The hardest part of a new gym isn’t the weights. It’s walking through the door the first time.

The imagined version of a room is almost always worse than the room. You picture everybody competent, everybody looking, everybody clocking that you do not belong, and that picture keeps people outside the door for months. Inside, hardly anyone is paying attention, because they are busy with their own sets and their own reflection.

Go once, at a quiet hour, planning to stay fifteen minutes. That is the whole goal for a first visit. Once the door has been walked through it stops being a door, and the rest is just turning up again.