Four Reasons Why You Shouldn't Join a Gym

Yesterday I found out that the membership to my local gym is just about a month away from expiring.  This is great for two reasons:  A) I'll be leaving the Cape in a matter of weeks indefinitely, and B)...

I can't stand my gym, as it's been noted more than once.

So here's four reasons why you shouldn't bother joining a gym.  Now, mind you, I'm still advocating for physical fitness and well being, but joining a gym isn't for everyone (or anyone, really).  There's plenty of things you can do OUTSIDE of four walls for physical activity.

1. You'll save money.

Gym memberships are ridiculously overpriced, and that's just walking in the door.  My membership was a locked-in rate of $55/month for 15 months, or something ridiculous like that.  And I really wasn't getting much out of it.  Sure, I had access to TWO facilities, but what's the point when both are terrible?  And again, aside from a few cursory classes, everything you'd want to do at our gym cost money.  Rock wall, massages, training, tanning, etc.  What was our monthly dues going towards?  The NEW RESTAURANT the gym management wanted to put in?!  The parking lot was a fucking mess (I, for reals, watched a pot hole swallow a Jeep Wrangler whole the other day...), how about instead of dumping a bunch of membership cash into what will inevitably be a failed venture (who the hell is going to say to their spouse "hunny, let's try out that new place... you know, at the GYM....), how about investing in a parking lot that won't require me to seek out a new tire and spinal alignment?

My $55 bucks/month will be better served either being squirreled away or .... paying for more ridiculous shit I don't need.  But either way, it's better than going to the mismanagement of someone else's property and business.

2.  You'll save time.

You really have to add it up, but think about it:  How much time are you technically "wasting" at the gym?  I'm not talking about your actual workout, but think of the amount of time it takes you to get over to and back from the gym?  For us, we're fortunate enough to live just a short drive from the main facility.  On nice days, I can run the three miles, work out, and run back, so it's not so much of a waste.  But having to get ready (about ten minutes), get out of our silly-ass neighborhood (five minutes), drive thru traffic (ten minutes, longer in the summer), get inside and into the locker room (five minutes) and on to the gym floor only to have to then warm up (another ten minutes) that's ... let's see... nearly 45 minutes of bullshit JUST TO START WORKING OUT!

Then you have to quantify leaving, which isn't nearly as long, but still, thru summer traffic, on Cape?  Yeah, you won't be home for another twenty minutes.  That's nearly an hour a day, saved, that you could be doing something else.

I realized a long time ago that the bulk of my workouts can be done at home, in my living room.  My current base workout is this:

4x25 push-ups
4x25 sit-ups w/25lb
2/20 pull-ups
planks
and some free weights.  I usually also either cycle or run for a warm up.

So, side from the free weights, I can be doing all of this stuff at home.  I'm only missing a declining bench to do my sit-ups on, which I can supplement by doing other abdominal exercises (bicycle kicks, crunches, etc)  Running is virtually free, and I already own a pretty boss bicycle.  We have a pull-up bar in the bedroom over the closet.  Total time to do all those exercises: 25 minutes, plus another half hour run?  That's 60-sum-odd minutes, roughly the amount of time it would take to go and come back from the gym.

3.  You won't have to deal with dickheads.

My gym is crawling with sweaty goonish guidos, semi-catatonic elderly people, and fat housewives glued to Rachael Ray on Tv.  On the weekends, it's even worse.

There are unsupervised children, and separately, the place is usually unusually dirty at all times.  Working out from home, and not paying money to use this facility will cut your stress levels in half, nearly instantly. 

I went to a yoga class last month and couldn't concentrate because I could hear the assholes thru the divider laughing like jackasses, they were so loud.  Now I'll be able to slap a yoga DVD into the machine in my living room and just sit on my yoga mat in full tranquility.

No longer will I have to wait to use a piece of equipment that some barely literate idiot is hogging up as he sends text messages between sets.  No longer will I have to wipe up someone else's disgusting sweat puddles when they're done with something I want to use.

