I LOATHE the gym in January. Really, I try to avoid it until mid-March, but sometimes, I need to workout and just cannot do it at home or outside. But the trauma of visiting the gym during the first few weeks of the year almost cancels out the high of a good workout. The misery begins the moment you arrive on the gym's property! Finding parking is nearly impossible; you have to be patient enough to drive around for 10 min, wait for someone to exit the gym right as you pass the door, then slowly and stalkerishly follow them to their car, wait for them to buckle their kids in, put their cell phone headset on, get out their post-workout energy bar, and reverse out of their blessed spot.
The worst, though, even lousier that the parking fiasco, waits for you when you finally get inside. It is all the new people crowding your gym, your safe place, the place you can always count on to help raise your endorphins so you feel great. I call these interlopers Resolutionists. How can you tell a Resolutionist from a gym regular (besides the fact that you do not recognize them)? Here is my handy guide to help you determine who to glare at while spending a large percentage of your alloted 90-minute workout waiting in line for a treadmill.
[I refer to the Resolutionists in the feminine because in my experience, most of them are women, and choosing a gender makes the writing process simpler. I do, of course, recognize that the following traits apply to both men and women.]
1. When on the treadmill/elliptical, the Resolutionist takes breaks from her ultra-low-intensity workout at least every five minutes to complete such critical tasks as adjusting her shirt to make sure it covers her midriff adequately, take a sip from her water bottle, change play-lists on her iPod, or take inexplicable, just-less-than-two-minute walks to other areas of the gym with her machine on pause.
2. Resolutionists often appear at the gym in pairs, and when using two adjacent machines, will talk to each other at a volume that makes it impossible NOT to hear about how proud they are for cutting back to only two glasses of wine per day, how their mother-in-law "totally does not understand" them or that their kids are already tired of their Christmas presents. You may blow-out your eardrums trying NOT to listen to their semi-mobile social hour, but you will not succeed.
3. The most exasperating characteristic of a Resolutionist is on display in the stretching area of the gym. She will place her mat just close enough to the next person to not allow for anyone to squeeze between, but far enough away to take up the maximum amount of room possible. The Resolutionist will spend most of the time just lying down on the mat, possibly talking on her cell phone. If it is the Resolutionist pair, as described above, well, you might as well find something else to do (or just stretch at home), because it will be a while before these completely sweat-free babblers get up.
4. If your gym has a track, don't bother to attempt to run on it until the Resolutionists have stopped coming. They walk in the lane they are supposed to run in, and let their kids play tag in the lane they are supposed to be walking in. The track is basically turned into an indoor playground.
5. When attempting to use the weight machines, Resolutionists tend to stand around the machine, apparently waiting for it to speak to them, or give them usage directions. They will sit on it, try to use it a couple of times, shake out their shoulders as though they actually just strained their muscles, and walk away.
There you have it, my fool-proof guide to recognizing the fitness dabbler, the casual constituent, the annual, month-long participant. Sometime in the next few weeks, the excuses will win and their visits to the gym will dwindle until the only time we see them is on Saturday mornings for their kids' indoor soccer games. The Resolutionist duos will move their bi-weekly social hours to the coffee shop or their living room, where they belong. We gym regulars will have our parking spots, our treadmills, our weights machines, and our stretching space back.
I recognize that not all newbies are Resolutionists. A few of them will beat the odds, actually stick with their resolutions, and become permanent fixtures at the gym. They will learn proper gym etiquette, use their free personal training meeting to learn how to use the machines, and continue to workout on a regular basis for an extended period. They will earn the right NOT to be called a Resolutionist. [I also know that not every newcomer to the gym is a newcomer to exercise, and some have just changed gyms, or joined to add variety to their already rich exercise regime.]
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