Fitness Culture in India

From the past year and a half I have been greatly influenced by the Gymnastic culture but
basically that of foreign because in India if you join a gym you are definitely going to mocked by
people around you. The general milieu of India believes that all the people who go the gym are
just putting steroids in their bodies and growing it. They just don’t believe that people can go to
the gym and exercise naturally without taking any supplements. They don’t understand that a
whey protein is made up of milk and is 100% natural. It does not have any steroids or other
supplements in it. Once my brother who also regularly goes to the gym had to get an ultra sound
and the doctor who did the ultra sound was like a 100 kgs and he told my brother’s mother that
all these protein had steroids in them. How can such an unhealthy man can comment on who is?

My cousin also used to believe that such supplements were very harmful and should not be taken
according to the recommended quantity but when she stated taking it she felt the difference in the
energy she had and how better it made her body. Another thing that Indians generally believe is
that if you start working out early in age you will stop growing. However this is not true. How
can one associate muscle growth with the increase of bones. It actually does help in height
growth because it pushes the body out what is normal and easy. Once I met a relative of mine
who was shocked that I wanted to go the Gym at 7 in the evening. His actual sentence was “you
don’t have to be a bodyguard. Get up early and do yoga.” Because he was an elderly I didn’t
think it was fruitful in getting into a debate with him. But I was screaming within. “If yoga
would have helped you then you probably wouldn’t be so fat.” I don’t disrespect yoga and it
definitely does have its benefits but just because I’m going to the gym does not mean that I want
to be a bodyguard. That is the unpopularity that Gyms have in India. Though there is a
significant rise in the number of people looking after their health there is still a huge population
who still believes that “ you’ve come to live your life once, life it with fun” and then they just
eat anything and lay around without moving a fiber of their muscle. What they don’t realize is
that all this will cut their life short to a great extent. Taking into consideration what people say
about small kids that “let them eat whatever they want. Let them get fat. They will get into shape
when the right time comes.” Let me tell you either the right time does not comes or if it does it
takes a lot of effort to get back into the normal routine and most of the people give up during this
process. Weight gain not only makes you lazy it also makes you lose your confident and thus
leading to many other problems. Now I am not saying that just by joining the gym your every
problem will get solved or by taking care of your body will automatically make you confident,
but it will help you with a lot of things. There is no denying that fitness has a lot of benefits. That
has been scientifically proven. It makes you happy. It releases stress. It helps you feel better from
within. It makes you stronger both mentally and physically. Do you think it is easy for a person
to go outside of his/her comfort zone and put stress on muscles? To repeat the same exercise
everyday? No one needs will and discipline to do so. It teaches you patience and hard work.

Now it would not be okay to say that fitness industry is free from any cons or bad influences.
There are definitely people who take such steroids which have very harmful effects on the body
and may even cause death. If you go to more rural areas the gyms there are full of people taking
and selling such steroids and therefore making the perception in the mind of people that
everything taken by a person going to the gym is steroids. One thing that I have noticed is that
area of gym matters the most. Like in Gomti Nagar I went to ‘iron core fit’ probably the best
gym of lucknow. I used to wonder why I am paying such high fees when there are cheaper
options available. Then when I joined the Golds Gym of Ashiyana, everything became clear.
Here was a vast difference in how seriously people took their jobs. How much is the gym
concerned about its patrons and how are the people progressing.