Should you wear your jewelry when you go to the gym?
It’s a question that comes up again and again while we work with our clients. The bottom line is no. As much as being newly engaged is something worth telling the world, there really is no reason to wear your ring to the gym and several good reasons not to.
First of all, you go gym to get a good work out and this more than likely involves intense physical activity with your hands. This is a recipe for injury. If you are boxing, you might bruise your finger or the ones around it. If you spar with a partner, you may well unintentionally injure them. It can affect your grip while lifting weights or playing golf or tennis. If you jam or injure your finger and don’t have the presence of mind to remove your ring before there is swelling, your ring may well have to be cut off your finger or worse! Just look at what happened to Jimmy Fallon of the Tonight Show (http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/14/media/jimmy-fallon-injury-finger/ ). If you swim, water (especially salt water) causes your fingers to contract and you may not even feel your ring falling off.
On a slightly more materialistic side, do you really want to damage your ring? We made a stunning eternity ring for a customer a few years ago and after a few weeks she called to complain that the diamonds felt rough. When she came in, we saw that 6 of the diamonds were heavily chipped or broken. It turns out this customer was a cross fit fanatic and never took her rings off. She had been doing barbell snatches, pull-ups and rope climbs with her rings on. Needless to say she no longer wears them to the gym! This is an extreme example but even a plain, stone-free shank can get bent while lifting weights. Boxing with your rings on can loosen the center stone and deform the ring as well.
I often see women wearing their ring on a chain around their neck but I have heard stories of scratched corneas from bouncing chains on runners, so I would not recommend that either.
So what should you do? The best would be to leave your rings at home before you go to the gym. Hidden and locked in your gym bag or locker are probably the most logical things to do. One of my clients once told me she hid her rings in a tennis ball in her gym bag. She put a 2 inch slice in the ball and just squeezed it to open it. What’s more inconspicuous than a tennis ball in a gym bag?
