This week, a fellow gym owner shared a photo of a few of his athletes in one of our local Facebook groups. If you’ve spent any time in a local Facebook group, you know that they can be a cesspool of the meanest people you’ve ever known. So unfortunately, a couple of these goobers crawled out of their swamp to try to diss these athletes for not “looking fit”. Wild that we’re still discussing this on Ilona Maher’s internet.
Athletes Come in All Shapes and Sizes
Here’s the thing: being an athlete isn’t about how you look. An athlete is a person who participates in a sport. Some athletes run marathons. Some lift cars. Some do cartwheels across a football field or hold a handstand for 30 seconds. None of those things are visible in a still photo.
Strong, fast, coordinated, and powerful bodies come in all shapes, sizes, and builds. If you’ve ever watched powerlifting, strongman, rugby, or Olympic lifting, you’ve seen this firsthand. The body that’s “fit” for one activity might look totally different for another.
So when someone looks at a photo and says “they don’t look fit,” what they’re really saying is, “they don’t look how I expect fit people to look.” That says a lot more about their biases than it does about anyone’s athletic ability.
You Don’t Have to Be Fit to Start
This one comes up all the time, and it’s one of the most harmful ideas in fitness culture.
You don’t earn the right to start training by already being in shape. Training is how you get stronger, fitter, and more capable.
If you wait until you “look fit” to go to the gym, you’ll never get started. Fitness isn’t a look, it’s a process. Every single person in that photo (and in our gym) started somewhere. Some could barely pick up a barbell. Some were nervous to walk through the door. And all of them got stronger by showing up, not by waiting until they fit some imaginary mold.
Weight is Just a Measure of How Much Gravity Pulls on Your Body
That’s it. That’s all it means. It doesn’t tell you how healthy, strong, kind, or capable you are. It doesn’t measure your grit, your consistency, or your willingness to push through hard things.
We’ve been trained to think of weight as a moral scorecard, but it’s really just physics. The number on the scale moves up and down for a thousand different reasons, from hydration, training cycles, hormones, even the weather. What actually matters is how your body feels and functions.
Final Thoughts
The people in that photo? They’re athletes. They show up, they train, they work hard, and they support their teammates. That’s what athletes do! What athletes don’t do is talk shit about strangers on the internet.
If you’ve been holding off on getting started because you don’t “look” like the people you think belong in a gym, consider this your invitation. You do belong. You don’t need to earn your place here.
At Power Plant Gym, we believe strength is for every body. Come see what your body can do.
👉 Schedule your free No-Sweat Intro today and take the first step toward feeling strong, confident, and capable!
