used to discuss with creatine consumption.

[-] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 week ago

the simplest way to think about it is that your body is evolved to survive, which means it tries to use as few resources as it can get away with and stockpile the rest as fat to be burned if you run out of food.

Exercise is just forcing your body to realize it has to spend resources on muscles and stuff, but it'll still do the minimum it can get away with, so you gotta do exactly the things you want the body to build for.

If you just do 50 reps with 10kg you'll be able to do 50 reps with 10kg, but you probably won't be able to do half as many reps with 2x the weight, and you won't necessarily be able to do 2x the reps with half the weight.

[-] peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 1 points 1 week ago

That makes sense. It's significantly easier to do dumbbell presses after I've been hitting my simply amazing 15 pushups (hey, cut me some slack, they're hard).

The closest gym is a little far away unfortunately and I certainly won't have the motivation to go.

[-] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 week ago

it's arguably more useful to train with every day objects anyway, since that's what you're gonna use your strength for normally.

[-] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 weeks ago

I don't, but I've heard that people who want to push their limits get a spotter so they can do so safely. Another person who can lift that weight at least once would be easy to find at a gym.

[-] peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 4 points 2 weeks ago

Oh I didn't even think about needing a spotter that's a good point.

[-] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 3 points 2 weeks ago

I use dumbbells and bodyweight stuff at home too and am happy with my progress but it would certainly be nice to have access to machines. I've hit a plateau on my lifts because theres only so much weight I can do with dumbbells before my grip and arm strength starts limiting me. That wouldn't be as much of an issue with the machines/barbell/squat rack at the gym. Also I could get someone to spot me.

[-] Sl00k@programming.dev 2 points 2 weeks ago

I can't squat 300 lbs without a full squat rack and weight set

[-] peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 2 points 2 weeks ago

I

Have no frame of reference what that means

[-] Horsey@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago

As someone who strongly believes the gym and exercise should be apolitical, it’s kinda gross when you see Fox News playing on the TV. That said, you really shouldn’t be in the gym longer than you need to be, and it’s not supposed to be a hangout spot; equipment is finite and has to be shared. Go hang out in a park or bar or arcade or whatever.

[-] state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 2 weeks ago

There's a personal trainer at my gym who I regularly hear chatting with his clients. It's the dumbest neo-lib shit all the time. One of his clients is a landlord and they always talk about how hard she has it. Really difficult not to vomit in their faces.

[-] Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 weeks ago

That definitely calls for strategic protein shake crop dusting.

[-] MehBlah@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago

Vanity is linked to narcissism. All narcissist are assholes.

[-] paraphrand@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago

It’s too bad that many link places to exercise with vanity.

[-] MehBlah@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

The link is to the majority of people who exercise because they are vain. Not the place.

[-] paraphrand@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago

And my point is they shouldn’t be the majority.

[-] MehBlah@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

But given the situation they always will be.

[-] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago

It’s an issue of motivation. Vanity is a powerful motivator. People who want to work out for health and wellbeing need to find a different way to motivate themselves. A health scare can sometimes help with that (I’ve witnessed it) but it doesn’t always last (also witnessed that).

[-] Sunsofold@lemmings.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

I don't know that I'd put it as a directional causal relationship. It's just as believable that valuing abnormal strength and belief in a 'might makes right' judgement leads one to go to the gym and bring those ideas with you, while an opposing view would likely take you other places than a gym.

[-] apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago

There are F3 signs and bumper stickers everywhere here. They give me this vibe, whether or not they are right wing or inadvertently reproduce right wing ideology.

this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
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