And the Tvs.... jesus, the Tvs.... Touch one and the whole peanut gallery on the ellipticals flip the F out, that is, when the Tvs are working....

4.  You won't have to deal with broken equipment.

If your gym is anything like mine, you're familiar with the constant disappointment of going to use a favorite piece of equipment only to find out it's broken.  Whether it's a certain treadmill (face it, using a different one feels "weird.") or bench, or weight, or medicine ball, not having that exact piece of gym equipment can make or break a workout.  At our gym, at least 35% of shit is constantly out of order, missing or broken.

My wife really liked doing push-ups with those hand-grip things.  She used them twice before they went "missing."  She found them a few days later, broken, kicked to the side of the room.  Same goes with medicine balls she likes to use to do squats.

For me, I don't like running on treadmills, but I'll put up with it for a few miles before the rest of my workout.  Half of the treadmills, and there's at least ten treadmills at our gym, are either broken, or too fucked up to use correctly: the belts slip, the speed is all messed up giving you an inaccurate reading, etc.  I did three miles the other day when I had the speed set to 7 minute miles, and the read-out told me I ran the mileage in 28 minutes.  THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE!  Great, the treadmills are so fucked up at my gym, they can't even do simple math right.

When you work out in your own home, that's your equipment you using, so that means you'll take care of it, one (it was presumably your money, right?), and two, no one else will come in one time and completely fuck it up while you're away (usually.).  The only downside is space: if you live in a small two-bedroom apartment like we do, there's not a whole lot of room to store equipment. 

For instance, we have some plate weights, some yoga mats, some hand-push-up-grip things, a jump rope, pull-up bar.... and that's about it.  And even I think we have too much shit here, especially without a dedicated room for it.  The one advantage to going to a gym, in this case, it's someone else holding on to all of this shit for you.

So essentially, you're paying for storage.

They Make Yoga Pants for Men, Right?

"Do they make yoga pants for men?"  I found myself asking this as my wife and I stood next to our dryer, and she fished out a pair of tight-but-comfortable looking capris made out of sweat-material.  I was dressed in essentially my pajamas; green Nike warm ups, slightly oversized electric blue t shirt from EMS with a pair of hiking boots on it with the words "Hikers do it in the woods" - perfect for I felt at that moment: an outsider about to undertake a rather large step from his comfort zone.

Candidly, I had never thought of myself to be the type of person who would wind up sitting on a tiny, thin-ass mat in a room with other people with the lights turned on low and New Age music softly humming over the speakers, trying to push my (obscenely rigid) body into the shape of the letter "W."  While I consider myself to be an athlete, I never took yoga serious.

We had decided, earlier in the week, that we were going to try one of the free yoga classes my gym/health spa/beehive of obnoxious children provides on Saturday mornings.  This want came to mind after sitting thru a lecture on my "Health and Fitness" class regarding a person's level of flexibility and how that's relative to health concerns as they age. 

I do not want to be a bent, crippled, barely-ambulatory little old man at 40 or beyond.  With the level of punishment I put on my body with my endurance training, I need something to help keep my body from deteriorating faster than it already is (for instance, my left knee has really been bothering me lately, and I don't even want to talk about my feet... think "Baghdad 2003" and you'll have an idea.).

So yoga seemed like a fun idea.  Something new, something I could see and find benefits in.  But like anything I'm new to, I tend to be really awkward.

My wife has gone to several different yoga classes over the years, so she knew what she was doing.  The morning of, we arrived early with our mats, in order to get a "good spot" in the studio.  She started to get out of her clothes (a hoodie, uggs) and padded around the hardwood floor barefoot.  I stared down at her feet.

I had to be barefoot for this?

Like I said just a second ago, I don't like my feet.  Actually, I don't like feet, period.  But I'm really self-conscience about MY feet, because, well, their pretty gross.  While training for my marathon last summer/fall, I burnt out three toenails.  One grew back, the other two, on my two big toes, are... well, I can't think of a polite way to describe them.  It's just really gross.  Now, a bunch of strangers would have the pleasure of looking at my mangled, rotten feets (later that night, when I explained my apprehension to my wife, she looked at me and said "we were in a low-lit room, in the back, and you were worried about people seeing your feet?  Who are you?!).

