Gym Rats 1 & 2

Gym Rat 1

It’s a bit sad to admit this to anyone, but since singledom crept up and nipped me rather harshly on my tushie, the main place where I can claim to have even a bit of a social life is at the gym. Yep, real sad. I suppose school is social, but the average age of anyone is sixteen. It’s social, but unless you’re Mary Kay Letourneau, not too many prospects as far as anything goes. I love my coworkers, but as most of us are older, families claim time beyond work. We meet occasionally for very brief and depressingly sane FAC’s, and I have a group of women with whom I love to hike, but on a daily basis, my social life can be found in the sweat-soaked and hormonally charged atmosphere of the World Gym.

It is, admittedly a weird place to fill up my “over the age of twenty” quota. First of all, I am always at my most unattractive during my gym time. I am not a make up and spandex gym woman. I run in t-shirts and Capri sweat pants. My short hair is usually pulled back severely into two barrettes, and I run, which means astounding amounts of sweat, and a, at good times, flushed, and at bad times, beet-red face.

Second of all, the majority of men who hang out at the gym are so not my type. While I’m not quite sure what my type is, after eight and a half years on “type” hiatus, I know what it definitely is not. The big men. I know some women love the Arnold types, but they scare me. If a guy’s neck is bigger than my upper thigh, I’m not going anywhere near him. And have you heard some of the sounds these men make? I was changing in the locker room today, and some guy was “Uh”ing and “Mmm”ing like you wouldn’t believe. I teach high school…fart jokes still make me laugh, so you know exactly where my mind went, and yes, I giggled. Luckily I was alone at the time, but honestly, unless I’m the cause of noises like that, can you please spare me the guttural groans?

I used to detest people who went to the gym so often that they became regulars. That’s me now. I have my “girlfriends”, none of whom I have ever talked to, but they seem like the type of people that I could enjoy going out with to grab a drink. We smile and say “Hi” as we pass each other on the stairs. And then I have my diversions. You can’t look at the stupid treadmill screen for a half of an hour, so every smart person has one or two people that they look for down on the floor. I think I’m up to eight. None of them has a chance of ever making it into my reality, but once the music really gets going, several of them have found their way quite pleasantly into one of my endorphin-induced fantasies.

Today, someone smiled at me. This confused the hell out of me. I’m used to people looking, but it sorts itself out as soon as I notice the beach-bodied blond on the stair-master behind me. I was tucked away alone in a corner of the upstairs today because my favorite treadmill was currently servicing someone else. The second time he looked up and smiled, I did what any other normal person would do without thinking. I smiled back. The third time he looked up, I looked away (hello, high school...has it really been fifteen years?). I make fun of the people who go to the gym and hit on people…is this what I have been reduced to? And the worst part was, he was cute.

It has since occurred to me that maybe there was a television mounted just below where I was running. This has happened before in another area of the gym. I was convinced that one guy was completely psychotic until I realized that he was just staring intently at CNN. If that is the case, God, I hope he didn’t see me smile at him.

Little things go a long way these days in my life. One smile from a guy at the gym could hypothetically take me through months of Friday nights alone. So yes, guiltily, I admit that there is more to my weekday afternoon workouts than my drive to develop a body that will make boys cry (don’t really care who…as long as someone cries eventually). Even if the cute guy wasn’t smiling at me, since I really don’t know anyone at my ultra-hip, sweat-laden, social hangout, there’s no one around to convince me otherwise.

Gym Rat 2


Okay, one more word on the gym. Today was my weight-lifting day. I hate lifting weights. I have tried to get around it, and someday, if the universe is kind, I just may read the article that tells me what I have suspected all along, that lifting weights is not really all that important, and your body fairs far better through a series of relaxing activities such as lying prone on a soft surface while opening and closing your eyelids. Until then, I do a half-assed job at the gym wandering among the scary, metallic machines, accomplishing, I’m afraid to say, very little.

What I hate about lifting weights: 1) It is slow. Very, very slow. 2) You have to count. And breathe properly. It took me months to remember that you breathe out on the exertion and in on the release, and I still screw it up when I do push ups. 3) I always lose count. I’m sure one side of my body is more toned than the other because I probably over count on the left, but undercount on the right. If you ever see a lopsided woman, that might be me. 4) I can never remember where to put the seat/weight/leg cushion/rotation thingie. It takes longer adjusting the machines than it does doing the repetitions, and honestly the amount of times I jump up and sit back down while moving this knob, or that pin, should really count as part of my cardiovascular workout. And most importantly 5) I look stupid.

Lifting weights gives you more time to watch people. It really is no wonder that so many people use the gym as their pick-up joints. If you think about it, you are practically naked with a ton of members of the opposite sex, you are sweating, you are bending and flexing your body in bizarre karma sutra positions, and when you add in the groaning and moaning (see yesterday’s blog), all that’s left is the penetration aspect. Really, when you look at it that way, it’s amazing that the dance clubs haven’t gone out of business. If the gyms start offering two for one shooters, it’s all downhill for the singles bars.

There are certain things I refuse to do at the gym. Any type of activity that requires me to lie on my back with my legs in the air is something I save for the privacy of my living room. I also stay away from that inner/outer thigh machine. I once saw a girl using that machine, and, let’s hope, unconsciously running her tongue along her lips repeatedly while opening and closing her legs (I’ll bet someone was smiling at her that day). I also avoid any machine where I have to hang, or where any part of my body is higher than my head. But that’s really more just because it makes me feel awkward and it’s absolutely unnatural.

I don’t get the weight-lifting obsession. I look at some of the women who obviously have the hang of it better than I have, and while I admire their Jennifer Aniston biceps, I’m not sure if I have it in me to put in the time and effort. I ran into a guy from high school a few months back, and as luck would have it, he has become a personal trainer. He walked me through a few (like 35) machines, explaining what each one did. There were at least four different machines that worked the same muscle. I remember saying, “So this one works the pecs as well, right?” and he said, “yes, but in a completely different way.” Yikes. If you have tips on how to make my weight-lifting days more enjoyable, please pass them on. But four machines for one muscle? If you can tell the difference in my muscle when I work on it on one machine as opposed to the other, you might be looking just a bit too closely.