In the final part of this three part series Mariem Dekhili, DET’s Podcast Presenter, talks with Justin Garcia – a Calisthenics Coach at Gravity Dubai, International Gymnast, and Mental Health Advocate – about ‘what it means to be a man?’ We discuss masculinity, strength, and weakness.
(00:01) That is a big question. Masculinity or what is a man? It’s really hard, because I grew up, again, in a dominantly male family. The only females in my household were my mum and my grandma.
I have three brothers, my dad. Sometimes we’d have uncles staying with us. Sometimes cousins would stay with us. It was always men in the house. We didn’t talk. We didn’t hug. There were no emotions. If you showed any emotions, you were being a baby.
(00:30) You need to suck it up, go away, get away out of here, toughen up.
Over the years, I've learned that that made me more fragile because it more so kept me on the edge of bursting.
I held so much in or I didn't express enough or I didn't show that I cared enough and it took away from the experience that I could have as a man, which I believe to be more one of guidance and leadership and less about just the stronghold of toughness.
(00:59) Like I’m a man, I can do it alone and that’s not the point. I feel like, at least with my journey, my job with masculinity is I did do it on my own, but I did that on my own so that I can bring others with me. I can go back and bring others along.
(01:24) This is really why I like the gym that I work at, Gravity Calisthenics Gym in Dubai, because it’s more of a community and there’s a lot of people that you’ll see over and over over and over over again.
It’s like a friends gathering. We even have some mutual friends who, although they train at the gym, you know, we’re doing our pushups and whatever else there, will message outside and be like, hey, I’m going through something right now.
Do you have any advice or just vent on the other person and I’m a very straightforward person and this mutual friend of ours, I’ll just tell him like, dude, you’re being dumb.
There’s the dumbest thing, you’re acting with your ego, you’re not giving that person any sort of humanity, you’re expecting them to act robotic. And this whole thing. It became more of a community support system rather than just going to the gym to workout.
I think this is what it means, at least to me, to be a man is to, again, uplift the village.
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