We were alone for only a few minutes.  We waited out in the waiting area on the other side of the retractable studio wall and played on our phones while an all Kenny Loggins' 80's Movie Soundtrack (It's All Right, Danger Zone, Holiday Road, Foot Loose - seriously.  But I can't complain, since this happened, I've add a "Kenny Loggins" station on my Pandora) pumped from the speakers over our heads.  My gym (both locations) lately has been playing music incredibly loud, even when there are minimal people around.  It was 830am on a Saturday.  The only people in the facility were my wife and I, and two employees.

Soon tho, a few elderly-looking women came into the yoga room and we entered behind them, sitting on our mats while these "regulars" chit-chatted.  We stretched... suddenly I felt as if I was getting ready for some sort of competition; warming the body up to perform in front of other people.  To perform better, actually.

By 9am, the instructor, a woman named Jane who had to be at least 60, set the lights low, closed the doors and got everyone centered.  We all sat Indian-Style on our mats with our eyes closed, trying to focus, meditate, align chakras- whatever.  The low, New Age music played, inter-twine with the "Caddyshack" soundtrack just on the other side of the divider we were sitting next to.

Because of this, it was really hard for me to concentrate.  At one point, I was doing some sort of stretch wrong with my back and legs, much to the ire of my wife, who shot me a nasty look from her mat, as if to say "you look like an idiot, don't you know left from right?!"  Also, I was unaware I was to keep my eyes open during the class.  I spent probably 2/3s the class with my eyes shut, only taking peeks to see what everyone else was doing, because I didn't want to be doing something completely different and look anymore like an idiot.

The class went on for 90 minutes, it was soothing in parts; At one point, one of the students sneezed so hard it sounded like a scream, which jarred the shit out of me.  But my mind started to wander around the one hour mark (like an asshole, I had kept my watch on, and was taking glancing checks here and there); I started to think about the upcoming Red Sox/Yankees game, and essentially, this article.

I ended up leaving relaxed in the end, but not terribly challenged.  The largest challenge for me was the wafer-thin divider, as it blocked little-to-no-noise.  As the morning picked up for the gym, the lobby continued to grow rowdier; Kenny Loggins giving way to some assholes guffaw-ing it up hard a mere 15 feet away.

I've sort've come to the conclusion that I would like to make yoga a regular once-a-week thing to intermingle between my running and strength training workouts. 

At the same time, my fat, out of shape, 19 year old self from ten years ago (complete with his patchy-gross goatee and pizza sauce-stained t shirts) wants to kick my ass.  But then again, he never had a body like mine.

Unethical and Underhanded

I know I said I wouldn't bitch about my gym anymore, but really, as soon as someone says something along those lines, you might as well peg them as a total liar.  Because, here we go again:

My 15 month gym membership is nearly up and I'm coming to this cross road where I have no idea if I'm going to continue to pay the $55 bucks a month to belong to a gym that treats it's members (and I mean, the core members, the people who actually come to the gym to workout) like crap.

Last night, as my wife and I were heading in for our typical Friday night workout, we were met with this shotgun blast of disgusting and gross behavior, just running amok around the gym facilities:

Children.  Hordes of children.  And balloons.

My wife has a rather bad latex allergy, so balloons, while seemingly harmless helium-filled orbs of celebration, can literally be a death sentence for her.  The entire ceiling was just covered in the local school's colors, black and gold.  Inside, it was like 6th grade prom.

'Tweens (children not exactly in their teens, but older and bigger than most elementary school kids) were running around, crashing into things and people, dancing to the Black Eyed Peas, ... everything you could imagine from a Robin Williams movie from the mid-1990s.  Obviously, to a young couple with zero desire to have children, this was very off-putting.

