From Ballet to Barbells - Navigating Gym Culture As A Newbie

The gym is a church and I'm agnostic.

It wasn’t until this past year that I decided to step into my apartment complex’s gym. Even at my big age of 25, it took me 2.5 whole years of living here before I lasted more than 15 minutes on a treadmill. Even then, I have yet to actually lift a weight in that gym. The realization of how long it took to build up that initial confidence, and now to build enough to expand my gym experience, is what made me start reflecting on this relationship I have with fitness and gym culture.

I’ve tried to describe this fear before, and the best analogy I can come up with is this: imagine a lifelong atheist attending a Catholic Mass and trying to follow along. Just like the unspoken rules of Mass, gym culture is full of small, seemingly obvious customs that no one explains to you. Adjusting the weights on a machine feels as complicated as I’d imagine figuring out how to lower the kneeler in a pew quietly would be. The gym regulars adjusting the plates, switching attachments, and racking weights with practiced ease is just like the seasoned churchgoers who seem to instinctively know when to kneel, stand, or respond in Latin.

And just like a small parish where everyone knows each other, stepping into a gym as a newcomer can make you feel like an outsider. In reality, they probably don’t care, but that doesn’t stop you from feeling like everyone is watching you, waiting for you to fumble your way through an exercise like a visitor accidentally sitting in someone’s unofficially assigned pew.

Movement as Art

Growing up, I was always active. I played tee-ball, softball, soccer, and volleyball– but my real love was dance. I started ballet and tap when I was three years old, and by the time I turned eighteen, I was spending upwards of eight hours a week in class (not counting the extra practice I did at home). Dance wasn’t just an extracurricular activity; it was my identity.

There’s so much I credit to my years as a dancer: discipline, attention to detail, memory, even my posture (which is weirdly something I still get a lot of comments on). But one thing I never thought about was the fact that it was incredible exercise, because dance never really felt like exercise to me. It was an artform, after all, and a means of expressing myself.

Even when I was doing crunches to warm up before jazz class or pushing through exhausting floor work in ballet, there was always a reason behind it. Strengthening my core wasn’t about getting abs– it was about making sure I could hold my body weight up on my toes without breaking an ankle. Running the same choreography twenty times in a row wasn’t about burning calories, it was about making sure the performance was perfect. The goal was always about the art, not the activity itself, which is probably why traditional fitness has always felt a little uninspiring to me.

Feeling Out of Place

In all my years at the dance studio, I never once felt like I didn’t belong. Even when I was thrown into an advanced class with girls several years older than me, I still knew what was going on. I spoke the language. I knew the routines. I had muscle memory to fall back on.

But in a gym? It’s the complete opposite.

The city I live in doesn’t have many places that offer ballet classes, and the fitness classes I’d actually enjoy (like pilates, which I’ve been doing avidly since middle school) are outrageously expensive. So, for years, I just resigned myself to doing mat Pilates alone in my apartment and taking long walks outside.

Which worked until it didn’t.

If the weather didn’t cooperate (which is often in the Midwest) or if Pilates didn’t feel like it was enough, I was left feeling lost and somewhat lazy. I had no real fitness routine. I spent my college years and the first couple of years post-grad being mostly sedentary. And when you combine a lack of fitness knowledge with body insecurities and lingering limitations from the spinal fusion I had in high school, the result is inaction and a grave lack of confidence.

Swallowing The Frog

Last September, I finally got fed up with my own fears ruling my life. I threw on the best Amazon workout set I could find and made the trek down to my apartment gym. It’s small, but not usually too crowded. And, mercifully, a treadmill was open.

I stepped on and completed my first-ever 12-3-30 workout– the ever-TikToked treadmill incline walk– and I felt an unexpected surge of pride. I genuinely didn’t think I was in good enough shape to do it. It wasn’t easy, but the more I did it, the easier it got.

The next day, I did it again. I made a goal to go every weekday, and, almost without realizing it, I was a regular. I then expanded my home workouts, making my Pilates sessions longer and more challenging. I bought resistance bands, ankle weights, and two 10-lb dumbbells so I could incorporate more strength exercises into my routine. My endurance increased, and so did my confidence. Pretty soon, 15k steps felt like nothing, and I no longer believed myself to be all the things I had told myself I was: out of shape, too shy to go to a gym, “skinny fat.” I had contradicted these insecurities and proved something to myself.

Onto The Next

Now, I find myself facing the next fear: actual strength training in a gym. It was all very foreign to me. I’m learning about macros, progressive overload, and how to build muscle. I’m realizing that the physique I want doesn’t come just from Pilates and cardio, it comes from lifting heavier weights, eating enough protein, and even from other non-fitness habits like prioritizing sleep.

And if I’m being completely honest, I had to overcome a pretty big mental hurdle when I first realized this. Because the idea of walking into the gym and doing more than just the treadmill and stairmaster feels like walking into unfamiliar territory again. I know that if I’ve done it once, I can do it again– but I can’t help but feel a bit like the girl I was in college, too shy to go with her friends to the Rec.

Reframing Fitness

When I catch myself overthinking my progress or nitpicking my body, I try to reframe why I’m doing this in the first place. Aside from the physique goals that are ever-present in the mind of a 20-something girl like myself, I want to build strength and muscle to cope more easily with my chronic back pain, reduce my risk of injury, and live a long, healthy life.

I am often reminded that working out will never feel the same as dance did. That’s why I look for ways to make movement feel more expressive. Pilates gives me that mind-body connection I loved in ballet, where I’m hyper-focused on form, balance, posture, and control. That was always my favorite thing about ballet specifically, you’re forced to think about a million minuscule muscles and aspects of your body all at once, for the entire duration of the dance.

Maybe ballet scratched the perfectionistic itch in my brain just right because the goal in ballet is unattainable perfection. The goal is to be this flawless, weightless apparition floating across a stage. It’s a fascinating contrast of hyper-feminine grace, satin, and tulle– while underneath it all is hard work, incredible strength, discipline, and, quite honestly, a lot of pain. I often describe this standard in ballet to non-dancers by telling them that when a ballerina leaps across the stage, the expectation is that she lands without a sound, despite having body mass and wearing shoes made of hardened layers of glue, paper, and cardboard covered in satin.

The gym will probably never feel like home the way the dance studio did. But that’s okay. I can create new versions of movement that work for me now. And maybe I will discover a new type of grace and focus in lifting weights.

Nobody Really Cares

A few weeks ago, I grabbed coffee with an old dance friend who recently moved to my city. We got on the topic of fitness, and I realized that she felt the exact same way I do. I was reminded that everyone has to start somewhere. Many of my close friends learned how to navigate a gym and lift weights when they were teenagers, and they’ve all assured me that they were once just as lost as I am.

And the best wisdom these friends have imparted on me? Nobody cares that much. No one at the gym is paying attention to what you’re doing, regardless of how silly you think you look or how much they seem to know what they’re doing.

So, I’m eager to see where this fitness journey and pushing through the discomfort takes me. I’m thankful that I have the ability to move and be active, and that my body is as strong as it is. The biggest takeaway for me is that movement– whether it’s dance, Pilates, or weight training, was never the problem. The problem was letting fear dictate how I approached it.

Besides, listening to Tchaikovsky while doing sumo squats is about as badass as you can get, imo.