For many people, working out is a distinctly private pleasure. The way we run, the faces we make, the amount we sweat and the places we sweat from, the creaks and groans our bodies emit during a squat — these are our own little secrets. The last thing we want is to be filmed climbing up imaginary stairs, lifting, pulling, and pushing heavy things. But if you ever want to see what it’s like to be unburdened by these inhibitions, all you need to do is go to any gym and find a person hitting record.
They’re setting up their tripods near StairMasters. They’re propping phones up on dumbbells. They’ve turned the squat rack into a studio. From Planet Fitnesses and Blinks to Equinoxes and Life Times, so very many people are filming themselves working out. At the same time, some of these Lycra-clad Narcissuses are alienating their fellow gym-goers, who are just trying to heft something heavy in peace. The clashing tension between the two raises some questions.
Why are all these people filming their public workouts? Are there really that many fitness influencers? Is this making anyone stronger or faster? Where are all these videos going? Perhaps, most importantly, do gym filmers know how irritating they can be? Who’s going to tell them?
Is that guy taking shirtless selfies on the bench press an influencer? Does he want to be?
Normal people didn’t just start filming themselves at gyms overnight; many spent the past decade watching professionals do it first.
“Filming really took off around 2015–’17, when fitness influencers started pushing themselves and their personal brands hard on platforms like Instagram and YouTube,” says James McMillian, the director of innovation at Tone House, a luxury strength training and training facility in New York City.
During that era, fitness classes at boutique studios like Tone House (think: SoulCycle, Barry’s, Solidcore) became pop culture obsessions. Taking a class and posting about it had social cache; it was a certain type of status symbol. Gyms and the people working at them leaned into the hype: From the lighting to the mirrors, group fitness studios and luxury gyms are camera-ready. Trainers teaching those classes became mini celebrities themselves and would post their workouts and social lives to promote their businesses and personal brands.
To no one’s surprise, it turns out that a lot of people liked watching attractive, fit people sweaty and shirtless or in tight athletic gear. Instagram’s algorithm still favors this type of content.
It may seem counterintuitive, but the 2020 pandemic lockdowns actually accelerated filming, especially for regular fitness buffs. McMillian says that when in-person classes were put on pause, influencers and non-influencers alike started posting their workouts — outdoors, at home, at private gyms — more. For many, exercise was more than a health necessity or a hobby; it was a lifeline to feeling normal again. A heart-pumping, self-improving way to forget that we were in the middle of a pandemic; if you couldn’t share that with others in person, you at least could online.
When gyms and workout classes opened again, people’s social media habits carried over.
“Everyone became a content creator and the gym became their stage,” McMillian says.
Wait, but really, why do people film at the gym?
Being comfortable filming at the gym — combined with what Instagram’s algorithm surfaces — may help explain the abundant supply of videos featuring people squatting at racks, leg-lifting on StairMasters, lunging by the free weights, and bench-pressing. The world is full of many things and videos of people doing the same six or so workouts are some of them.
This proliferation of exercise snippets has become so popular and so annoying that the backlash against gym filmers — i.e., people saying they’re selfishly hogging the equipment or being inconsiderate to their fellow gym-goers — has become its own social media subgenre that generates millions of views.
“It’s vanity. It’s the end result of a culture obsessed with social media and watching videos of other people,” says Bobby McMullen, a trainer and founder of Adonis, an app that connects personal trainers to potential clients and vice versa.
While McMullen concedes that some gym-goers who film are indeed fitness influencers, he says that’s a path that’s not as popular or as lucrative as it was before the pandemic. He asserts there’s a far greater number of gym filmers posting for the sheer dopamine rush — and the compliments.
McMullen doesn’t just know the power of praise because he spends so much time at the gym or because he’s a fitness professional. He knows this because he’s an unapologetic, apex-level thirst-trapper himself. He has over 18,000 followers on Instagram, and his losing battle with shirtlessness is a recurring feature of his online persona.