"You know when you have those feelings when you get in the front door, and immediately don't want to do your workout?" I ask my wife over the din as we cautiously make our way to the front desk to check in.  She's notorious for getting all the way out to the gym, in the doors, only to want to turn back because she doesn't feel like working out.

"You're having one of those moments, huh?"  She says back.  I nod.

We wait at the front desk for an employee to "beep" us in with our membership fobs, but no one's paying any attention to us.  There's one employee way off to the side having some sort of deep conversation with a parent who's just ... caught up in this whole whirlwind of screaming pre-adolescence.  The poor woman looks shell shocked; a victim of some sort of terrorist market bombing.

Eventually, after leaving enough time for someone to notice us, I said "fuck it" and swiped our cards for us.  We grabbed towels (we were going to TRY to swim...) and made our way downstairs to the gym proper, while avoiding more balloons and sugar-high kids.

"But seriously, let's get out of here," I try again, as making our way down the stairs becomes an effort; the stairway is clogged with loitering, unsupervised children.  We're able to look into the pool area and we see it's awash in splashing kids.  No laps for us tonight.

We honestly thought there'd be no way kids would be allowed to run amok downstairs in the actual gym area, but we were wrong.  Tubby kids in the pilates room throwing swiss balls at each other like over-sized dodge balls, children running at full speed across the gym floor, one of the racket ball courts converted into a giant inflatable bouncehaus.  A few hearty (and presumably single) souls were trying to tough it out, and try to workout despite the constant distractions, but you could tell they weren't enjoying themselves.  They were annoyed; one guy just sat on a bench with a numb expression on his face, earbuds in, watching children climb all over the ellipticals. 

We got about halfway to the lockerrooms when I tried again, to dissuade my wife from actually going thru a workout that evening.  She finally relented when a pudgy 11 year old came flying around the corner where they keep the floor mats, with what looked like fresh puke smattered on his oversized cheeks.  From the far corner of the gym floor, where the rockwall is located, we could see children dangling upside down in some sort of crude version of the Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark play.

We about-faced and tossed our towels on to a nearby desk, like "fuck it."  We weaved back thru the crowds of ungrateful brats and stunned proctors.  No one seemed to notice that we were leaving within five minutes of arriving.

Last night wouldn't have bothered me so much if there had been at least a 24 hour heads up, some sort of printed-off notice that said "hey, on Friday night, we're hosting a middle school dance and function, you might not want to be here for it, thanks, the Willy's staff."  Something like that, printed out and taped to the wall over the water fountain would've sufficed.  Nothing crazy, no mass emails, no phone calls, nothing.  Just a simple white sheet of paper with those words on it.

It took me less than ten seconds to type that sentence out.  Printing might've taken all of 30.  Taping on to a surface within a high-traffic area, maybe a minute.  Seriously.

But no heads up was given.  Literally, we were blindsided by this turn of events.  Did the Willy's staff really think for a second people, due-paying members, would want to workout in this type of environment?  How bad is this facility hemorrhaging money to rent out the whole establishment on a Friday night (see also: failed restaurant-in-the-middle-of-winter-on-Cape idea)?

To make matters worse, the management at Willy's (in Eastham, MA by the way.....) has been stacking it's reviews on the business web aggregate site "Yelp" recently.  By "stacking" the reviews, I mean, hiring people who may have never stepped into the facility to write bogus glowing reviews in an attempt to raise the business's web clout.  You see, Google ranks it's search listings for businesses based off of reviews from sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc.  The better the overall reviews, the more frequent and more towards the top of the search pile the business will appear.

For over a year, there had only been three reviews for Willy's Gym, the best was a 4/5 star rating from some gay dude out on San Fran.  The other two (one being mine) were mediocre.  Suddenly last week, a slew of ultra-positive, rather vague reviews from Oregon of all places, started to pop up on Willy's Yelp site (not to mention "new" Yelp pages, stacked with positive reviews, to help off set the original site listing's less-than-stellar rating).  The reviews are pretty much identical, from people whom have reviewed no other businesses on the site, and have no real profiles.

