t’s 8 a.m. You look out the window of your tiny dorm room, and it’s pouring rain. Nevertheless, you decide to venture out of your warm, comfy bed and do something good for yourself after a long night in Lamont Library: You’re going to go to the gym!

You have two and a half hours before your first class starts — plenty of time! What can go wrong? You put on your Alo Yoga sports bra and Lululemon leggings, grab your umbrella, and head towards Hemenway, the MAC, or even the QRAC — because, as a freshman, you don’t have a House gym to fall back on — only to find the place packed, with lines for nearly every machine.

Such is the reality of many Harvard students, from the College and the graduate schools alike. The free-weight areas can be packed with lifting barbells and dumbbells. Those hoping to use a strength training machine, meanwhile, may find only one or two options for an exercise — if the gym has a machine for it at all.

The shortage is especially frustrating for students working out their lower bodies, and even more so for those on a mission to grow their glutes. This raises the vital question: does Harvard Recreation hate big butts?

At Hemenway, MAC, and the QRAC, I couldn’t find a single hip abductor machine.

A hip abductor machine lets you sit with your feet on platforms and push your knees outward against resistance. This activates the outer thighs and hip-abductor muscles. It specifically stands out from other strength training machines or movements with free weights because it activates gluteus medius and minimus, essential for a rounded posterior but also for hip stability and motion.

I was puzzled the first time I stepped into the MAC and couldn’t find one. “Am I blind?” I said under my breath. At first, I just attributed it to my unfamiliarity with the dungeon-like MAC. How could there not be a machine for one of the simplest and most effective exercises? I must have missed it.

My luck was no better at Hemenway, so I went hunting my cherished hip abductor machine. Spoiler alert: The mission was short. The QRAC had squat racks and a rock-climbing wall, but no hip abductor machine. And the House gyms? Unless you’re a House resident (or friends with one), your Harvard ID won’t get you in.

The result is that — at least as a freshman or a graduate student — you’re left with no hip abductor machine at all.

“Without a strong butt, the chances of getting hurt are sky-high,” trainer Stephan Pasterino told The Washington Post. “It supports your back, it supports your hips, it drives you through motion and accelerates motion, it helps to prevent injuries in the knees, even in the shoulders.”

One could argue that the existing dumbbells provide more than enough equipment. For gymgoers who prefer free weights or don’t need specialized machines, that may be true. Covington W. Jackson ’27, for example, tells me he has “never felt the need for more machines.”

But some machines provide more support and control than free weights, which can be useful for beginners or people returning from injuries.

“For someone who’s had two shoulder surgeries, I think more availability of those kinds of machines to protect yourself while also trying to work out, I think is pretty important,” Emanuele “Manny” DiRubba, a second-year Harvard Law School student, says.

Plus, for those who are trying to exercise their glutes, alternatives to things like the hip abductor machines are often inconvenient, requiring a lot of planning and set up, which is difficult in the overcrowded gyms. “In the Harvard gyms, you have to, like, awkwardly take up a bench and pull out all this stuff, and it’s really, and then you’re thrusting in front of people, which is also weird,” says Jessica Patey, a Ph.D. candidate in the Committee on the Study of Religion who trains four times per week (usually at Hemenway or the QRAC gym).

Hala Arnouk, a second-year Harvard Law School student, also described the lack of both hip abductor and adductor machines at Hemenway. “I never actually hit them anymore because there’s nowhere to do that,” Arnouk says. She has had to adjust her workout routine to make do with the equipment available — which has taken time that she would otherwise have spent doing things she is more excited about.

Many of the students I talk to are nostalgic for their gyms back home. Adam Bazzi and DiRubba, both second-year Harvard Law students, say that Hemenway has the best selection of machines, but that’s “a pretty low bar.” DiRubba adds that his undergraduate college, Colgate — despite being much smaller — had superior gymnasium facilities, and the two especially miss having a hack squat machine and a hip abductor machine — or anything more than “just one shoulder- or chest-related machine.

Oksana Parafeniuk, a Nieman Fellow from Kyiv, goes to Hemenway because it’s the closest to her Cambridge home. She, too, misses her old gym and says that the lack of lower body machines here has forced her to adapt her training regimen. “When I first came to this gym, I was like, okay, I have to reprogram what I do, because I couldn’t do exactly the same thing that I’m used to doing,” she says.

The students I spoke with said the available equipment did not always meet their needs. There are plenty of free weights and dozens of cardio machines, some of which sit unused while students wait for strength-training equipment. Perhaps Harvard Recreation wants us all to become cardio bunnies.

The selection also raises a question about which workouts Harvard Recreation prioritizes. Students interested in lower-body strength training described fewer options than they wanted, and several said they had to adapt their routines. Without a fuller accounting of equipment use, it is difficult to know whether the balance reflects demand. (A spokesperson for Harvard Recreation did not respond to a request for comment.)

Glutes are just as important as biceps and strong lungs, and one ought not to be favored over the other.

Working out shouldn’t require an Odyssey for the machine you need, waiting in a BerryLine-length queue or not finding what you are looking for at all. At stake is the question of whether Harvard will be a home for big butts.

I, for one, hope it will be.