Published September 18, 2026 10:15AM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Two weird things happened when I went to my first men\u2019s Bible study in 25 years. First, I was the only person there who pulled out an actual, physical Bible. The Super Bowl champion football player who was also there was reading verses off his iPhone Bible app, which I suppose counts.<\/p>\n
The second weird thing is what didn\u2019t<\/i> happen: not once was the word lust <\/i>uttered. When I ran with the evangelicals in my college days, you could count on the fact that, no matter what topic any particular men\u2019s Bible study session was ostensibly about, within 16 seconds or less, the conversation would turn to\u2014and stay on\u2014lust. Sex. Desire. Madonna\u2019s Erotica <\/i>album talks about these things less than 19-year-old males at a Bible study.<\/p>\n
So, the omission was surprising at least, because the Bible study I\u2019d come to was held at Proverbs 27:17 Fitness<\/a> in Oklahoma City, where a one-hour workout in the gym\u2019s upstairs loft preceded the prayers.<\/p>\n Proverbs 27:17 has made appearance after appearance in recent articles<\/a> and social media posts<\/a> as part of the new \u201cmen\u2019s-only\u201d and\/or \u201clust-free\u201d gym trend that\u2019s growing among a certain set of fitness enthusiasts\u2014evangelical or otherwise conservative Christians, mainly. The goal of this gym and others like it? Stop men from cheating on their partners and\/or from being distracted by women when trying to bang out their third set.<\/p>\n The workouts here at Proverbs 27:17 are intense but positive: loud-voiced coaches wander from man to man\u2014one on a cable rower, another working with free weights, another on a cross-country machine\u2014barking orders and encouragement.<\/p>\n So I was girding my gay loins to listen to an hour of men doing what I had seen countless men do in this situation: wrestling with, fighting with, going to war with their normal sexual urges. Trying to tame their bodies into submission.<\/p>\n Thank God this place doesn\u2019t have a locker room<\/i>, I thought, remembering the other reason my gay loins are girded in places like this.<\/p>\n Proverbs 27:17 Fitness started in November 2025 as the brainchild of Jeff Hambrecht, who pulled up to the gym in a Chevy Equinox and not the Cybertruck I was expecting. His workout program is intense\u2014two days of strength training, two days of light cardio, and two days of Zone 2 cardio<\/a>, which keeps the heart rate pumping at 60 to 70 percent of its maximum. It\u2019s all informed by his studies in health and exercise science and Olympic lifting. He\u2019s a corporate health and wellness director and a former college soccer player who opens up early and often about his struggles with addiction: the drinking that cost him his athletic scholarship then ramped up after he was married; the injuries that led to pain pill abuse; the pornography; the affairs.<\/p>\n \u201cThe best way to describe me on pain pills is, someone hijacks your body, ties you up, and then flips your life on a screen and makes you watch you just completely destroy everything, and you can\u2019t do a thing about it,\u201d he told me. \u201cYou\u2019re numb. You don\u2019t care about anything.\u201d<\/p>\n Through it all, Hambrecht had athletics. But the night he came in first in his age group in the 2021 Hyrox Chicago Pro Masters North American championship, he cried himself to sleep.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t know what I was doing\u2014like my life was at an all-time low,\u201d he said. \u201cFour weeks later, I got served divorce papers in the middle of a training session.\u201d<\/p>\n They will know we are Christians by our love<\/i>, reads an old hymn. But these days, to those outside the church, many American Christians have made themselves known largely by their politics\u2014two load-bearing pillars of which revolve around opposing queer marriage<\/a> and abortion<\/a>. Noticeably, these are two things that, at least in part, involve things people do with their genitalia. Both, in this belief system, are the end result of a culture that has let lust run amok.<\/p>\n Hambrecht isn\u2019t alone. Other Christian entrepreneurs, namely Mitch Parsons, are creating men\u2019s-only gyms meant to help their members curb temptation.<\/p>\n In my conversation with Parsons, he mentioned the work of Caroline Leaf, a Christian communication pathologist and author of Switch on Your Brain<\/i><\/a>, who has studied neural pathways extensively. Regarding sexual urges, he said: \u201cWhat your eyes look at, then your brain associates with something else. And so my brain is actually wired through the content I consume that skin equals sex.\u201d<\/p>\n Parsons lives in Denver, where he\u2019s building another men\u2019s-only facility called The Remnant<\/a>. The nonprofit often is described as a gym, though Parsons calls it a holistic training center. Its website says when it opens in 2027, it will feature a coworking space, golf simulators, a coffee bar\u2014even a conversation lounge. What it will not feature is women.<\/p>\n This, Parsons said, is because coed gyms breed a toxic culture.<\/p>\n \u201cIn my faith, what I believe is that my eyes are for my wife alone,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I was purposely putting myself in an environment where the culture is as little clothes as possible<\/em>\u2026I would rather not walk the line of being tempted to look at a woman in a way that\u2019s not honoring to my wife, to the Lord, and to her. So I\u2019m just creating an environment where that doesn\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n On one hand\u2014huh?<\/i> Parsons describes big-box gyms as \u201cstrip clubs\u201d\u2014and who hasn\u2019t been in a locker room where you knew not to touch any moist surface? But think about your local YMCA. There, many of the clients are seniors who like to walk on the treadmill and gossip and listen to audiobooks. So not to go all \u201cnot all gyms,\u201d but\u2014maybe Mitch Parsons just hasn\u2019t met the right <\/i>coed gym.<\/p>\n And yet, while listening to Parsons, I couldn\u2019t shake my own memories of that<\/i> guy at the gym I went to in my twenties who bothered women to such a degree that management had to ban him. And the other guy like that. And the other three. The bros going to these so-called \u201clust-free\u201d gyms are, in some sense, owning the fact that they are the problem\u2014something I appreciate. If only more would.<\/p>\n What did Jesus say about plucking out your eye? That.<\/p>\n Michael Ulloa<\/a> is a physical therapist and fitness influencer living in Edinburgh, Scotland. But unlike most people with the title fitness influencer<\/i>, Ulloa doesn\u2019t post shirtless thirst traps to snag clients. His Instagram account is dedicated to debunking the kind of half-baked \u201cwellness\u201d advice that tends to start with phrases like Scientists don\u2019t want you to know\u2026 <\/i>and Doctors hate this one tip!<\/i><\/p>\n So,<\/b> I had to ask him: Is \u201cmen\u2019s only\u201d just another weird fitness trend like proteinmaxxing or perineum sunning<\/a>\u2014exposing your anus to sunlight in the pursuit of better focus, libido, and yes, our favorite buzzword, longevity?<\/i><\/p>\n \u201cI think that potentially, these spaces could be a good fit for some people,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I don\u2019t like the way that they are being portrayed\u2014people explaining why these spaces are needed just feels incredibly gross to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Parsons uses phrases like shoved in my face <\/i>in describing how he\u2019s felt about seeing women in skimpy clothing at gyms. And in an Instagram video<\/a>, Hambrecht noted, \u201cIn a nutshell, one of the number-one places affairs and infidelity occur is the gym.\u201d<\/p>\n Unlike Parsons, however, Hambrecht doesn\u2019t believe normal gyms foster a toxic culture. In fact, he says it is one of the goals of Proverbs 27:17 to help men reintegrate back into coed fitness spaces. He believes his group of men can build each other up to that. And maybe men need more third spaces.<\/p>\n