Thus, a rather unethical practice, attempting to dope the casual summer tourist into thinking Willy's Gym is worth the 20 dollar day pass. 

I can only hope that people will be able to see thru the bullshit.

My Gym (and Why I Hate It)

People who know me know I hate my gym.  It's because it's not really a "gym" so much as it's a "health club" with an elderly clientele, juice heads, and children running around unsupervised.  

I go here, because it's local and they have a pool, which for me is kind of a big deal.  Laps are the best kind of workout, second being running.  So, for one last time, here's a breakdown of everything I hate at my gym, and why:


The Patronage:

Like I said a second ago, there's just this.. wide swath of people that go to my gym.  Half of the week, I go in the mornings, and I'm forced to deal with the elderly.  Old woman sitting on stationary bikes who bark at you for touching the TV channel, lest they miss one second of Ellen or Rachael Ray.  If they're not on the bikes, they're getting in my way when I want to use equipment.  And they're SO SLOW!  Like, all I want to do is just rip out four sets of ten reps, in under five minutes... but then they just sit on the equipment, while their bored fitness trainer looks on, or texts his girlfriend, or watches the tv, inattentive to their client.  If I try to budge in, even politely, I'm met with resistance. 

The old ladies like to chit-chat with each other too.  True story:  the other day, I was over by the free weights, where no little old ladies have any business being in the first place, when, standing in front of the rack of weights, two old bettys are gabbing about how fucking unbelievably precious their grandchildren are.  I had had enough by this point, and carrying two 60 lb dumbbells, walked between them and set down my load.  They both looked at me as if I just kicked a puppy down a flight of stairs.  I pulled my earbud out and looked one of them dead in the eyes:

"This is not your living room," I told her.  Stuck my bud back in and went back to my workout.  They left shortly thereafter.

The men are no better.  I walk into the men's locker room and there's no less than 6 or 7 pairs of naked, old, hairy balls dangling around.  At what age do men just stop being modest around each other?  Big fat hair-covered bellies and asscracks, the smell of icyhot and farts lingers.... inevitably there will be one in one of the toilet stalls, letting loose bladdery gas as he bares down.  And they all just stand around talking about the most absurd shit!

"Yup, that Obama there ain't been born in this country, no sir, they can't even find a dat-gum birth certificate..."

"He ain't MY president...."

"Jesus didn't die for me to have no black president," and so on.  I just keep my head down and gear up and try to get out of the forest of dicks as quickly and quietly as possible.

The evening sessions are no better.  Low-educated juiceheads get out of their day jobs and clutter up the place with their tiny wife-beater undershirts, bulging muscles, the smell of Hungarian Horsecock Steriods and the all-too-quick-to-point-out attitude about how you're doing your workout "all wrong."  They sit on benches or stand in the middle of the gym on their cell phones, either texting or shouting into them at arms length.

While they're being boobs, they're monopolizing the free weight area, the benches, the machines.... they're like fucking gremlins that got fed after midnight, they just spawn everywhere, shouting at each other from across the gym floor:

"AY JIMMY!  LOOK AT ALL THIS WEIGHT I CAN LIFT!  HAVE YOU BEEN JUMPIN' ROPE LATELY, YOU'RE LOOKING REAL CUT!  NO, I'M TAKING A NEW WHY ISOLATE!  THANKS FOR NOTICING!"

I wish, for creativity-sake, I was making most of this up.

Then you have the unattended children that just run amok all over this place.  Dad's with "weekend duty" will bring the kids to the gym for an hour while they workout.  The kids, unchecked, throw bosu balls around, run and trip on shit, run and run into you, destroy equipment by not using it correctly, and NO ONE SAYS ANYTHING!  I grabbed a small 9 year old boy last weekend by the arm after he was just banging on objects with a light dumbbell and asked him where his parents were.  He pointed across the gym where a sweat-covered middle-aged man was sitting on a machine, sending a text to someone.  I marched the child over and presented him to his parent.

