I Can Be Crying All the Way to the Gym. Then the Headphones Go In — and It’s Game Time.

I think most people who go to the gym go for a reason. Some people want to look better, some want more confidence, some want to be part of the crowd and some are trying to reinvent themselves. Then I think there's a smaller group of people who go because the gym is peace.

I'm probably a mixture of all of them.

I have health conditions that mean training frequently has become an important part of my life. My mind can become extremely overwhelmed. Emotional turmoil can turn into overthinking, intrusive thoughts and thinking that just feels completely disorganised. For me, the gym has become a point of tranquillity in the middle of that.

I wish I could explain exactly why it does that to me. I can't. It just does. There's one particular day that probably explains what I mean better than I ever could.

Boy Meets Girl

It's basically the classic story. Boy meets girl. Girl is gorgeous. Girl seems perfect. Boy falls completely in love. Then girl realises boy can be a bit much, girl starts pulling away and boy spirals.

I was the boy.

For some reason, struggling relationships can affect me incredibly intensely. When everything is good, everything is good, but when I feel that distance appearing my mind can go into complete overdrive.

There was one day when I was already really low. I wasn't thinking about having an amazing workout, getting a pump or hitting a PB. I was genuinely just trying to get through the day, and I knew I needed to get to the gym.

Then life did what life does. An argument happened.

By the time I was driving to the gym, I was crying. And I don't mean one cinematic tear rolling gracefully down my cheek while some sad song plays in the background. I mean properly crying. Bawling, wailing out loud, the sort of crying where I genuinely thought I might have to pull the car over because I couldn't compose myself enough to keep driving.

Eventually, I made it into the car park of my local gym and sat there for a moment. Then came the slightly ridiculous transition from having an emotional meltdown in a car to preparing to lift heavy things.

Gym bag ready, pre-workout taken, headphones in and through the doors.

A few minutes earlier I'm crying my eyes out. Now I'm taking pre-workout like we're about to go to war.

Boom. Game Time.

Walking into the gym has always felt different to me than being outside it. It's difficult to explain to somebody who doesn't experience it in the same way.

I take my pre-workout, headphones go in and usually some kind of trance music gets turned up far louder than it probably needs to be. Then boom. Game time.

There's a bar in front of me with weight on it and suddenly life becomes incredibly simple. Move the weight, rest, another set, more weight, another set, keep going.

The problems haven't disappeared. I can still think about them between sets and I'm not pretending that putting headphones on somehow fixes everything happening in my life. But once I'm actually underneath that weight, something changes. I have to be there.

I'm thinking about my grip, my breathing, the movement and the next rep. Then another rep and another. For that little period of time, everything else seems to evaporate.

The Loudest Place Is Somehow the Quietest

This is the part I struggle to explain because the gym isn't actually peaceful. There's music playing, weights are hitting the floor and people are talking. I'm sweating, throwing weights around and blasting trance music directly into my ears while putting my body through something physically exhausting.

That doesn't exactly sound like tranquillity, but somehow it is.

Not quiet around me. Quiet in my head.

I wish I had some profound explanation for why that happens, but I don't. It's just my point of tranquillity.

Outside those doors there can be relationships, work, responsibilities, uncertainty, conversations and a hundred different things my brain wants to analyse at once. Inside the gym, there's a weight in front of me and my job is to move it. That's it.

Maybe that's part of the reason I've managed to remain so consistent with training. Maybe turmoil in other areas of my life has pushed me harder, maybe I've sometimes used the gym as an escape, or maybe it's simply because through periods of my life where other things haven't felt particularly consistent, the gym always has.

The bar doesn't care what sort of day I've had. The weight doesn't know I've just been crying in a car park. It doesn't know whether my relationship is going brilliantly or falling apart. It weighs exactly the same either way, and I know what I'm supposed to do with it.

Then I Walk Back Out

Eventually the workout ends, and this is another feeling that's difficult to explain.

I'm tired. Sometimes I'm absolutely battered. There's this slightly baggy, dazed, almost trance-like feeling after a really hard session. My body is exhausted and my mind doesn't seem to have the energy to continue running at 100 miles per hour.

And I'm calm.

Whatever happened before I walked into the gym hasn't magically changed. The argument still happened, the difficult conversation might still need to happen and life is still waiting outside those doors. But I'm different from the person who walked in.

The bloke who arrived might have been sitting in his car crying his eyes out. The bloke leaving is tired, headphones probably still on, gym bag over his shoulder and ready to deal with the rest of his day.

That's why, when I say the gym can be therapeutic for me, I don't mean that I think lifting weights cures mental-health conditions. It doesn't, and exercise isn't a replacement for professional help when somebody needs it.

What I mean is much simpler: the gym doesn't solve my problems for me. It gets me into a state where I feel capable of dealing with them.

More Than Muscle

I've spent years chasing strength, muscle, numbers and changes in the mirror. Those things matter to me and I'd be lying if I pretended they didn't. But somewhere along the way the gym became something else as well.

It became routine when other things weren't consistent, structure when my thoughts weren't structured and occasionally peace when my head was anything but peaceful.

Maybe that's why two people can walk through exactly the same gym doors and experience completely different places. One person sees dumbbells, benches and machines. Someone else sees somewhere to build their confidence. Someone else sees their social life. Someone else sees an hour away from work and responsibilities.

And occasionally somebody walks through those doors after crying all the way there. The headphones go in, the music goes up and there's a weight waiting.

Boom. Game time.

For the next hour, the world goes quiet. Eventually you put the weight back down, pick up your gym bag and walk through those doors into exactly the same world you temporarily left behind.

Your problems haven't disappeared.

But you're calm again.

And sometimes that's all you needed.