Understanding social gym intimidation and anxiety using the power-threat-meaning framework

While many gymgoers do not experience psychological barriers to gym use, some feel anxious and intimidated there in the presence of other users. Qualitative research has suggested gyms can be places of unequal power leading to threats to one's adequacy of self, and privilege certain users based on demographics, masculinity, size, fitness, performance, competence, etc. Social comparison and trait social anxiety have been suggested as contributing to gym anxiety. However, a theoretical approach is needed to provide a coherent explanation of gym anxiety which can inform interventions; there is no current theory in use in the research literature. I argue that gym anxiety is not the same as social physique anxiety (a limited concern about physique evaluation) nor social anxiety (often conceptualized as a mental health "disorder" rather than a response to the norm-laden setting of the gym). I propose that the most suitable theoretical framework to explain gym anxiety is Johnstone and Boyle's Power-Threat-Meaning Framework (PTMF), designed to explain psychological problems or distress. Gym anxiety or intimidation does not represent a disorder or pathology but an understandable response among some users to the power differentials of the gym environment. The PTMF explains how the negative operation of social power, in combination with societal and personal meaning-making, can lead to a perception of subtle threats to one's psychological needs, such as exclusion, invalidation, or rejection; the resulting "symptoms" such as anxiety, shame, hypervigilance, and avoidance are conceptualized as coping strategies called threat responses. By addressing one or more of power imbalances, perception of threat, meaning-making and threat responses, interventions have the potential to make gym anxiety more manageable by addressing some of its root causes, either in individual interventions or at wider group level, including by changes that can be made to specific gym settings.