By Alexei Summers (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: April 4, 2012
When I’m not engaging in the great sport of wrestling bears, or flying around the world in my private jet airplane solving mysteries, I like to spend a little bit of time at the gym. Any gym will do, provided it has the right equipment for my regimen, which consists of a bit of cardio – treadmills, rowing machines, and then some armcurls with the dumbells, and maybe some cable stacks. Lately I have been frequenting UFV’s Abbotsford campus fitness centre, and have been fairly impressed. For a gym that is very small in size it’s got nearly everything I need – although boxing equipment might be nice.
However, for my own part, there has never been a time where I have gone to any gym without finding at least one person who has annoyed me terribly. Simply put, for all those who don’t normally go to fitness centres, gyms tend to be a gathering place for all kinds of highly-annoying people: gym stereotypes.
UFV’s fitness centre is surprisingly fairly devoid of these people – but not completely. I still occasionally hear the words, “bro,” uttered between two gym buddies, as they finish using the barbell – which is probably loaded with too many weights because they were trying to look impressive.
Now if you’re anything like me, you’re probably not a terribly serious gym-goer. I like to go for only about half-an-hour to an hour a day – I’m a busy man, as you know; I have bears to wrestle, and mysteries to solve. As such, it’s particularly annoying for me when I arrive at the gym only to find someone using the machine I had my heart set on using. I usually think to myself “Well. That’s alright. They will be done soon,” and I’ll go use some other machine, or fitness apparatus. Thirty minutes later, that same person is still on it, seemingly unaware—or perhaps just uncaring—that there’s anyone else in the gym. These are the machine hogs, the worst kind of gym-goers. It’s strange they’re usually there every time you go to the gym, too, almost as if they never leave.
Then there is that one guy who grunts and screams very loudly while lifting weights because he has to let everyone around him know just how hardcore he is. He seems to be in incredible pain, and he’s lucky his spine is not snapping, which probably has a lot to do with the fact that he’s lifting way too much. Yet despite what you may think, he doesn’t put the weights down. He keeps lifting, and screaming, and his friend next to him is nodding vehemently and is yelling “One more!” They’re both wearing muscle shirts, and sunglasses—yes, even at night—and occasionally they will lift up their sleeveless shirt to check out their own abs in the mirror. Just picture television personality Pauly D, from Jersey Shore.
I’m sure deep down, most of these stereotypes are alright people. But they’re inconsiderate, and annoying. You learn to look past them, because at the end of the day you only have to deal with them for a short period of time. So, look past their faults, and try to find it in your hearts to forgive them, gym-goers. They know not what they do.
