One woman at the gym has captured the moment she was approached by a man... and he did not try to explain anything!
Racking up over 237,000 views, the footage shared on June, 1 shows Sophie-Anne Yasruddin, 25, doing band-assisted muscle-ups but she is interrupted by a stranger.
The man's voice can be heard asking how she manages to do the exercise. "I've been genuinely trying to do that for about three years," he says.
"A man has never come up to me to ask for tips," the personal trainer told Newsweek. "At the start of my PT career, I had men ask for me to be their personal trainer, but after a few times of that leading to them hitting on me, I decided to become a women's only coach."
![Gym](https://d.newsweek.com/en/full/2405067/gym.png?w=1200&f=7c67e4971cfa4693f26c7cb8b4669bd0)
Yasruddin proceeded to demonstrate her technique, which involves using a band to pull her body down and then swing herself up to the bar. But it isn't the exercise that has caught TikTok's attention but the fact that a man has asked a woman for advice.
"From my own experiences and from those in the comment section of this video, I think it's a pretty rare occurrence that men approach women solely for the purpose of learning from them, and nothing more.
"I've experienced men coming up to me to give me tips—which they've done so respectfully, and I have made friends from those interactions too—but this one was different as he was the one asking for advice."
Sometimes tips are not so welcome, like the time Georgia Ball, a professional golfer, was interrupted by an insistent man who criticized her swing as she enjoyed some solitary practice.
A report from personal training experts Origym surveyed 1,000 gym-goers and found that over 61 percent of women said they had felt harassed by a man at least once in the gym.
![Personal trainer](https://d.newsweek.com/en/full/2405073/personal-trainer.png?w=1200&f=31ac597c66ca795881f7560fd596fe35)
Yasruddin, from Essex, England, told Newsweek: "I wanted to show people that the gym isn't this scary place that it's often assumed to be, and that as an adult, it can actually be a great place to make friends.
"He went about it with such respect and I thought sharing the interaction could help inspire others who may have wanted to start up a conversation, but didn't know how."
So far, the internet seems to be blown away by the interaction and the clip has over 20,900 likes and almost 200 comments.
One user said: "No joke this is the first time in my life I've seen a man genuinely ask a woman for advice in this kind of setting. This is amazing."
"Wow. Can we see more men being genuinely respectful and kind and listening to learn?" asked another user.
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Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Lucy Notarantonio is Newsweek's Senior Lifestyle and Trends Reporter, based in Birmingham, UK. Her focus is trending stories and human ... Read more