What men really talk about in the locker room (hint: it's rarely women)

Donald Trump looks like a man who hasn't seen a gym since the 1970s. Which possibly explains his assertion that it is normal for men in changing rooms to brag about sexually assaulting women. Perhaps it was, in his gym-going days – in the same way that racism, drink-driving and Blue Nun were once acceptable.

Trump hasn't just offended women the world over, he's denigrated male gym-goers. Scores of high-profile US athletes have taken to social media to distance themselves from his comments. "That ain't our locker room talk," said Udonis Haslem, NBA veteran and Miami Heat captain, on Tuesday. "I don't know what locker room he's been in."

As a regular gym user for 30 years, I've towelled down in walnut-panelled changing rooms alongside celebrities and captains of industry, and showered in spit-and-sawdust gyms with men with broken noses and prison tattoos – and I can tell you that, when stripped back to our birthday suits, the topics of conversation are always the same, it's only the vernacular that differs.

Here are seven locker room subjects you will really hear in one of the last vestiges of male-only space.

1. Divorce. This is the only acceptable framework in which the subject of the opposite sex can be mentioned. In gym changing rooms, divorced men will hark on about their perceived financial misfortunes to anyone who will listen. Get several divorcees together in a changing room and the size of their alimony orders becomes a perverse bragging right.

2. Injury. In the amphitheatre of the locker room, men have a captive audience. And when men have an audience, they like nothing more than to moan about their ailments and their failing health. The young boast about muscles torn asunder under the strain of exertion; the old nod in the sympathetic knowledge that youthful exuberance begets sciatica.

3. Chicken. I kid you not. How many grams should they eat? What is the best way to cook it? Skin on or off? Gym users of all ages are obsessed with nutrition in general and with chicken breast in particular, which is revered as the magic bean of the fitness world.

4. Vanity. As a rule, men who use gyms believe they look 10 years younger than they are – all that treadmilling like human hamsters an attempt to outpace old age. There is a man at the gym I attend who, when shirtless, will regularly ask strangers, "How old do you think I am?" He's 60. He looks it. But everyone humours him.

5. Cars. Men will try their best to draw attention to the fact they have a new one, without sounding boastful – leading to the shoehorning of their new Jaguar into the most tangential of topics. For example, "I've got enough boot space in my new F-Pace to fit 100 kilos of whey powder, but the suspension in sports mode jars my back injury", would score highly and impress your peers.

6. Other gym users. There are two tribes in any gym: the puritanical, sweaty cardiovascular devotees and the preening weightlifters who do their hair before a workout and use "caffeinated" moisturisers to combat their eye bags. Both bitch about each other constantly.

7. Donald Trump's hair. Following Monday's presidential debate, no one mentioned Trump's grope boasts, but all mentioned his preposterous mane. To a man, they were fascinated with it. Is it a comb-over? Is it a wig? Is it animal, vegetable or mineral? Perhaps it was because of the age profile of the male gym users there, who were largely over 50 and thinning (on top, at least).

Telegraph, London