The Power of Community in Your Fitness Journey
Discovering Strength, Support, and Success Together
A fitness journey is rarely a path you walk alone. Whether you're running on the streets, hitting the weights, or any combination of the two, the significance of community cannot be overstated. Defined as the connected feeling you share with others who have common interests or goals, a community forms the backbone of support, motivation, and accountability in our pursuit of fitness goals. It can be the most important factor that drives our motivation when others are counting on you to show up, believe in you, and want to see your success. In this post, I want to discuss the profound influence that community can have on your exercise routine. From the tangible benefits of improved outcomes and consistency to the intangible yet invaluable enhancement of your social health, I want to explain how finding or building a community around your fitness pursuits can be the difference between getting to your goals and changing your lifestyle or falling back into some old habits.
Defining Community: When I refer to a community in this regard, I want to make sure we are all on the same page regarding the expectations. A community is the connected feeling that you have with others who share common interests, attitudes toward something, or a similar goal in mind. I like to emphasize the idea of a community as the feeling because it can extend far past your immediate family, friend group, or neighbors. Often you may share this sense of community with these groups but they can also not share your fitness interests or goals. With this definition in mind, we can define our fitness community as a single person who shares a common interest in seeing one another improve, an online community of accountability, could be a positive gym community itself. Any of these are great examples of a community that can be supportive of one another. There is absolutely plenty of overlap that can happen between physical neighborhoods and community but following that feeling of shared interest and having others invested in your journey as well as investing yourself in others’ journeys can make the process magnitudes more enjoyable and stronger.
Visible Benefits of Community: There are some clear benefits of being a part of a community that is very simple to connect the dots with. Being a part of a community brings more responsibility to your fitness journey. You’re no longer alone in the journey, you have a group of like-minded people around you who are there to see each other succeed as opposed to waiting for the downfall. Being in a positive community helps bring more motivation for success as you’re going to suffer and grow with a group of people all pushing a bit further. Finding a group like this can make it that much easier to push yourself and work on that all-important piece of progression which can be very difficult alone. Having this strong support system built into the community and seeing each other succeed not only promotes it within your brain that this is a place you enjoy being, but it is a place that you want to be. Your brain likes doing hard stuff but does not enjoy thinking about doing the hard things. When the community itself provides you with that starting fuel and an enjoyable place to be, it breaks down the hard part of starting and leaves you with only the positive outcomes and the people that come along with it.
Another large benefit of being a part of a community like this is the safety that it provides you to push yourself, making more overall progress. It has been shown that if you have a spotter promoting the confidence that you will be safe, you can push closer to failure and have a lower rating of perceived exertion. Meaning that you’re able to push further and have it feel less fatiguing than if you were to be lifting alone. This benefit paired with the external motivation that has been studied to have a similar effect, this external motivation being cheering along, and positive encouragement during the lift itself, all can help you push further than you’d expect getting more overall work done. If you pair these two factors together that you can’t get by lifting by yourself then you can see how much additional work can be done even just having the positive forces around you. Not saying effective progress can’t be done by yourself but the benefits and confidence gained from being a part of the community can’t be made up with just some music at home.
Invisible Benefits of Community: Along with these clearly stated benefits of a community that you can directly test and see for yourself. The increased motivation, the increased accountability, the increased ability to push yourself and make those gains. There are also lesser seen benefits of being a part of a community. A lot of these fall into the idea that your health is so deeply interconnected. You don’t just have physical and mental health, you have social health, financial health, spiritual health, etc… All of these aspects of health are so interconnected in ways that often can go unseen if not directly thought about. This is where I want to highlight how finding a community can benefit these aspects of health. The easiest one to highlight is your social health gets a large boost from being a part of the community itself. Humans are innately social creatures, no matter how introverted one may be, we need to have social interaction, especially face-to-face social interaction. It provides a large boost to our mood and can help humanize one another again. Being a part of a community that you’re exercising with can help you experience something difficult together and then deepen that relationship overall strengthening your social health. This goes even further as a community can benefit your financial health and spiritual health by finding people who are more like-minded, helping you get out and networking, and deepening your relationships with others, you never know who somebody knows. When you form these relationships, it aids you in becoming a more effective communicator, increasing your confidence, which can then have a total cascading effect on all aspects of your health. Seeing how just working out or participating in a new group can have these effects and making that a priority can have huge overall benefits in each aspect of your health!
Finding a Community: As we always do, I want to make sure that you aren’t just left with a pile of words and no way for you to act on it. With all of these different benefits of finding some sort of community to dive into, this is actually where the hard part lies. We know that it is great for us, we know that we should be in one, but we still hesitate on the sidelines. This is why I highlighted in the definition that a community is that feeling that we get when connecting with others. Our lifting community can be as small as a lifting partner, or as big as a whole greater gym culture and atmosphere that promotes working together and being a part of something greater. Starting small is usually easier than diving off the deep end, using people who are already around you who may have similar interests in getting healthier but have yet to express that can be a fantastic way for both of you to get going! If you’re already going to the gym but want that additional benefit and confidence that having somebody around you would give, then ask somebody for a spot! Ask somebody why they are doing a certain exercise and how it is getting them toward their goals! It is oftentimes that easy to do. Think to yourself, would you ever be mad if somebody approached you and was positive with the interaction overall? No? Then why are we so scared to have these social interactions and initiate what could be an excellent accountability partner in the whole journey! If it doesn’t hit on the first time, you get a spot and you can try again with another lifting partner. The other big that you can do is find a gym or a group in general that shares a common goal with what you want to accomplish. Are you in the world of CrossFit and want to get better there? Look for local CrossFit gyms or classes, are you into running? Go to a local running store and ask about the groups that they have! There are so many different ways to get involved in a community, just like exercise, diving in is difficult but once you’re in it, it becomes a million times easier and you’re glad you did. You never regret doing a workout, but you always regret not doing a workout. The same thing goes with trying to join a community or find a lifting partner, you’ll never regret asking or trying but you will always regret not asking your best friend if they have an interest in exercise! This all goes toward the bigger picture of fostering the type of community that you want to be a part of. If you are regularly asking people for a spot and engaging with more people, they are likely to have that barrier broken down more, improving the overall experience for everybody participating in it! Building back on that social health and confidence aspect of health that we had discussed prior.
To wrap it all up, a community may not be directly something that helps with your health, but it is health-adjacent in that it improves every aspect of your health. Hopefully, this has given you an idea of the idea of a community, and how it is so important in fostering a lifelong lifestyle change, making the experience significantly more positive as well as driving deeper purpose into your lifestyle change. The seen and unseen benefits of being within a community spur on some thoughts to deepen that understanding that your health goes much deeper than just how you physically or mentally feel at this moment. Then I do truly hope that you have been inspired to seek a larger community to be a part of to interact with, or even reach out for a spot and start a conversation. Breaking down that barrier can make the gym a less intimidating place and open up a whole new world. The barbell doesn’t care who it is interacting with and the barbell is for everyone.
I am looking to begin building my community soon which hopefully can help connect people of similar interests and make the journey easier for everybody. If this is something you’re interested in, have any questions, or need personalized guidance, don't hesitate to reach out at sidneyabartlett@gmail.com
I invite you to share this with one person who may find it interesting or who could benefit from this message. By spreading the word, we can expand our community of like-minded individuals and empower more people to realize their fitness goals together.
Until next time,
Sidney Bartlett, CSCS