Gym Dandy

I just recently joined my sixth, or so, gym.  No, not concurrently; I’m all for fitness but there are limits.  My first gym was Gold’s.  Joined it in the early 80s.  As I’ve gone from gym to gym I’ve noticed that they’ve both changed and remained the same. For one the name has changed.  What used to be a gym is now a fitness center.  I guess the name gym conjures up visions of  boxers and weightlifters in a Spartan testosterone filled room, smelling of sweat and punctuated with the sounds of grunts and clanking weights; intimidating.  They’re now called fitness centers; much more egalitarian.  Gyms, pardon me, fitness centers have modernized, offer more amenities and options and cater to a wider demographic, but one aspect of the gymnasium or fitness center that has never changed is that it is a great place to observe human behavior, sometimes in its most ill-mannered or make you shake your head in disbelief, bizarre forms.

Gyms have always had their own set of theoretical protocols usually associated with taking care of the equipment and also with being courteous to your fellow members.  The real protocol however is to often ignore the theoretical protocols and destroy equipment and disgust your fellows.

Let’s take sweat.  When I joined Gold’s, sweat seemed to be a good thing.  It showed that you are actually exerting yourself.  There was one small form of etiquette that sweat required and that was to put a towel down on that bench you were laying on.  Over the years the level of toxicity in sweat has apparently been on the rise.  That’s because when I joined 24 Hour Fitness in nearby Richmond some years later members were admonished to use a towel to thoroughly wipe down the equipment.  Later I joined Hercules Fitness in the town in which I live and it has dispensers posted around the gym with sanitized wipes to wipe off the equipment.  Most recently I joined my current gym and it has various stations with spray bottles of disinfectant and towels.  I never knew that someone else’s sweat could be so horribly offensive.  Not that I want to bathe in it (well maybe Diane Lane’s but we’ll save that for another post) but c’mon; really?  Sanitizer?  I’ve seen folks, who apparently distrusting the honor of their fellow members, take the sanitizer and wipe down nearly every square inch of a piece of equipment before using it.  Do they ever sit at a park bench that over the years has been shat on by a legion of squirrels and pigeons?  Do they ever hold hands with someone or as my Uncle Al used to call it, swap spit?

I can’t imagine that these sanitized individuals ever go in the locker rooms because I’ve seen some behavior there that’s made me want to crawl into a hazmat suit.

One of the more memorable was at 24 Hour Fitness where some fellow was at the sink shaving his head.  No not a little touch up with a blade but actual locks of hair falling in clumps on the floor around him.  To this day I wonder if he at least had the decency to take a towel and mop up that mess.  I tend to doubt it.

There’s a lot of nudity in the locker room.  A female Facebook friend commented about how disgusting it is to see all of those women walking around naked.  Really?  I don’t know what to say about that.  Maybe I can see her point though.  This happens in the men’s locker room as well.  And it’s not just walking from locker to shower and back to locker.  It’s more like strutting around, brushing teeth, strolling to the bathroom stall, brushing teeth or standing in front of the TV to watch an inning of baseball.  And it’s so often the 300 pound guy with boobs an enormous gut, and a back with so much hair it would make a grizzly bear envious.

Hey buddy can you wrap up in a towel or put on a pair of drawers before shaving in front of the mirror?  Did you know your winky is dangling in that sink that your fellow members might want to use?

And just when I thought that the new gym, uh, fitness cent...screw it you know what I mean, that I just joined has a more mature and well-mannered crowd along came the guy shaving his nether regions in the shower.  But that wasn’t the extent of it because you know how those little hairs can cling so stubbornly to the blade?  He found it necessary to give the razor an occasional vigorous shake to dislodge the little buggers.  Oh look, it’s raining pubes in here.

  

And then a day later; Say sport, is it really necessary to dry your bean with the community dryer?  Really?   I know the device is called a BLOW dryer but I don’t think that’s the job the inventor had in mind. 

When you go to a gym you often see and sometimes get to know a core group of regulars.  That’s except for that one particular time of the year.  For anyone who regularly visits the gym the worst time of the year is that two month period from January through February.  This is time of the resolutionaries; those folks who think that they added a few extra pounds over the holidays but actually have been sedentary, gluttonous sloths for years.  And so as they’re packing in that fifth plate of food at the New Year’s Day all you can eat buffet they announce to the fam that they’ve resolved to join a gym and get back that lithe body that they had 15 or 20 or 40 years ago.  They crowd into the gym, take up equipment time, walk around in a daze, join a class, hire a trainer and wheeze through a month or so of halfhearted workouts until they realize that getting in shape requires work, sweat, some discomfort and yes, real honest to goodness resolve (that’s where the word resolution comes from).  By President's Day they've become discouraged the crowds have thinned and the only folks you see are the regulars you’ve seen every day for months.  

