Obligatory Schwarzenegger: "The kind of people who train alongside you in a gym makes a difference. If you are surrounded by people who are serious and train with a lot of intensity, it's easier for you to do the same thing. But it can be pretty hard to really blast your muscles while the people around you are just going through the motions. That is why good bodybuilders tend to congregate in certain gyms. By having…
Even if the gym is run by an old bodybuilder with old machines and weights, its mostly younger people that maintain it, and they don't know you were allowed to have fun and talk in that kind of place, only 10 or 20 years ago..
The light bullying when I went to a gym in the 2000s was not awesome, but the current atmosphere is even worse...