(Picture: Ella Byworth)

We hear loads about gym buddies but…how do you actually go about making mates at the gym?

I’ve been a regualr gym goer for years and I’ve never made any friends at classes or on the gym floor. Am I a social freak? Well, maybe, but I’m not the only person who struggles with building a community in that kind of environment.

For one thing, I’m busy trying to actually work out – sometimes you can only concentrate on one thing at a time. And when you’re all gross and sweaty/you’re exposing your skin than you normally do/you’re not wearing any makeup/it’s 7am, you just don’t feel on your social A game.



Particularly with Instagram, the pressure for us to make the gym our home and our peers our close friends, is huge.


It shouldn’t matter if you’ve been going to the same place for years and still don’t know anyone but if you do want to get to know a few more people, then it can be a bit of a minefield.

No one does cliques better than gym folk.

My mum’s got a gang of mates who all spend hours in the gym together every day and spend all their time out of the gym chatting about the gym on WhatsApp. Me? Well, I’m just her cling-on.

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

So, how do you go about making friends at the gym?

Rob Leiby, a PT at Virgin Active has five tips for making your gym time more sociable.

‘Smile at everyone. Go there regularly and you will see the same faces who will notice you as well and after a while, either ask people for advice or give it out if you’re brave enough and you see someone doing something wrong.

‘Compliment clothes, trainers or exercise and ask where they got them from.’

But, he says, that it’s in classes that you generally make friends.

Part of the problem is that on the gym floor, everyone has different goals, different levels of fitness, different reasons for being there. In a class, by the very fact that you’re doing the same activity, you’ve got some common ground.

And here are a few more tips:

Give the headphones a break

That way, you’ll come across as more approachable. And it’s less awkward when you ask people if they’re done using the equipment…which is always a good conversation starter.

Get on that HIIT hype

HIIT is awful. Do not believe anyone who says anything different. And you know what? Talking about just how hard a HIIT session is is quite a good icebreaker because literally everyone feels or has felt the same. So don’t be nervous when you don’t find an activity easy – friendships are built on relating to painful experience and few things are more painful than a spin session.

Ditch the larger gyms

Big gyms are super useful because membership often means you can visit several branches. But if it’s a community you’re after, it’s all about the smaller boutique gyms.



Training in smaller, more intense groups (Salus London, or GymClass, for example, where you’re training in groups as small as four) makes it way easier to make friends and stay on track.

Book into circuit training classes

Because of space constraints, circuit classes tend to work by pairing people up to share stations. Ministry of Fitness, for example, offers sessions which require partners to push each other on metal sleighs. It’s kind of hard not to have a convo when you’re all up in someone else’s grill.

Join Be:FIT

Be:FIT is a ready-made community of women looking to get fit. It throws festivals, retreats, classes and meet-ups regularly and everyone who attends them is there for the same reason – to make connections and find fitness friends.

Use the Girlcrew app

Dubbed ‘the easiest way to make new friends’, this is a platform for meeting women of all interests – it’s not just a gym pal app.

But you could use it to find a gang to work out with; you simply pick a ‘home crew’ (location) and then follow the fitness group. Then you simply introduce yourself and see who’s game for training together. There’s also an event feature, which is great for first time meets if you don’t want to feel like you’re going on a weird gym-based first friendship date.

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