Every gym that I’ve ever belonged to has offered some sort of nutritional option.  When I belonged to a racquetball club back when I was in my early twenties we would sit in the spa and sip beers that the club sold.  Gold’s offered a number of powdered supplements, proteins and carbohydrates and mega-doses of vitamins that, as my dad used to say, you might as well just toss straight into the toilet and cut out the middleman.  Given the times and the number of beefy bodies at Gold’s I would imagine that some independent entrepreneurs offered some injectable options that years later would help to fuck up the baseball record books. 24 Hour offered some energy bars and operated a juice bar.  But it's Hercules Fitness that has taken nutritional options to a whole new level.

The club partners with a young lady who teaches classes in something called cleanse and detox (No, not that kind of detox) that is supposed to remove toxins, parasites and colon build up from your body; sort of an intestinal Drano I guess.  A major component of this program is something called PaleoGreens, a powdered drink mix that is supposed to clean out your guts and cure what ails you.  The website claims that, among other things, it will give you a strong liver, heal the intestines, keep you regular, take care of skin problems, give you stronger hair and nails and accelerate wound healing.  I’ve heard people in the gym talk about PaleoGreens and from what I could gather it tastes like pure shit.  But don’t take my word for it.  I checked a five star review on the website that proclaims, in a classic case of damning with faint praise, “the taste is acceptable.”  Another five star review offers, “If you don't mind the dark green taste, it will be great.”  I’m not sure what exactly a “dark green taste” is but I feel safe in saying that it isn’t something that Bobby Flay is aiming for when he dons an apron.  Maybe part of the problem is that the name PaleoGreens doesn’t exactly stimulate the appetite.  When I hear PaleoGreens the first thing that comes to mind is that picture you see in kid’s dinosaur books of a Brontosaurus with green slime hanging from its mouth.  It amazes me that highly paid, supposedly smart people can get together in a conference room and decide that PaleoGreens would be a great name for a product that they want people to spend their hard earned rubles on and then actually ingest.  I think they should come up with a more appetizing name for the product.  I suggest calling it “bacon.” In fact I would go so far as to suggest tossing the greens and just eating bacon but I don’t suppose that would fly because my toxic, un-cleansed and parasitic gut tells me bacon is a paleo no-no.  I’ll wager that burgers, baloney, bread, booze, steak, chicken, churros, cheese, chocolate, coffee, candy, meat, potatoes, pastries, pasta, pizza, sausage, hot dogs, cookies, cakes, ice cream, an apple, a pear, a plum, a cherry and any good thing to make us all merry and anything else that might be enjoyable to eat are all paleo no-nos’s.  My guess is that the regimen calls for PaleoGreens a couple times a day and a bland tofu, grains and egg white concoction for your “regular” meal.  Call me a know nothing cynical bastard but when I hear PaleoGreens two words come quickly to mind; snake oil.  The website says that PaleoGreens contains grass juices, algae, enzymes, fruits, vegetables and berries.  I’ve an alternate idea; eat your vegetables.  I don’t know what to tell you about grass juices.  I suppose you could just go out to a field and graze.  It isn't really a testimonial but my dog does that now and again and then she vomits; is that the cleanse part?  As for the algae I just happen to have some in my pool at the moment; feel free, I need to get rid of that shit before summer rolls around.  Have you noticed that I’m poking fun at this?  Hey, maybe the stuff works.  You have your daily paleo and a couple of meals that taste like nothing at best and the newspaper at worst and then what? Do men and women grow inches in those places where it’s supposed to count?  Do you leap out of bed every morning ready to take on the world? Can you run faster than a speeding bullet?  Do you notice that your liver is stronger?  I always thought it was a strong son of a bitch to begin with.  Does it add a year or two to your life?  I picture the two octogenarians at the senior center.  One says to the other, “I got to be this old by eating PaleoGreens, grilled chicken, egg whites, chickpea paste and tofu all without seasoning.”  The second one says, “Really?  I ‘ve been eating sausage and biscuits and gravy every morning and having two martinis every afternoon at five.”  And then the first guy says, “Balls.”  The gym, I’m sorry, fitness center that I just joined has energy bars, energy drinks and vitamins.  It also has microwave popcorn and snacks.  If you’re old enough to pay ninety five bucks a month you’re old enough to name your own poison. I think I digressed a bit.  Sorry about that.

You’re probably reading this (well maybe you probably aren’t) and thinking, why does he go to these horrible places called gyms, er, fitness centers?  Well let’s face it, we aren’t amused by good behavior so that’s why I’m writing about the, uh, different behavior.  But in all seriousness gyms are great places.  If you put it to good use with a real sense of resolve a gym can do wonders for you.  I’ve been inspired by folks I’ve met and seen at the gym.  There is my all-time favorite spin instructor who was at one time very overweight.  She basically lost a person and is now a personal trainer.  There is the fellow who I regularly saw at Hercules Fitness.  He was grossly overweight and would struggle through a cardio and weight workout, stopping often to catch his breath but seemed to be making progress when I let my membership expire.  There are the very fit who do some incredibly tough workouts and show some amazing determination.  I highly recommend gyms for everyone at every level.  And not just during January but all year long.  Just do me a big favor.  When you’re shaving?  Put on your drawers and keep your lizard out of the sink.