Down At The Gym
I'm off to the gym this morning. One of those large ones that charge a huge amount of money to people who have no hope of ever getting in shape, and who only show up twice before returning to a life of donuts and sloth. I work out four or five times a week, lifting weights and, although I think of myself as "more muscled than average" I don't fall into the group that waxes their chest, goes to a tanning salon and injects steroids in order to develop a look that would get me attention from gay men.
This might seem like pointless information but if you're going to visualize the scene, you need to know that I'm not a spandex-wearing, cardio machine freak or a corpulent blob in ill-fitting jogging bottoms wandering aimlessly from one machine to the next. I like lifting weights - it's relaxing but hard work, in a good way, for someone who doesn't get anything physical out of my day job (apart from carrying bags through airports).
Anyway, the thing about lifting weights is that you get time between sets to look around and notice your fellow gym-users. This is not always a good thing. In addition to the aforementioned fat men looking to accelerate a myocardial infarction there are always lots of wizened and wrinkly fitness women whose look combines excessive tanning and low body fat with the relentless march of time, resulting in the "health-corpse" effect. Like one of those long-interred bodies on CSI, only with less earth adhering and more of an orange color.
There is a sprinkling of obvious steroid users (and probably many more not so obvious) including one with a comical lack of neck, as well as occasional groups of teenage boys desperately trying to close the gap with the older teenage guys that teenage girls inevitably fancy. The interesting characters generally fall into two categories, however - those who wear funny stuff and those who do funny things.
In the former category is Spandex Man, a forty-ish should-know-better guy who wears colorful lycra outfits with matching shoes and visors. He seems to have an endless supply. I like him, partly because he's harmless but mostly because he skipped the tanning bed and has the same pallid looking skin as me. I don't actually talk to him, you understand. Gym etiquette requires that you talk to very few people, generally only after nodding at them in passing for about six months and, maybe, asking them for a spot. Plus he wears lycra and clearly could be a raving poof.
In the interesting characters class the best, generally, are people who don't have any idea what they're doing. You watch them and laugh silently. Or out loud, if you're with a buddy. Now I have the greatest respect for anyone who shows up to the gym, especially the old and fat - good for them, they're trying, and it doesn't matter if you lift bugger-all weight, you're still making the effort. But there's a small group of people who mess about trying to lift too much weight with abysmal form and give the rest of us a laugh. My favorite is Mr. Baggy Shorts. The list of his transgressions is long indeed (including the most comical bicep curls ever seen) but he does this one exercise (and I have no idea what the hell it's supposed to develop) involving sitting on a bench with a small bar in his hands, resting on his knees and then jiggling. Not wrist curls or anything like that. Just jiggling. From the back you'd swear he was frantically pulling himself off, and I challenge anyone to see it and not laugh.
It's now time of year when the January new-arrivals have all given up and the regulars among us get the gym back to ourselves. The only consolation durng January is that you get to see guys go to the bench and load the bar with whatever weight they just saw someone else using. They then unrack it and it drops irrevocably to their chest (or teeth, if they really overdo it) and they have to wait for someone to lift it off them.
Anyway, it's time for me to go now, and I only hope Spandex Man and Mr. Baggy Shorts aren't both in today. I overdid the abdominal workout yesterday and it hurts when I laugh...
Copyright 2007 Edward Bison
This might seem like pointless information but if you're going to visualize the scene, you need to know that I'm not a spandex-wearing, cardio machine freak or a corpulent blob in ill-fitting jogging bottoms wandering aimlessly from one machine to the next. I like lifting weights - it's relaxing but hard work, in a good way, for someone who doesn't get anything physical out of my day job (apart from carrying bags through airports).
Anyway, the thing about lifting weights is that you get time between sets to look around and notice your fellow gym-users. This is not always a good thing. In addition to the aforementioned fat men looking to accelerate a myocardial infarction there are always lots of wizened and wrinkly fitness women whose look combines excessive tanning and low body fat with the relentless march of time, resulting in the "health-corpse" effect. Like one of those long-interred bodies on CSI, only with less earth adhering and more of an orange color.
There is a sprinkling of obvious steroid users (and probably many more not so obvious) including one with a comical lack of neck, as well as occasional groups of teenage boys desperately trying to close the gap with the older teenage guys that teenage girls inevitably fancy. The interesting characters generally fall into two categories, however - those who wear funny stuff and those who do funny things.
In the former category is Spandex Man, a forty-ish should-know-better guy who wears colorful lycra outfits with matching shoes and visors. He seems to have an endless supply. I like him, partly because he's harmless but mostly because he skipped the tanning bed and has the same pallid looking skin as me. I don't actually talk to him, you understand. Gym etiquette requires that you talk to very few people, generally only after nodding at them in passing for about six months and, maybe, asking them for a spot. Plus he wears lycra and clearly could be a raving poof.
In the interesting characters class the best, generally, are people who don't have any idea what they're doing. You watch them and laugh silently. Or out loud, if you're with a buddy. Now I have the greatest respect for anyone who shows up to the gym, especially the old and fat - good for them, they're trying, and it doesn't matter if you lift bugger-all weight, you're still making the effort. But there's a small group of people who mess about trying to lift too much weight with abysmal form and give the rest of us a laugh. My favorite is Mr. Baggy Shorts. The list of his transgressions is long indeed (including the most comical bicep curls ever seen) but he does this one exercise (and I have no idea what the hell it's supposed to develop) involving sitting on a bench with a small bar in his hands, resting on his knees and then jiggling. Not wrist curls or anything like that. Just jiggling. From the back you'd swear he was frantically pulling himself off, and I challenge anyone to see it and not laugh.
It's now time of year when the January new-arrivals have all given up and the regulars among us get the gym back to ourselves. The only consolation durng January is that you get to see guys go to the bench and load the bar with whatever weight they just saw someone else using. They then unrack it and it drops irrevocably to their chest (or teeth, if they really overdo it) and they have to wait for someone to lift it off them.
Anyway, it's time for me to go now, and I only hope Spandex Man and Mr. Baggy Shorts aren't both in today. I overdid the abdominal workout yesterday and it hurts when I laugh...
Copyright 2007 Edward Bison
posted by Mr Bison at
6:29 PM
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