Sometimes nice and sweet, sometimes hella mean, gym bros are their own genre. But universally, there exists a mandate. 

If you are a gym bro, it is legally required that you have to be obsessed with these 9 things:

1. Grunting like an animal

If you don’t let out a boarish scream to assert your alpha-ness then WTF is the point of building a rock-solid body that can be scaled by mountaineers.

2. Slamming weights

The most loyal compadre to grunting like an animal, a pairing almost as perfect as mountain chai and mountain Maggi, the Rahul to its Anjali, is the incessant slamming of weights on the ground with full force, effectively initiating a tiny earthquake. Is it necessary? Nope. 

3. Shitting on romance

Dare one plays romantic songs at the gym, a gym bro will flip shit and go on a tangent about how love sucks and making big bills is all that matters. Their vow of celibacy doesn’t stop them from checking out that cute gym girl’s butt and using a slimy pickup line to ask them out, only to be rejected and restart the tangent all over again.

4. Breasts

Not women’s breasts. Their own breasts.

5. Protein

A cardinal rule in the gym bro training manual is that you have to be a slut for protein shakes. If you can’t go on a five-hour rant about the seven amino acids that make up a protein molecule, are you even a real gym bro?

6. Mirrors

Duh.

7. Water

Five litres of water a day and running to piss 50 times a day. That’s cardio. 

8. Bragging about their dukh & dard

Like superheroes, every gym bro has an origin story. Their girlfriend dumped them for someone hotter, they didn’t feel ‘swole’ as a child, that one asshole kid who beat them at basketball and led them to the life of the iron.   

9. Mansplaining 

No matter what you do, a gym bro will always find a fault in your exercise regimen and mansplain the same workout you’ve been doing for fifteen years back to you. Every gym bro claims to have the secret sauce to eternal fitness. No, it’s not steroids.