Google returns 108 million results on the term ‘gym bro’, on Instagram there are 1.2 million publications with this tag and on TikTok the expression accumulates almost 191 million views. Gym bros, brothers or gym buddies are not a new concept, but now they are triumphing on the networks: they recommend strength exercises, they explain how to get muscles in the arms or abs – the queen chocolate bar of the gym – (without a scientific basis no guarantee of success) and pose in front of the camera to show their defined and fat-free body.
Companions of fatigue in fitness: a help to motivate yourself or a danger to your health?; A way like any other to maintain physical fitness or a showcase of hegemonic masculinity and misunderstood virility?
Regarding the first question, Néstor Serra Verdaguer is clear. He has a degree in Physical Education, a trainer and coach trainer in the world of fitness, health and performance and author of the book 3×10 Method. Although training with someone can help with motivation, “the problem is when this partner, who is not a professional, is dedicated to prescribing training according to criteria that are often erroneous. In a professional training program there is a quality to the movement, a balance, a progression. Here lies one of the dangers of the gym bros that we find in gyms,” he tells La Vanguardia.
Although there are gym sisters or gym sis, the female concept is not as widespread as the male one. The reason? It seems that more men than women go to the gym to exercise their muscles on their own, to define their body and achieve great volume. “Everyone needs to train strength, but these gym bros are associated with bodybuilding and exaggerated muscle mass, the typical image of the fitness center customer. Very often, women, when you propose strength training, emphasize that they do not want “lumps”, exaggerated bodybuilder muscles,” explains the trainer, owner of the LUDUS center in Barcelona and member of the College of Physical Activity and Fitness Professionals. of Sports of Catalonia. They, who are increasingly clear about the benefits of working strength well in terms of health, prefer to go train with a specific program.
Strength training is necessary and a key aspect to aging well, but muscle training focused on hypertrophy with a mere aesthetic objective has its dangers. “Very large volumes are sought, and to achieve them you have to take substances that can be doping, but are not recommended,” says Serra. Growth hormone – for example – is not healthy when the body does not need it. There are other examples. “Anabolics have side effects such as the growth of the jaw or the reduction of the testicles, there are studies on their possible effect on the loss of ejaculation capacity, more hair also grows on the back…”, comments this physical performance specialist.
In addition, there are many false myths spread by non-professional ‘gym bros’ in gyms. One of them is that abandoning continued training is exposing yourself to the muscle turning into fat. Nothing supports this theory. “They are two different fabrics, that is not possible, it would be like turning iron into gold. Now, people who have a lot of muscle mass, it is because they eat a lot of calories, and if they stop training and continue eating the same amount – because, for example, their stomach is dilated -, they stop burning them, their muscle mass decreases, and “Calories will actually accumulate as fat,” says the coach.
In addition to training in an unhealthy way, the obsession with muscles can bring with it the need to show manliness. “One of the mandates of masculinity is not to show weakness, to be brave, to show strength. That has to do with the muscles, the manifestation of that force. Now there is a lot of self-demand among men to gain muscle and have a strong person’s aesthetics,” says Isaac Navarro, gender equality technician for the Plural prevention and awareness program, the Masculinities Center of Barcelona City Council. “The male beauty canon has always been associated with a person with defined muscles. In women’s magazines there are no protagonists with muscles, while in men’s magazines, men often have significant volume,” adds Serra.
Begonya Enguix, professor of Anthropology at the UOC and expert in the body, gender and masculinities, believes that “you only have to look at the history of art to see that hegemonic masculinity, the canons of how a man should be in our society, are deeply linked to the body and the muscles.” Masculinity in our context is associated with strength. “It is a relationship that has a cultural genealogy that can be traced back to at least classical Greece, where the image of man as a warrior and hero also intervenes, always imagined with a strong and muscular body. The association rebounded at the end of the 19th century, when the Olympic Games of the Contemporary Age were held. There is a spectacularization of the male body, promoting the idea of ??healthy men in healthy corps,” adds the anthropologist.
If muscles are synonymous with virility, why in certain homosexual circles are they also a way of expressing another masculinity? “Virile male homosexuality is also claimed from the 70s, showing strong bodies. In the 80s, with the AIDS epidemic, the muscular body was not only seen as virile, but also as a healthy body,” explains Enguix.
For Navarro, not only the physique is a way to show virility, but also the very fact of training very intensely. “You don’t have to give up, it’s “I can’t be less than my teammates, I have to show more, I have to have more muscle.” It is the male camaraderie in the gym of working muscle to feel more like a man.”
According to Enguix, this camaraderie is activated by carrying out, with other men, activities considered masculine, such as watching a soccer game or going to the gym to exercise muscle. “Bodybuilding exercises, due to this cultural association between masculinity and muscle, are marked by gender from their origin, gendered practices in a sense – masculinized – regardless of who performs them. Muscular women do not break that association, but rather make it more complex, as shown by the stigma that has historically fallen on women who practice weightlifting, who have been labeled as “masculine”,” reflects Enguix.
There is a social construct that says that a muscular man is more desirable. We have been learning it through cinema and television references, for example. As Navarro points out, “the one who got the woman was the most attractive and strongest.” The male body stereotype (muscular, slender, strong, virile) and the desire of adolescents and young people to embody it “is closely connected to the fear of appearing physically inadequate. It is considered that those who fit the body ideal obtain social and cultural benefits that are denied to those who distance themselves from it,” writes Nina Navajas-Pertegás, researcher in equality policies, in the publication “And God created the Spornosexual: body image , youth and masculinity at the beginning of the 21st century.”
The term spornosexual – which refers to people with an appearance influenced by sports and pornography stars – appeared in 2014, inspired by the aesthetics of Cristiano Ronaldo. Its introducer was the English journalist and writer Mark Simpson, also the inventor of the metrosexual word. “Spornosexuals work their muscles until they reach socially valued standards as an index of masculinity and in relation to cultural stereotypes of masculinity, which associate this position with strength, aggressiveness and bravery, among others,” says Enguix.
On the next rung of neologisms with gendered meaning, gym bro is also a relatively new term. “It is a cocktail that brings together the importance of the body in social relationships, ageism (the glorification of strength and youth), stereotypes about masculinity (strength, aggressiveness, bravery, determination) and male bodies, the relevance of Gender as a system that structures social relations and social value. Furthermore, it adds a key element of masculinities: the male camaraderie that we mentioned,” explains the specialist in body and masculinities.
Various sources and studies identify muscularity or physical superiority with conservative ideology, the extreme right, or anti-feminism. Recent work from the University of Arkansas has looked at the connection between physical attributes and political perceptions. The results show that physically strong and muscular men are perceived as more conservative, which suggests that our society associates physical strength with specific ideologies.
According to another research from Brunel University of London, published in 2017 in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, physically stronger men are less in favor of social and economic equality than weaker ones. Psychologist and researcher Michael Price, leader of the study, and his colleagues evaluated 171 men between 18 and 40 years old. “The results suggest that physically stronger and more attractive men are more likely to oppose wealth redistribution. A key question for future research could be whether certain personality traits, such as narcissism or the drive for dominance, could be related to both muscular effort and inequality,” Price pointed out.
For masculinity specialist Isaac Navarro, “aesthetics is just another language. For political figures (like Santiago Abascal) or YouTubers (like Jordi Wild, with an anti-left discourse), aesthetics is a way of addressing people, it is linked to the discourse, to the ideology, to what they want to project. , he concludes.