"Unless you're planning on paying me for babysitting duties, watch your own kid," and left it at that.  I'm sure the asshole got indignant about the whole thing.

The Lack of Respect for Equipment:

It goes so much further than just not wiping down the equipment when you're done using it (which no one does, except me and my wife) but not putting equipment back to it's proper place or even cleaning up after yourself.

The locker room is usually a hot mess by the time I'm leaving in the evenings; used towels everywhere, paper towels in clumps by a trashcan because people were too lazy to follow up on their missed throw, loose gear just strewn about.  The airduct above my locker was last wiped of dust when George Bush was president.  The first one.

If I want to take a soak in the jaccuzzi, I can only do so if I'm wearing a condom and a cork up my ass.

Broken equipment stays that way for weeks at a time, no matter how many times my wife or I tell the staff that something's not working correctly.  Benches are torn and there's a sizable hole in the middle of the freeweight section begging for someone to step into it under load and destroy their knee or ankle.  All of these things have been brought up at one time or another.  The best the staff can do I guess, is leave a little computer-printed sign that says "out of order."

People pee in the pool.  I know this because I'll be swimming and find myself in the middle of a murky, warm section of my lane where someone just left.  Cocksucker.

Also, the parking lot looks like a moonscape.  I'm starting to get curious as to what my $55-a month membership fee is going towards?

And rack your fucking weights when you're done with them!  Wipe down the sweaty puddle you left on the goddamn bench you were using!  I'm here to do MY workout, not yours, and I don't get paid to clean up after you!

Jesus.

The Cost:

Lastly, my membership is $55 dollars a month, like I just said.  For that amount of money, I should be getting a goddamn complimentary handjob every time I walk in the place. 

Yes, there's a pool, and yes there are classes I can sign up for, but like I said in the last section, the equipment is very slow to repair, and the place is usually filthy.  Given the bulk of my workout can be done at home (minus swimming laps) it's very frustrating to pay the amount I'm locked into for the next year.  The place can be better.  There has to be 500 people going there a day, total.  That's 500 people paying roughly 60 bucks a month.  Do the math, improve the place.

I'm going to open my own gym one day and membership fees will be assessed based off body fat % and composition.  The less you have, the less you pay.  The tvs will be locked on either the Weather Channel or ESPN.  No bitching, no grunting, no yelling, no children, no cell phones, no naked old men.  It will be bare bones and members will be expected to sign up and train for a local athletic competition within 3 months of starting a membership, or their privileges will be revoked.

This is my gym.

I'm Better Than You

My body fat percent
Hovers around a cent
My resting heart rate
Is about forty eight
I can do 100 push ups
my body, I'll never corrupt.

I'm better than you
This is fact, it's true
I'm the essence of greatness
judges line up to rate this
My visage is high maintenance

I practically live in the gym
in the pool, I endlessly swim
I run marathons
and triathlons
I even carry the baton
for your college track team.
I'm all lean
a clean, fighting machine
I'm what every fat slob secretly dreams

Because I'm better than you
Women line up to be choosed
I'm the picture of a god
my abs are 90% of my bod
My diet is all protein, I love me some cod

I practically never see my wife
I don't have much of a life
Our last vacation,
was to a Work Out Nation
I get angry when I don't workout
I'll stand in the mirror and pout
Pull on imaginary fat
that I think is growing that
is not really there.
They call me douchebag,
Juicehead and gym rat
They say I'm over compensating
for lack of a tool used in mating
The gym janitor gets pissed when I won't go home
my back is breaking out, from all the testosterone
my knees are bad
my kids are mad
because I lift weights
But I won't lift them.

But I'm still better than you
Don't deny it, it's true
Nice half marathon
Did you run it, or did you jog?
I'm lost in a protein shake fog.

In your worst nightmare
I'm your trainer in your ear
I'm the asshole giving you advice
while you try to figure out a new device
I noticably flex when we speak
I get off on intimidating the meek

Because I'm better than you.