Observations from the gymnasium

I have noticed that since Barack took office, my articles have adopted a very serious, frustrated tone. My last article was about funny people-- and it definitely wasn't funny. So here's a more lighthearted topic.



I've been wanting to write about my gymnasium observations for awhile. There is simply too much weirdness that goes on there on a daily basis.

Since I've finally made a conscious effort to get my ass into some sort of respectable shape, I've been spending more and more time working out. And of course, the more time you spend in a fitness club, the more you notice about it and the people in it. Here we go.

-- There seem to be very few guys that do both cardio and weightlifting. You see the same meatheads in there every day, always lifting weights, many times never breaking a sweat.

Then there are the runner guys who show off by hitting the treadmill for like half an hour at 8 mph, just because they can. You never see the runner guys mixing in with the meatheads, because neither one does the other guys' exercises. You occasionally see a runner giving a meathead the stank eye and vice versa. There is an uneasy ceasefire going on here-- probably since the days of Ancient Greece.

I suppose I'm more meathead than runner guy, but since I've been so grossly out of shape for so long, natural law dictates that I must do both types of exercise to make progress. Therefore I am able to blend in amongst both groups unhindered.

-- What I want to know is why, exactly, the runner guys even bother paying $54 bucks a month to run on a treadmill and do ab work, when they can just run outdoors and do crunches on the floor of their townhouse while listening to Coldplay. Mystery...

-- These days you see more old timers in there. It's both pathetic and inspiring to see 80 year olds trying to do stuff, especially when everyone around them is able to do 10 to 20 times more than them at everything. Good for them.

-- The biggest problem with my gymnasium is that members have no individual control over what's on the TVs. You have to go up to the front desk and ask one of the disinterested ladies who are generally texting on their iPhone to please change the channel. It's always a chore. There are a good amount of TVs, but they are always on the same channels. They never anticipate big or nationally televised sporting events (or even local teams for that matter... Giants/A's/Warriors/Sharks). Two TVs are eternally on ESPN, and the rest alternate between CNN and the radical leftist MSNBC.

All I ask is a Warriors game and a little bit of Glenn Beck once every three weeks. Is that so much to ask?

-- Many women are self-conscious about working out in public (dudes too, to a certain degree). This is why I see a constantly rotating cast of random out of shape chicks in there. They'll go a few times, get intimidated, think perverts are watching them, and give up. The same thing happens to dudes who feel emasculated by the meatheads and the runner guys.

-- This part needs to be said. I totally understand why women don't want to work out in a place side by side with dudes. We're in there all fired up, hopped up on multi-vitamins and creatine, listening to our iPods on our extreme iPod arm bands, and when those sorts of juices are flowing, we cannot help but notice babes (like we wouldn't anyway). It's a magnified effect.

On that note, ladies, we cannot help but check you out at the gymnasium when you're wearing spandex capris and a sports bra. Seriously... what the hell do you expect from us? Some of these chicks look like they're ready to hit South Beach, and we're the perverts? We're only human.

-- I wish I didn't have to cover this next part, but this must be said as well. To all the exhibitionists in the locker room: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

Take your goddamn shower, and tie a goddamn towel around your goddamn waist. The last thing I want to see either before, after, or during my workout is another man's naked ass and/or junk.

Seriously. And this is a generational thing. It's only the 40+ year olds who do this. It's gotten to the point where I've literally gone blind for about 10 seconds a couple of times. I'm just trying to get in there, get changed and go work out. Never look straight ahead, God knows what you'll see.

It's like, really? You can't put a towel on while you're shaving or blow drying your comb over? The other day I was walking in there, and right as I went around the corner, I literally almost ran into some old dude, who was standing directly in the entrance to the locker room, doing arm extensions with one of those rubber band things--- TOTALLY NAKED.

Unacceptable. Totally unacceptable, unnecessary, and asinine behavior.

-- One last observation that I must cover involves douchebags. These douches don't fit into either the runner guy or meathead categories... they are neither; they are wannabe meatheads. These are the guys who dress up to go to the gym. They make sure their colors match, and that they're wearing shirts that leave their tattoos exposed. If that means wearing a sleeveless shirt, they do that. If it means wearing a wifebeater, they wear those. I'm fairly certain that if these guys had back tattoos that some of them would wear a backless evening gown.

Most of these douchebags even accessorize with hats, wrist/armbands, or oversized headphones. These individuals generally are looked down on by both meatheads and runner guys, but they always arrive in pairs, so they feel cooler and don't get exposed for the attention-seeking frauds that they are. They can also be spotted because they're the ones air-rapping and wildly swinging their arms around between biceps curls. They generally exercise for under an hour and two thirds of their time is spent acting cool. Please check out this site if you are not sure what these guys look like.

Did I leave anything out? What category do you fall into?