While it’s cute the college chicks training ass & abs in color coordinated name brand yoga pants and top, it’s downright comical, sad really how practically the same can be said of the male gym going population.
I used to care about the footwear, wrestling shoes, or hard soled (work boots, the poor man’s improvised weightlifting shoe) only, but as I mature even that slips.
I have a pair of roughly 8 year old Saucony running shoes, practically falling apart, they are all torn up with holes, from 3 years of heavy usage, that are what I walk through pf in with pride.
With the gym closed I’m mostly exercising in beat up $20 walmart work boots, complete with tape on one boot, that were actually hand me downs from an old timer when he moved into retirement apartment complex not needing to shovel any longer a few years back, the tape covering a hole gotten while chipping ice at work.
My track pants are almost all nearing a decade old, my tshirts worn til they fall off.
If you go by clothes I’m the most homeless looking person in the gym. Every article of clothing is beat up, and this is really the best way.
Worn in moves better, and things worn during physical activity get worn down. Use clothing til it’s so dilapidated that it’s no longer functional.
Talking about my clothing and girls a coworker told me I should peacock, if I’m gonna just live in basketball shorts and tshirts at least buy the name brands not the least expensive, “jordans man, not what are those walmart”, I told him in a fully true touche that “my trap muscles are peacocking enough”.
Often the biggest and strongest are just wearing whatever.
I’d see older roid head bodybuilders in only gray sweatpants and gray sleeves cut off sweater, New Balance (the old timers brand if ever there was one) sneakers, only replacing something when it became unusable by virtue of falling off completely.
The men just put in the work, it’s the misguided boys alongside the girls getting dressed up to exercise.
(Ye who be ineth a nightclub.)
The cheapest gym shorts or track pants will last for years, by the time you rip a hole in the crotch demanding replacement (I had this happen last summer/fall) the $7 pair of basketball shorts had lasted over ten years.
(And I joked about it to the cashier, probably the best built cashier I’d ever seen at walmart, I’d guess 19yo, and her response was hilarious. “You were washing them right!?!? It wasn’t 10 years of sweat just building up.”)
Working out can be expensive or as free as you like.
The true cost is in time and effort. You have to pay in hours and sweat.
The dollar cost can be effectively zero.
I train in the footwear and clothing I already have. I pay gym dues only because I like going to the gym. It’s a way to be social, out of the house, and has more equipment. Over time I have bought some equipment to use at home, and when I have to I’m entirely ok with just calisthenics.
Fitness is free.
Get moving.
Persistence & Tenacity