Modern Fitness Culture and the Admirable Ferocity of the "Gym Girl"

U Aware?

A quick pit stop back home this week meant a couple trips back to arguably my favorite place on the Island: Bev Francis Powerhouse Gym in Syosset.

Bev’s is the fitness enthusiast’s nirvana.

There are weights of every conceivable poundage or kilogram, machines that can hit every part of your body from every angle biomechanically possible.

Couple this with the raw energy and the air of “productive lawlessness” that Bev’s brings, and it’s almost impossible to have a poor session in there.

Thursday night brought about a grueling workout with my friend Jay, a longtime Bev’s-devotee who is similar in height to me but not in stature (he’s a hulking 240+ and I am very much not).

That being said, a this session exactly what I needed, and as I caught my breath in between rest-pause sets of Hammer Rows or supersetting bicep movements on the myriad of contraptions that gym has to offer, I gained inspiration for what we’re going to discuss today.

When the Gym was just…the Gym.

Once upon a time not so long ago, the gym was not a “thing”.

It was a place for off-season high school athletes or frat bros home for the summer, where you’d run into the one super in-shape friend’s dad you knew, or the lady from your neighborhood who was using her daily two hours on the treadmill as an escape from whatever the situation was at home.

The last half decade has seen this shift dramatically.

“Gymfluencer” is a legit term in the cultural lexicon.

Teenage boys in TikTok comments casually use steroid parlance that was once reserved for hush hush conversations at Gold’s Gym in Venice.

Tripods and phone holders affixed to cable towers are commonplace.

Late 2000’s/early 2010’s bros wanted “jacked gunz!1!”, and now the new crop is worried about their deltoid/tricep striations before they can even legally operate a motor vehicle.

It’s been a physical fitness cultural quantum leap.

As someone who started taking his physical fitness seriously at a relatively early age, it’s pretty crazy to see how far it’s come and the staying power that gym culture seems to have.

(Fun fact I’m not afraid to admit: I’m an old school Bodybuilding.com Forums poaster…I remember the "how many days are in a week" fiasco, and I’ve been active on 4chan’s /fit/ back when…real gritty old days)

Influencer-adjacent gyms are also popping up left and right, such as Bradley Martyn’s Zoo Culture or Christian Guzman’s Texas compound Alphaland.

Might be a good spot for the first Substack field trip.

The influencer gyms are flourishing, and fitness apparel brands are right alongside them.

English entrepreneur Ben Francis was able to push GymShark (now a household brand name in the fitness world) to over a billion dollar valuation, and has big plans for bringing his brand across the pond.

It’s a hypertrophic gold rush, with damn near every millisecond recorded, documented, and posted along the way.

Let’s look at it a little closer.

Chaotic Good

The modern fitness landscape is mostly a good thing.

After all, how can we be upset that a large swath of the youngest set of our population has become fixated upon improving their physical health?

Statistically, young people are drinking the least they ever have and working out more than every before. This is a net societal positive.

As with any other cultural shift, of course there are downsides.

We have the Sam Sulek’s of the world (I actually happen to really like Sam Sulek) glorifying PED use, albeit indirectly.

The crossover between social media and the gym craze has put more pressure on body image for young people than ever before, and the offshoots to this can’t be ignored.

There’s the rise of “blackpill” content on TikTok, a murky underworld that basically says your romantic and life success is pre-determined entirely on your genetic makeup and there’s nothing you can do. (For the purpose of levity -with an added dash of vulnerability- whoever ascribes to this BS or knows someone who does: I’m a well over 6’ white guy with a jawline and guess what- I have my share of bad days, too).

The ubiquity of filming and recording bothers quite a few unwilling background participants and troubles gym owners alike.

(Go visit Joey Swoll on TikTok, he’s done a good job of policing the gym floors across America thus far)

The wealth of information available online has simultaneously made the trek safer and easier for new gym-goers, while at the same time making the seedy underworld of PED’s and toxic mindsets far too accessible.

The fitness pendulum swings faster and higher to both ends, exaggerating the pros and cons.

In short- we’re healthier, fitter, and sexier than ever before.

We’re also self-absorbed at previously unseen levels.

Only time will tell where that lands us.

The Extinction of the Cardio Bunny

We’ve talked about the effect of the fitness takeover on young men, but what really stuck out to me at the gym this past Thursday was something that I’ve been clocking for awhile now: the girls are working extremely hard.

