Sixty percent of the time I go to the gym with Mom. We walk on the treadmills together for a half hour or so and then we go about our separate routines. She does a full body thing while I tend to focus on leg strength. Occasionally we're on neighboring machines and a few times we've gotten so tickled that we'll be silently crying and wiping tears away with towels meant for disinfecting the equipment. Admittedly I do a better workout on the days when Mom isn't around.
I joined the gym for an intersecting collection of reasons. First, it was after my months of not being able to eat and the doctor told me I was six pounds of muscle underweight. Second, Mom was given some kind of early diagnosis of osteoporosis which made us both look at me with my equally dainty bones and realize that I should try to get ahead of this. And three, I had just quit my exciting job and needed something to get me out of the house.
And so ten months of observa... I mean, exercise has taken place. I like going to the gym because the people in there are very cute, what with their grunting and flexing and intentional outfits. I like watching the pair of guy friends take turns lifting the same weight and secretly competing with each other while chatting about their weekend. I like the young girls in their matching sets and water bottles who only seem to be working on their glutes. If you go early in the morning, the older crowd will be there and my favorite is a group of five men in their late 60s. One of them walks on the treadmill while the other four hang on the sides of the machine and shoot the breeze. They're all dressed like they came to exercise but I never see them do anything.
I love the pairs of older women sitting side by side on rowers or bicycles, so deep in their conversations that they're barely moving any of their limbs. I like catching a buff guy striking a pose in the mirror, and there's also a lady with huge balloon boobs and too much lip filler who makes a real show of her workouts. It's just all so terribly human - and when they aren't bothering you, humans are adorable. All of our little hopes and intentions.
I'm also terribly amused by how no one looks at anyone else. People keep their eyes down. They give everyone their space and privacy. That's nice. But they won't smile at you if you accidentally lock eyes, so obviously my real goal at the gym is to make someone smile at me. I try all kinds of tactics; looking thrilled, looking worn out, acting like this will all be the death of me... but most people avert their eyes. Girls in their twenties are most inclined to return my smile. I successfully made one guy laugh and now we are friendly passersby. "Oh hello again. Nice to see you." Also, the staff is very friendly.
Oh! And even as a novice gym person, I can tell that lots of people are doing the exercises wrong. That's fun to watch, though I do worry they'll get hurt.
So that's all the fun, external stuff. Internally is less fun, more intimidating. It's a lot of wondering what to do with yourself between exercises. There's a lot of down time at the gym and nowhere for you to be in those moments. I've just finished on the stair-stepper but need to catch my breath before the hamstring curler, so I just stand in the walkway and pant and try to act confident and casual. Why don't they have benches for breath-catching? I find myself rushing from thing to thing just to avoid the awkward in-between time. I think people are looking at me because I know that I've secretly been looking at them. I worry that I will put too much weight on a machine and hurt myself and I also worry when I go to machine right after someone my size and they're using 90 pounds more than me. Am I especially weak or are they especially strong? Where should I be in this process? And is there anything more embarrassing than overestimating yourself and then having to decrease the weight?
Once, on the thigh-squeezer machine, I had a great big fat lady to my left and what had to be a 80 pound college girl on my right. Both of them looked like they've never exercised before and I smugly thought that I must be what they both aspired to. Look at that normal-sized girl with the shiny hair and the mustache. She is so lean and presumably strong. I hope I can be like her someday. I was lost in my self-aggrandizement when I looked over and saw that the tremendous woman on the left was squeezing something like 180 pounds together with her thighs. I was shocked! I whipped my head over to check the tiny's girl's machine - she's squeezing 130. I whipped my head back to my weight rack. 60 pounds. What do you mean! I shouted to myself. I checked all the numbers again and came back confused. How do I justify this? I asked myself. And I'll tell you. They were both doing five reps and then waiting around for two minutes. I had to show them, so I just kept squeezing. 5 reps. 10. 20. 35. My thighs trembled with fatigue. Slow and intentionally. I told them in my mind. That's how you build strong muscles. Not this, blasting out a few reps. That's just for show. I told them everything I've gathered about exercising and then fled the scene and soon as it seemed plausible.
The interesting part of gyming, is that you can be perfectly proficient at other forms of exercise but it doesn't translate into anything impressive at the gym. The gym is its own specific kind of exercise. Nevermind my Youtube Pilates training to hold a plank for two minutes - you can't use that at the gym. So there you are, curling 8 pound dumbbells like a middle schooler, and no one in there would guess that you can hold an L-sit longer than they can. I bet people look at me and write me off as skinny. An outrage! I'm quite strong - much stronger than people expect me to be. And I know this is true because I have surprised many a stranger at the grocery store (carrying all my grocery bags on one arm) and the lawn care centers (heaving 50 pound bags of soil) and even at a self defense class I took in college where the instructor couldn't release themself from my grip, told me I was "abnormally strong" and then made me sit out the exercise. This struck me as counterproductive seeing as most attackers will be men, no doubt larger and stronger than Laura Union, so maybe the instructor needs to come up with a better maneuver.
But at the gym I just squeak out a few dainty weighted moves here and there and then go back home and get a real workout via YouTube. I'm just not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing in the gym, but it think it's all awfully cute.
(Photos curtesy of a handstand gone wrong.)
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