My gym

When the sun shines as it has been for the past few days, the last place I want to go for exercise is my gym. I’d much rather be out running in the great outdoors, however I went out on Saturday for a brisk 6 miler and have never fought such a mental battle to convince myself to carry on since I last ran a marathon. The heat quite simply took my breath away.

 

 

 

Quick straw poll for all women: Is it ok for a man to go running with his shirt off? Supposedly it’s deemed bad form and I once read an article in Runners World which quoted some crazy statistic like 75% felt that men shouldn’t. We’re so different, because I have just conducted a straw poll and an emphatic 100% of men saw no problem with women not wearing their tops when out running. Funny that?

 

Anyway I ran without my shirt on so I didn’t come home with vest marks, but I’m a constant red all over instead!

 

Like any gymnasium, you have to keep your shirt on at my gym, and its not just in that aspect that it conforms to a standard. It’s also the standard cliché clientele which frequent it. At my gym there are the:

 

Weeble Bodybuilders: This is not a good look men. (It’s even worse in a woman) There used to be these little toys called weebles and the strap line was ‘Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down’ this was because of their low center of gravity and tapered upper extremities which gave them an egg like appearance.

You're soo interesting!

Weebles seem to have small heads, but they are  probably normal sized, but just look small because they have chests and arms which are stuffed full of Whey Protein and covered with a sleeve tattoo on both arms. A shaven head is a must and also the ability to believe the myth that ‘big equals hard equals girls’ when the truth of the matter is the vast majority of them couldn’t punch their way out of a paper bag, certainly couldn’t out-run me, and have the conversational skills narrowed down to only talking about one subject: Themselves. This vanity is not known as a particularly successful technique with the ladies, but don’t tell that to a weeble!

Over sixty and over the hill: Now don’t get me wrong, they are always nice friendly people but you just wonder why they are there, because stomachs that look like they have entered their fourth trimester will not magically disappear through ten minutes on a static bike followed by a sauna!

 

 

However I applaud you as a collective group because you apply the golden rule of any gym that nobody should feel self-conscious and they patently don’t! Amazingly there is one woman over 60 who is still quite a hottie and has a figure which has yet to head south. She remembers the war to, so gents, you’ve got more chance than the rest of us, so go for it!

The runner: I don’t get you? Get off the treadmill and go outside.

The rugby buff: Is he muscled, bulky or fat? I cant tell because he wears a British Lions or England repli shirt to hide the truth. But amongst his compatriots he’s king because not only is he a great laugh (remember that night when he drunk 20 pints of lager and a bottle of vodka, ate his best mates used jockstrap for a bet,  and still got up the next morning and had a cooked breakfast before playing loosehead prop for Uni and scoring the winning try) and he obviously does something in the gym because he’s always breathless and sweaty and he’ll never grow into an Over sixty and over the hill because its only when he’s become an alcoholic (funded by a good job in the City) that they’ll realise that he’s clinically obese and he’ll be dead by 55

The loner; Wears black. Talks to himself. Uses the mats and does inordinate numbers of crunches. Is well toned but the face that would have been cruel if put on a dog. He might even have a tattoo. Definitely loves guns. Don’t invade his personal space.

Govt Health Warning

This man is DANGEROUS!!

Miss Silicon: We only have one at my gym. Sometimes that makes me sad and other times it is a relief, but Miss S sure is a pretty little thing and doesn’t Miss S know it! And doesn’t Miss S like all the boys to know that she’s there and in need of a little help adjusting the straps on the rowing machine which sends a host of willing hormonal helpers swarming round her like flies round a fleshly deposited dog do!

And does Miss S know what effect she is having on the male populace every time she undoes a button on her t-shirt and are those really Pilates exercises or is she having sex with the invisible man on the exercise mats?

 ( I had so much  choice for a photo! More fool me typing in 'hot girl working out' on google images!)

 

 

The Grunter: I can’t help wondering what you would be like during a sexual encounter. I just hope nobody else is in the house.

 

I guess because of iPods, some people might not hear themselves, but the use of free weights or medicine balls can reduce some men to a litany of cacaphonic prehistoric animal grunts!! I can  only assume it’s all part of either a mating ritual in an attempt to attract the attention of Miss Silicon or a game of one-upmanship with the weebles (In fact, through cross fertilization there is now the grunting weebler)

 

No pain, no gain. But do we really have to listen to it.

 

Thank goodness for normal people like me who would never leave the scene of a methane crime for some unsuspecting fellow gym member to ingest, or who wears his headphones pumping out Prodigy or Pearl Jam and is unaware that the little methane exhalations coming from within his shorts are so loud that they can be heard across the room! And heaven forbid he would wear a white, yellow and blue striped vest which he wore on the beach last year in Dominican Republic which makes him look as camp as a row of tents, and which after 30 minutes is so wet that the smells of last weeks sweaty exertions are re released (even though its been washed!) and mixed in with the stale smell  of last years sun cream.

 

No. I’m the only normal, non-annoying one there!