September 3, 2025 The “gym bros” didn’t talk to me much. I’ve been going to the same gym four to six times per week for nearly three months. I tend to go around the same time every evening, so I tend to see the same people – mostly men – regularly. I have a few guy friends who love lifting weights and love going to their gyms. They talk about how much they enjoy “the social aspect” of a gym. Despite my best efforts, the gym hasn’t felt very “social” to me. Then, a couple weeks ago, I was learning to do barbell squats. In that exercise, you squat as low as you can while holding a 45-pound bar (with weights added for people stronger and more skilled than me) on your upper back/shoulder area and with your hands. Then you simply stand back up. Repeat. It sounds easier than it is. After doing a couple sets of 10 squats without issue, I got a couple squats into my last set, and I lost my balance. I fell backwards, clanging the bar into another piece of equipment. I’m pretty sure people in the building next door heard what happened. A gym full of “gym bros” saw it. While the fall drove my hairclip into my head, and that didn’t feel great, my pride was hurt far more than my body was, and the fall and noise scared me. Though I tried to stop it, I cried. I was mortified. I didn’t know what to do next. So, I did the only thing I could think of: I told the guy who was helping me that I was fine, picked the bar up off the ground, put it on the squat rack, stepped underneath it, set it on my back, set my feet and squatted. I finished my set. The next week, I kept running into people who saw my squat fail when I was working out. But now they were talking to me. A friend suggested I had earned their respect because I climbed back under the bar that day. Maybe that’s part of it, but I don’t think that’s it. I think my embarrassing squat drop made me relatable. I think most people have embarrassing moments we wish we could erase from history. It also made me think about the fact that God tends to work most often in my life using those things about which I carry the most shame – my sinfulness, my weaknesses and my character defects. Those are the areas I need to surrender to God the most, and those are the areas through which God uses me to help others the most. It’s amazing how God uses vulnerability, our brokenness and maybe a bit of embarrassment to get people talking. |
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