Weirdness at the Gym

I wish (I have mentioned about 10 x to 10 different managers that this should be put in place) my gym did something like this.  A clean gym is awesome.  A dirty gym...well that is a huge turnoff. If I am ever forced to go to the gym and workout it is usually intense and a sweatfest.  Then I get no supplies to clean it up so all I can do is use my sweaty towel to clean the screen...that can't be good.

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I guess there should be a happy medium is all I'm saying.  Seriously, this is a gym that only has weights & cardio, no showers or pool or aerobics room, so small.  There must be 50 spray bottles throught the floor all with little towels on top of them.  It just seems, er, a bit excessive on the chemicals :-)

Gyms must do weird things to people.

Another example: a guy at my gym wipes the sweat from his eyes (at least I think that is what he is doing) like every other stride on the treadmill. But he does it so much, so quick that it basically looks like he is smacking himself in the face for 30 minutes. Its hysterical to watch.

I like watching the folks that get on the treadmill, set the speed to 9mph, run for 30 seconds, then jump off the belt (while it keeps moving) and stand there texting with someone on their phone. They will repeat this 3 or 4 times, getting a total of 2.5 minutes of running, then wander off to "lift weights." In a 45 minute run, I can see this happen 5 or 6 times.

I can understand WHY some of the folks want to use the recumbent bikes, since it is so much easier, but those are the people that really SHOULD BE walking or jogging to get their heart rates up, and burning more calories with harder exercise.

From an ex bodybuilder / powerlifter, I can say the most annoying thing in the gym is.

Guys doing bicep curls in the Squat rack. Used to kill me.

A close second is the "help" they hire in globo-gyms... Seriously, I don't want to PAY (premium might I add) for advice from somebody who is obviously in poor shape themselves.

I like the *idea* of wiping off excessive sweat from a machine, but in my gym it is waaay overboard as it sounds like it is in your gym as well. There are carts every 10 feet loaded with sanitizer and cloth towels, and signs EVERYWHERE telling you to wipe the equipment down after use. And you get the stink eye if you don't.

My heebie-jeebie comes from the fact that those cloth TOWELS??? OK after 100 people (heck, even ONE person) wipes their sweat and germs off of of a machine WITH THE SAME TOWEL, aren't we just spreading the germs around from machine to machine now? Totally defeats the point, IMO.

 

This might be all they can do at this point. Walking and/or jogging may hurt their joints or bring their heartrate up to a dangerous level for them. They're at the gym working out and facing the judgement of all the other members when they have every reason to want to hide from it. When I see people like this at the gym, I silently cheer them on because they have decided to try to change.

Edited by njk123 2009-09-01 11:03 AM

People that show up to the gym with their Starbucks and phone earpiece in to only walk very slowly on the treadmill and talk to their other social buddies.  Really?! Isn't coffee a little hot to quench your thirst?!  Oh yeah, your not even breaking a sweat!

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I've been using the elliptical this week as well (muscle strain), and I totally feel you on the Human Condition.  Things I have seen both inside the gym and outside it recently:

1) Woman in full, heavy makeup and gym clothes, carrying duffel bag, headed towards gym, smoking a cigarette.

2) Man using "Ab Solo" exercise machine (basically a device for doing medicine-ball situps by yourself by throwing the ball into a basketball hoop so it shoots back at you, it's actually really fun).  Although the machine is pretty fun, he clearly didn't have the necessary base of core strength to be USING it -- he would do like 2 situps and start making this horrible half-hacking, half-retching sound.  The noise was so loud that people wearing headphones would ask "Are you OK?"  It seriously sounded like he was about to die.  Inevitably he would snappishly say "NO!  I'm FINE!" and do 2 more situps and hack again.  This happened several times before he vomited in the gym.

3) Morbidly obese woman coming over to inform me that I was using the elliptical machine incorrectly, because if you sweated when you were exercising it meant that you weren't burning fat.  At the time, I was working fairly hard and didn't really want to get into a discussion about this woman's beliefs about exercise and how those beliefs may or may not match up to reality.  So I said that, in reality, if you worked at moderate and high intensities, you would end up burning more fat in the long run.  At this point, she looked down her nose (literally -- she had to actually tilt her face upwards in order to properly look down her nose at me, since I was up higher than her, but somehow she managed).  Then she surveyed my entire body with a critical air, and said "Really?" in an indescribably sarcastic, catty tone of voice!  I mean, yeah, I still need to drop maybe 10-15 pounds before I'm where I really want to be, but two things here:  1) I'm down 50 pounds from where I was at this time last year.  2) I don't have the approximate bodyfat levels of a young orca, nor do I go up to complete strangers at the gym and tell them that their workout is incorrect unless they actually seem to be in imminent physical danger!

