Kids in the Gym

Being the active person I am combined with the facts that I am cheap... err, I mean frugal, and don't like exercising in the cold I joined a gym back before Christmas. It's not a gigantic, overpopulated, has everything you'll ever need and more style health clubs. No, that would have cost my like $80 a month on top of a $150 joining fee.

Being that I felt the above amount was a little too much to pay just to be able to do something that I view as a necessity for my not becoming the world's next 1,000 poun man, I hooked up with a 24-hour gym that has some treadmills, bikes, eliptical machines, and various lifting machines (as well as a bunch of dumbells). It works for my needs and it only costs $30 a month so my wallet doesn't feel so much pain.

At first, before Christmas came and went and everyone made their new year's resolutions to get un-fat, there were hardly any people at the gym. Now there are more, but still not an overabundance to make the place feel crowded, which is key. There has been only one time that I've had to wait to get a treadmill because they're all taken up.

Anyways, what I'm slowly getting to is that there are certain classes of people that go to this type of a gym. Each is totally different from the rest and the people that don't fall into one of these categories are extremely few and far between.

Doctor Exercise: You know how Nike, Reebok, Adidas and just about every other fitness gear company in existence advertises like crazy so that you buy their stuff? Doctor Exercise ignores these ads completely and comes to work out in a polo dress shirt, khaki shorts, and sneakers that are as close to dressy as possible. How anyone can work out in this type of garb is beyond me. Then again, watching Doctor Exercise work out you'll notice that he never does anything more than half-ass any exercise he's doing.

Sixteen Year Old Strong Man: When you were in high school you wanted to be in shape, good looking, and attractive so that the girls would gravitate towards you and, when the time came, you might actually have a chance of getting a girl to say yes if you asked her out. The Sixteen Year Old Strong Man is the high school kid who doesn't make it on to a sports team, but is in decent enough shape. Because of this fact, they think they're the shit. They come to work out in either ratty-ass old clothes or super trendy underarmor outfits. Regardless, these kids spend about as much time looking at themselves in the mirror and talking with each other than they do actually exercising. Oh yeah, and they never do cardio. They just lift.

Great Grandma Marathon: Old ladies who, I'm assuming, are now dealing with an empty nest or divorced life like to exercise to waste their time and probably to validate their continued existence since what they'd previously latched onto is no longer around. Great Grandma Marathon will go from treadmill to exercise bike to eliptical and back again doing each for long periods of time but at such a low intensity that rarely will you see a bead of sweat on her brow. At least she feels good about what she's doing, right?

Cheeseburger Chump: You know how you make New Year's resolutions to get in shape or sometimes if you're getting a little too plump someone will get you a gym membership for your birthday? The Cheeseburger Chump is that type of person. He's also likely to stay with the gym for about two months or until his gym gift expires. He goes to show everyone that he is, indeed, still in shape even though his definition of shape (being flabby) is different than anyone else's at the gym. The Cheeseburger Chump focuses mainly on lifting and doing the cardio machines on a really low intensity for short amounts of time.

Post Pregnancy Primadona: When women get pregnant they also get fat. Eventually they'll shoot out a good chunk of that fat in the form of a mini version of themselves, but a lot might still remain. In the process of freaking out about it, the Post Pregnancy Primadona books a membership at a local gym to burn off those extra pounds that she gained while eating copious amounts of sour cream and onion potato chips covered in bacon strips and peanut butter (or any other odd food combination that only a pregnant woman could conceive). In exercising she usually acts as prissy as possible, treats the cardio machines like they are her very own, and likes to make known that she recently crapped out a kid so that's why she's so fat.