“You are expected to do everything right” – Exercise norms in the gym as a frame for potential (not) belonging: A norm-critical exploration

The gym is a well-established location for the promotion of health and is imbued with a range of norms regarding, e.g., body size, gender, and age. Applying a norm-critical stance, the study aims at exploring the normative frame of gym exercise, a) investigating norms framing the understanding and b) performance of gym exercise and the potential for deviance. 24 semi-structured in-depth interviews with Swedish active, reasonably healthy, recreational (= normal) gym-users aged 27–76 have been analysed using qualitative content analysis. Data-derived norms describe gym exercise as an individual, committed, responsible, surveyed endeavour, characterized by knowledge and awareness regarding efforts, techniques, goals and body limits. Performance norms oblige exercisers to push themselves, seek improvement, never quit and get bodily noticeable results in terms of certain pains and adjust their performance to a contextually defined standard. Due to the flexibly interpretable normative frame of exercise and its equally flexible socio-spatio-temporal localization, the gym is compartmentalized into fluid performance zones. This norm spectrum can be connected to a healthistic discourse and provides a multitude of occasions to experience (not) belonging to ‘the norm’. Hence, basically everybody may or may not be deviant, depending on the context.