”They’re doing it for the love of the game and their own social media,” McMullen says.
Before social media, going through a fitness journey didn’t pay off until you showed up to a party or dinner out and receive that elusive “Hey, you look great!” Now, McMullen explains, you can get that same reaction within seconds.
“It’s thirst-trapping. It’s showing off. It’s hoping that someone who watches their story sees it,” says McMullen.
That’s not quite the story for everyone who films though: “Let me tell you. You do not want to know what your face looks like when you squat really hard,” says Morgan Hah, who works in accounting and is competitive powerlifter.
Hah works out at a members-only powerlifting gym, where she and most of the clientele films their lifts. Hah films her lifts and sends videos to her coach so she can improve and refine her technique; many of her cohort do, too. It’s the only way to get better.
Hah explained that while most of her filming is about improving as a lifter, there’s still a sense of achievement and pride. For Hah, it’s the thrill of watching your body doing something difficult, mixed with the excitement of gradual improvement. Some powerlifting coaches also create shared albums for their students and post their personal bests, which Hah says builds camaraderie and community.
Hah also made clear that the recording atmosphere and motivations in powerlifting gyms are unique. Powerlifters take longer breaks between sets and are doing a minimal amount of reps, which makes recording quicker, if not easier. Because everyone at her gym is so used to it, they’ve developed a system of not getting in people’s way and getting the shots efficiently. They’ve also come to a respectful understanding about their fellow gym-goers filming.
No one cares if you film at the gym if you aren’t annoying about it
When people get irritated with gym filmers, it’s likely the thirst trappers are who they’re peeved at. This is gym filming reduced to its most narcissistic form, and seeing a stranger try and present “sexy” to an audience that you’re not a part of is one of the unsexiest things in the world. Even McMullen admits this, because being a thirst trapper and being annoyed at them are not mutually exclusive — one can flex in a mirror at one moment and roll their eyes when someone else does it seconds later.
“The breaking point is when the person filming thinks they’re more important than the operation of the gym itself,” McMullen says.
McMullen explained selfishness manifests in hogging a machine and taking way too long to find a perfect shot. It’s blocking dumbbells. It’s telling people to not get in the way of the camera. Essentially, the filming at the gym comes at everyone else’s expense.
Not unlike people who use their phones at movie theaters, turn concerts into selfie opportunities, or treat bars like their living room, a person filming at a gym is using a public space as if it were private. To some, everything is content. At the same time, few people are particularly fond of becoming an involuntary background character in what’s socially understood as a shared space.
Though many gyms have soft guidelines about respecting other people’s space, privacy, and time when filming, it seems all but impossible to go back to a world before phones and tripods. The best we can hope for is understanding that if you’re going to be annoying at the gym, be the least amount of annoying you can be.
“The way to avoid being that person is to keep your setup compact and out of high traffic spaces, be quick to get your shot, don’t film during peak hours, and be aware of your surroundings,” McMillian, the director at Tone House, says. Not filming anyone without their consent, minimizing time on benches and machines people want to use, and keeping tripods out of walkways should be the baseline.
McMullen, the personal trainer and thirst trapper, goes a little further. He thinks that if you’re on your phone at the gym, you shouldn’t be sitting on a machine or on equipment hogging up space — you should be standing, preferably in a corner out of everyone’s way.
He also believes that any new gym opening up might as well lean into the filming aspect. This means designing the space and lighting to make filming as painless and efficient as possible. The less time people spend playing creative director, the less time everyone else will spend being irritated. Gyms could also implement rules like “no tripods” if they’ve already put in the work to be studio-ready.
Despite these dreams of best practices and better gyms, there will always be someone who understands they’re annoying and does it anyway.
“If you are so unbothered by the world at large around you that you can just throw ass in the mirror while knowing that everybody sees you doing it and is judging, then you’ve earned it,” McMullen says, comparing the glares and stares to a kind of social tax the oblivious are willing to pay.
At that point, it’d be a bigger shame if they didn’t post.