Ten years ago, you’d read a T-Nation article that, amidst its wealth of scientifically-perfect knowledge, would crack a joke about looking good for the cardio bunnies.

While gym culture may be ascending to new heights, gym stereotypes (especially as it applies to gender) are age-old.

In short, the men were in the mirror doing their umpteenth set of curls, while the girls yapped side-by-side on the treadmills, iced coffees nestled into the cupholders.

If the former has stayed steady, the latter has transformed immensely.

You take one look at the modern gym girls- leg pressing with wheels for days on the rack, doing Romanian deadlifts and Bulgarian split squats- and it feels as if “cardio bunnies” should be rescheduled as a slur.

It’s not uncommon for the leg section of the gym (where the real blood, sweat, and tears action goes down) to skew 65/70% female on some nights.

This is a fun one to dig deeper into.

This isn’t Pickleball.

It’s easy (and lazy) to ascribe the rise of the gym girl grind to trends and the glorification of certain body parts on social media.

Pickleball is all the rage these days, and most of us remember it as the “it’s raining outside today” activity we did in gym class.

Fun? Sure.

Physically taxing? Hardly.

You don’t show up to a loud, packed gym and start ripping 185 lb. RDL’s because it’s “cool”.

There’s something primal going on, a driving force.

Raw female power showing up in the form of posterior chain development and heavy compound lifts. I’m consistently blown away by the work being done by the girls with their hoods up and Airpods in.

Before you go thinking this is a love letter- my personal preferences have always leaned more “matcha and Pilates” than “protein shakes and front squats”.

It’s simply human-to-human admiration of effort in this context.

However, I can’t help but think…is there something deeper at play?

Responding to the World with Strength

Nobody really knows what a person’s motivation for getting themselves into fantastic physical condition is, and frankly nor should they.

I’ve been pretty open about the fact that the gym is a mental health outlet more than anything else, to the point where I’ll even respond to the classic “what are you hitting today, bro?” with “my brain”.

That being said, I can’t help but cross the line for a moment and wonder if there’s a cohesive motivation en masse to the legion of strong women with real-world physical power.

There is of course the classic “wanting to look the best you can”, and not only is goblet squatting and hamstring curling far safer and more effective than BBL procedures or semaglutide injections, it’s also far more noble.

Perhaps that could be the bulk of it, but I don’t think so. This would have pre-dated it’s eminence by a decade or so more.

Personally, I think it’s more of a societal reaction than anything else.

One scroll of the fyp or the explore page would show you street interviews of women lamenting the modern dating landscape, ascribing their single status to a dearth of men with ambition or guts.

We have multiple generations of men at home pew-pewing on Xbox and ripping the “Penjamin” instead of out dating and socializing.

“The bar is on the floor” (no pun intended with the whole lifting thing) is an oft-heard refrain from America’s young women.

Looking at the broader landscape, at the time of writing, rockets are pinging back and forth between Tehran and Tel Aviv, Russia and Ukraine is still very much a thing, WWIII trends on X.

We’re feeling unsafe as a collective more than ever before.

Perhaps American women are done searching for the strong person in their life and becoming that person instead.

To the feminist-leaning reader who might be infuriated with this paragraph and hit me with “She’s not doing it for you, she’s doing it for herself!”, I would counter with: that’s exactly my point.

It’s unique, it’s new, it’s a touch heartbreaking, but most importantly, it’s wholly inspiring.

The Cool Down

That was a fun topic to delve into, and one that will continue to shift, change, and mutate as time goes on.

If there’s anything to glean from the modern era of TikTok’s of tricep pushdowns and Instagram pre-workout ads, it’s the fact that a large part of our population is showing up to the iron temple on the daily, striving to be the best they can be.

That’s American at it’s core.

As for motivation? Well, that’s unique, as I said above.

If you need it?

Sure, there’s mashups and edits of Golden Era bodybuilders all over social media.

There’s hype videos, instructional YouTube shorts, posters of Ronnie Coleman or Jay Cutler peering down at you as you eke out the last reps of a grueling set.

Still, perhaps the greatest inspiration you’ll find in the modern fitness jungle is in the dusty corner of the gym, adorned in a hoodie and mauve grey Align pants, hip-thrusting 225 lbs and wanting nothing to do with you.

Now that’s beautiful.

Talk again soon.

<3

-John Abbate

17.6.2025