You become a product of your environment. Choosing your environment means choosing how you want to be.

A commercial gym is an average environment.

You have to walk past the coffee club to get in the gym. You’ll be surrounded by people who are just hanging out, people who don’t really care whether they do a circuit on six machines and take up people’s space. It’s hard to be intense when someone’s sitting next to you on their phone for 10 minutes between sets. People leave a mess behind them, and nobody says anything. As long as people are paying for membership, the staff doesn’t care what you do or if they ever see you again. It’s not really about fitness.

Personally, I don’t want to be average. Average is easy. You just end up going with the flow, and you find yourself not really doing what you love. Everyone wants a sense of purpose and a sense of reward for who they are and what they did, and you don’t find that by following what everyone else is doing. And that’s why we do the exact opposite of every other gym in our area.

Name another gym with louder music, louder people, or where they have metal weights you can drop. We like the noise.

When you walk in here, you can feel that it’s serious from the moment you open the door. And it forces you to go. You’re not gonna stand around and be in people’s way. There’s limited space, limited equipment, and I think it pushes people to be better because of that. There’s no place to really hang out, be on your phone and be unaware of what’s going on.

Everybody here is pushing for a goal. Whether that’s to compete in a show, to powerlift, or just to overcome a mental challenge, these people are here for a reason. It’s not to hang out, it’s to get better at something. The community, the music, the whole feel of the gym, forces you to put in more work. You want to get better, and you feel like you don’t have a choice. 

At a commercial gym, no one’s gonna hold you to any type of standard. Here, there’s a massive standard. You’re expected to put your stuff back, expected to wipe stuff down after you’re done. You can go to other gyms and not clean up and no one cares, but here, you can’t hide from it. You’re not gonna get out the door with that. There’s a level of basic work ethic and etiquette you have to have to be here, and that gets rid of complacent people. And you’re not gonna stand next to the other people who are here and half-ass something. Everyone is looking at you to put in work, too.

Because of all that, we just end up with people who want to be better, and when you put all those people together in a room, you’re going to bring out the best of anybody and everybody, whether it’s a bodybuilder four weeks out from a show or someone who’s just trying to overcome mental struggles and insecurities. 

That’s what stronger together is on the wall for. It doesn’t matter what your personal end goal is. When you’re around people that are pushing towards something, it’s going to make you push towards something, or you’re going to fall off and not fit in. When you have people around you who actually want to be there, actually have a goal for why they’re working out, it pushes you to your next level. 

If you have an environment with a high standard to get better, or an environment that doesn’t really care whether you show up as long as you pay your membership, which one are you going to get stronger, look better, or overcome your mental struggles in? 

Choose the environment where everything pushes you out of your comfort zone.