Men: You have to wear underwear at the gym. Always.
By Sam Downing|
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There's only one man who can get away with being commando at the gym, and his name is Steve Willis. The rest of you fellas need to wear underwear — always.
Every gymgoer has a horror story about copping an unwanted eyeful, usually of someone who's bench pressing (or in any similar position that involves lying back with legs set apart).
There are already enough things that should never be encountered in the gym — unflattering activewear, soppy couples working out together, people yet to discover deodorant has been invented — without adding the no-underwear crowd.
The good news is that, anecdotally, most men I spoke to about this issue have never intentionally gone commando while they work out. If it's happened, it's happened because they forgot a change of underwear.
But there are deliberate, frequent commandos out there. Staff at one major inner-city Sydney gym tell me about a former member so notorious for his constant lack of underwear that he was ultimately asked to leave for good.
Coach writer Stu Marsh spins a tale of another Sydney gym where one of the regulars is renowned for both his lack of underpants and for wearing running shorts with especially high side splits (a double no-no).
Fellas: this is not cool. Maybe you don't think anyone will notice you're not wearing underwear — but we do. Maybe you don't care if anyone notices you're not wearing underwear — but you should.
If you don't consider decency, consider safety. Surely you don't want everything hanging loose in the gym, knocking around and getting squeezed while you're using the leg press? As Stu poetically puts it to me: no tangle, no dangle.
You need proper support when you exercise, and the baggy gusset (a word up there with "moist" and "panties" for its grossness) hanging in your shorts doesn't cut it.
So what should you wear? My personal preference has long been a pair of comfortable-fitting swimwear: the tightness provides better support than regular pair of undies — think of them as the male equivalent of a sports bra — and they're easy to wash, quick to dry, and don't smell as bad as day-to-day fabrics if you accidentally leave them in your bag overnight.
If the burden of carting around swimmers or a pair set of undies is too much to bear, Sydney-based men's activewear brand teamm8 recently released its two-in-one Activ8 brief/trunk that you can wear all day in the office then to the gym — saving you precious seconds getting changed.
Teamm8's 2in1 Activ8 Sports Brief
"The days are now gone of awkwardly having to carry your 'sweaty' post-gym underwear around in a plastic bag," Teamm8 founder Michal Nicolas said in a press release.
(I tried out a pair and can confirm that they're as comfortable at work as they are working out. That said, I'd still recommend changing into fresh underwear after any sweat session.)
None of this is to say men should cover themselves head-to-toe for fear of revealing more than they intended. Absolutely feel free flash your thighs at the gym in stylish shorty shorts. Just wear something underneath them.
And FYI, jumping on the compression gear trend doesn't give you an excuse to ditch underwear. As we've noted on Coach before, if you're going to go tight, you have a duty to keep yourself, uh, neatly packaged to avoid the dreaded "moose knuckle". Sans underwear is just as unflattering in tights as it is in baggy basketball shorts.