Wearing sunglasses at the gym.
Three months ago, I started randomly wearing sunglasses at the gym.
Back in 2021, a long-distance old flame took it upon herself to give me a wardrobe intervention. I was a nearly broke boy wearing ill-fitting jeans and old raggedy graphic tees with little holes in them. We made an Amazon shopping list for me full of stylish casual clothes titled “Mandatory Glow-up.” This list included a nice pair of sunglasses she insisted I purchase for my trip to her home state.
I ended up never wearing them and eventually misplaced them. I wasn’t in a rush to find them for obvious reasons.
While tidying up in preparation for moving out from my mom’s duplex, I found them after two years. The September equinox had just passed. A slow autumn over darker days was ahead of me. I was scratching my head over what I could possibly need sunglasses for.
Then, it hit me.
I thought back to a post from the LifeProTips subreddit asking “What items can I carry to make life a little sillier?”
Some of my favorite responses were:
Clown nose kept in the glovebox to wear during traffic jams
Business card saying “otherwise” to pull out after saying “I’ve got something here that says otherwise”
Tiny harmonica keychain
At the time, my powerlifting journey had started giving me daily anxiety. The heavier the weight, the higher the risk of injury. A successful gym session means I have to do it all again but even heavier the next week. A failed gym session means I get a bout of body dysmorphia for a couple of days as I contemplate whether eating four to five thousand calories a day and gaining all this weight was worth it.
I needed something to break past the mental plateau. I needed a curveball to be thrown. I needed the monotony of my weekly lifts to be shaken up. I needed something.
And that something was a pair of sunglasses.
I arrived at the gym, threw back my pre-workout, warmed up, and shyly looked around at everyone else in the powerlifting room as I worked up the courage for my silly little adventure.
Then, I thought “Even if someone has a problem with it, what are they gonna do about it? What can they do about it? Absolutely nothing.”
I slipped them on and had one of the best workouts to date.
There’s honestly nothing funnier than a joke that’s only meant for you. All the anxiety of lifting was gone, from the risk of injury from heavy weight to the self-imposed standards of strength causing a daily fear of failure. I couldn’t take anything seriously with sunglasses on and I was having so much fun at the gym for the first time in a long time.
Two good friends arrived while I was on one knee, twisting a knob of my tripod to lock it into place, and angling my phone just right so I can capture my new max-effort deadlift, all while wearing sunglasses. They immediately asked, “Uh, what’s with the shades?”
I responded with “Gotta shock the body,” referring to a famous clip of Arnold Schwarzenegger explaining how you have to catch your body’s stagnation off guard with workout variations to promote muscle growth.
I deadlifted 495 for two reps, got my friends in the video, slapped “I Want It That Way” by Backstreet Boys over it, threw it onto my Instagram, and called it a successful day.
Randomly throwing on a pair of sunglasses has become a weekly puzzle prompting gym regulars to ask me what’s going on. Here are some of my fun ways to respond:
“It’s bright outside.”
“I can’t let you see the way you make me feel.”
“You’ve never heard of shaded squats?”
“I’m kind of a big deal.”
“All the fine-ass people in here are way too distracting.”
And my absolute favorite: “I have a confession. I can’t see shit in these.”