It’s 100% acceptable for women to wear yoga pants or spandex to the gym and it’s acceptable. We have heard stories over the years of guys wearing runners to the gym and being asked to wear shorts over them. This even happened to our own UNB Shawn. There seems to be a bit of a double standard in the world of spandex and gym wear. UNB Shawn covered that in his post.
I think the core issue with the debate boils down to body image. I know guys who are built and have six packs who wear shorts over runners. On the other hand, I have seen bears just walk out in gym with all the confidence in the world and not care what people say. I used to wear them while working out, when I did years ago, and never thought twice. Now that I’m bigger and need to get in shape, I hesitate to put them on.
Another argument is that it’s “obscene” for guys to wear just spandex. Let’s not be afraid of the curves of a guys body. Specifically the bulge. Some guys have more than others in that department, and can’t do anything about how much bulge they show. Most guys aren’t at the gym to show off, they are there to work out. They feel comfortable in the runners and want to wear them. Wearing shorts over them makes things bulkier and contracts movement.
As you can tell I am very much pro “No shorts.” We should be able to wear them to the gym without being told we need to wear shorts over them. The double standard of it’s good for one sex and not the other needs to end. Guys are branching out to wear more things that have not been considered “masculine” by traditional standards. We are creating a new masculine definition!
3 Comments
I do, each and every visit to the gym (no shorts). I feel the women’s yoga pants angle to be a double standard. A few things happened, over time: 1) more guys started wearing them too, 2) it made *me* more serious about the workouts (hard to hide a bad bod in those!) and 3) I very quickly lost any self-consciousness over it.
It very much depends on my workout – but I am a group fitness instructor. When I teach strength or HIIT classes, I’m in tights for a couple reasons: range of motion, demonstration of movement, and unimpeded apparel accidents when going to the floor for planks and burpees. Dance fitness, however, i tend to favor looser fitting clothes, but even those are getting tighter and tighter as I become more used to wearing tights / runners. People in my classes don’t say anything, but then again, I teach to mostly women. I do get men in my classes from time to time, especially the ones where I wear tights, as those classes tend to attract more men due to their content. I do not wear shorts over them, so the only covering that happens is where the shirts naturally fall.
I run — not at the gym, but around the neighbor hood. I typically wear compression shorts, and a compression shirt. When I moved to my new neighborhood, most of the other male runners I saw wore lose shorts over their running gear, but I’m seeing less and less of that. If I’m at the gym, my gym shorts are lose, but I do wear a swim brief when swimming. I think most americans need to get over their assumption that another person’s human body is there for their judging. Just let folks work out in cloths they are comfortable in.