Time To Get Your Swell On

So I recently Joined a gym and it has been a while. But in that time I had forgotten my disdain for some of the types of people that "workout" aka "be seen" at the gym. When my roommate and I go to the gym its business time. When we go to workout, it is as fast as possible, then leave. The gym isn't my hangout place, or a lounge for me to be social in (thats waht the LBGT bar across the street is for). It's a place with heavy things that I can lift repeatedly until I am tired. thats what a gym is for me, but unfortunately that isn't the case with everyone. You have your yellers, your grunters, your posers literally and figuratively, your juice heads, your wispy runners, your need to be seen-ers, the old fogies, the lurkers and more. I guess I should detail these for you in case you aren't familiar.

1. In the world of annoying gym people, the yellers are pretty common but also pretty annoying. These guys have come in for a serious work out, but they really want you to know how serious their workout is. They signal this by yelling at the end of almost every rep, crescendoing into a primal scream that alerts you to the end of their set. Its somewhere between a howler monkey and a man passing a kidney stone (equal parts). If I don't have my headphones turned up all the way and there is more than one yeller in the gym at one time, I occasionally lose myself and think I am at a slipknot concert. Either that or in the middle of prime gorilla mating season, either way is equally miserable. Sometimes I think maybe I should go help them and their screams are a cry for help, but normally I just listen with hatred and hope that their arms really do give out.

2.Grunters are the next subset of worker outers (I said it). Grunters are not just men, but more often then not they are women. This is really more of a subset of yellers, but it deserves its own category. Grunters are more subdued than yellers, there is no"grand finale" on their sets, just a consistent low level grunt that follows every rep, never missing a single rep. What other activity can you think of where on every single "repetition" someone lets out a low level grunt? No not the shakeweight... sex. This is what is weird about this category, when you get a couple of grunters in the same gym all of a sudden it turns into Barry Lincolns "sex or Weightlifting" skit in a hurry. Ya know when you are in the south and the crickets are going crazy but all simultaneously to one another, thats what it is like with multiple grunters in the same gym. A symphony of grunts thats is equally amusing as it is vomit inducing.

3. Now onto the Posers/ Poseurs. The biggest expense in any modern gym? Mirrors. They are roughly 87% of any gym's start up budget, otherwise how can steroid stanley look at his biceps 37 times a minute? If he can't see how big his arms look how is he gonna know hes getting any bigger? These are some tough questions that need answered for your typical poser. I mean not only does he stand 8 inches away from the mirror staring himself straight in the eye for the added intensity, but he checks himself out walking from one machine to the next, or if possible he likes to check himself out in a combo of mirrors getting angles of himself that he normally only dreams of. The other side of this are your not lifting posers, these are the guys that come in and lift like one set and then walk around looking at themselves in the mirror. Most posers actually do work out so they can get the most out of their mirror time, but non working out posers really just want the mirror and wish these weight would go away so he didn't have to be bothered while checking himself out. Oddly enough this exists in quite small numbers with the women at my gym, I assume they have their own mirror rigs at home and have no need for public mirror viewing. Jack Lalane would not be impressed with these people.

4.Now for a comparison of equally crazy work out styles. The juicers versus the wispy runners. A true juicer would really be a yeller and a poser at the same time but even more than that they are obviously much larger than a normal human should be. Really its the tri-fecta of douch-ie workout people. Veins popping typically more tan than someone should be for mid winter in Ohio, and always have at least one visible tribal tattoo, this subset is easily recognizable (think jersey shore). Instead of the GTL motto, I propose a GYP motto (grunt, yell, pose). A noticeable difference with these style lifters are that some posers will try to be discreet about blatantly checking themselves out, not juicers, they not only want you to look at them, they want you to look at them looking at themselves. Now thats some heavy shit. (get it "heavy" shit)

Anyways their counterparts I actually find more annoying, the wispy runners. These runners come in with their skinny ass legs and just look at you with a smirk that says " I can run more than you Mr Cankles, and I am going to make a spectacle of it." Anyone who says they don't glance over at the person next to them's machine is a liar. These runners get on the treadmill next to you, look at what your doing, double it, and this is their warm up. If I am on the elliptical I can't tell you how many times I see one of these runners get on the machine, put the exact scenario that I am in, then watch them churn out double the reps, while smugly looking over at my 81 calories burned 38 minutes in. Also while I am literally chugging along, struggling to get my foot in front before I make a "Jackass" scene on the treadmill, they are over there bouncing away running easily into mile 8 while I am about 1/4 mile in and struggling. Wispy Runners are the most elite feeling people in the gym, they aren't scared of mister meat head, he would never catch them if they were to scuffle, these runners are without a care in the world except being scene steve prefontaine-ing your ass all over the gym. Both of these types of work outers are in it for you to know they are better and to see that they are better at the same time.

5. Now for my last category The lurkers. This is also a slight crossover for the non-working out poser (except the non working out poser still loves to pose, while the lurker does not pose, he simply lurks). The lurkers are the people that seem to come to the gym to listen to their ipod (Katy Perry of course) (BTW isn't Kitty Perry the best cat name you ever heard? So contemporary, yet so elegant). Thats it, they just wanna listen to some music and walk around for a while. I don't mean walk on the treadmill, I mean literally walk around the gym. They come in and the first sign of a lurker is a ridiculously long stretch. I am talking stretching their neck for 15 minutes, they stretch their toes and who could forget the proper wrist stretches ( you should never work out before spending at least 10-12 minutes on stretching you wrists). Then after an extended stretching session that includes some yoga moves developed by Stephen Hawking, they then proceed to scope out the gym landscape. As if it were a magic eye poster and if they could only find the leg press machine in the picture . Then after all of this planning and analyzing they head to a machine rip out 4-6 reps of calf raises, then stretch their wrists for another 15 minutes of grimacing to show that they may have over exerted themselves. In a weird way these people think not only that you are looking at them but they want you to see how they are hurting after doing exercises meant for a 3rd Grader and sympathize with them.

Oh one more, My all time most disturbing Gym Patron goes to...... The ball adjusters. Maybe I am not so anatomically gifted as some people, but there is no need to adjust your balls 500 times in a 30 minute workout. I watched a guy the other day (WITH FREE WEIGHTS!) set down a dumbbell with his one arm with the other arm over his head with the other dumbbell, so he could scratch his junk, in the middle of his set, he then resumed after a significant scratch. Again maybe my little diddy isn't as formidable as others but for the love of god man, get some compression shorts or something, either that or see your doctor about those crabs. Even funnier was later this kid did the same thing but scratched under the shorts (for an extended shake down), but I was watching long enough to see him apparently forget this then about 40-50 seconds later I saw him wipe the sweat off his face with the same hand, hahaha, that is gym karma right there.