My odd things at the gym:

- Men in the locker room trimming facial hair in front of full length mirror, buck naked.
- Man in locker room talking to self in mirror about how good looking and sexy he is.
- Women in spin class saving bikes for their friends, so they can talk during class and not actually break a sweat
- Bozos working out on the sauna floor
- Man scraping off sweat with a credit card in the sauna
- Sign by hot tub, indicating no razors (thank god)

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Orca...
Blow dry junk...
Admiring themselves...omg...
Sweat with credit card...
LMAO (thanks I needed that)(knew there was a reason I had been avoiding joining gym)

Edited by RiverRat50 2009-09-01 11:33 AM

I always enjoyed running next to the mustached man on the treadmill who has his walkman on high so that I can hear his 'eye of the tiger' pump up song next to me, while he speed walks. But that's not it... he also screams out every now and then to pump himself up. The first time I heard it I was so startled that I nearly jumped off the treadmill thinking I was about to be attacked.

What kills me is the "help" training people that are pretty significantly obese and having them do DB bicep curls and then switching to hammer curls. Seriously?? They are 100 lbs overweight, come to the gym 3x a week, and you have them do bicep curls? How about some total body exercises to shed some lbs first?

X2, I remember 100+ pounds ago and how embarrasing it was to go to the gym and feel the judgemental, real or perceived, looks.  Don't make assumptions about someones health or goals.  BTW...I used to do my 10 Min warmup each day on the recumbant because at my weight and level of fitness sitting on a spinning bike or airdine was just not possible.

It's sad, I was offered a job as head trainer at our local gym TWICE, but declined due to the company's policy was to use "their" training methods.

I don't understand... until you are a Pull up master... why you would even touch a curl bar is beyond me. Yet, bicep curls (and... bench press of course) are the #1 exercises.

Don't get me started on the "old" globo-gym... they asked me to leave because they didn't allow "those kinds of lifts" (I was Power Cleaning)

Oh, one more thing. A guy at my gym likes to show everyone how much he sweats. So, he's got on his sweat wicking shirt and shorts and he rocks out on the treadmill for 45 minutes to an hour sounding just a Lamaze class. He finishes, finds someone he knows, and goes and talks to them for 10 minutes. When he moves again, there is a 16 inch diameter pool of sweat on the floor and he's dripping like he just got out of the shower. Its disgusting.

Easy there, Speedo-boy!

Thankfully I belong to a nice gym where we don't get too many meatheads but there's one dude who's always GRRRRUNNNNTING! and it honestly sounds like he needs more fiber in his diet.

Oh and watching the dating rituals at the gym is always funny. Some of my favorite moves:

The Stretch-by-Her: When a woman is stretching a guy will wait, forever, until the person next to her moves to get that spot, then try to engage her in conversation. The best is when she gets up 30 seconds later to leave. I always wonder ... did she leave because he was there or was she really done with her stretching?

The Run-by-Her: When a woman is on the treadmill, a guy will wait, forever, until the runner next to her moves so he can get the treadmill next to her and attempt engage in conversation. It's funny to see when she just ignores him because she has headphones in. Is that a ruse or can she really not hear him?

The Aerobics-by-Her: You get the point. The best one about this is when the big, bad guy can't keep up with the class full of small, weak women. Cracks me up to see him leave halfway through just DYING.

Oh and there's always some dude trying to help the poor, hapless women lift the weights. Those guys usually get shot down pretty quickly too because, as one woman said to me, um, I mean some dude, `If I needed help I'd ask for it, but thank you.'

I will see your bicep curls and raise you a wrist-curler.

There is some dude at my gym that does situps, pushups and dips on the bleachers in the sauna naked except for his shoes.  Grunts and groans alot and appears to be in great pain.  I don't even know why I go in that thing anyway, it seems there is frequently something strange going on in there but yet I keep going back.  WTF, I guess that's for another thread or perhaps a therapist.