Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Gym Be Gone

Sometimes it's a great feeling standing up for your principles. Today, I stood up for one of mine: always work out in a nice gym.

Actually, I really never worked out in a gym until I moved to DC. Now that I am older, it doesn't matter if I starve myself and purge after every meal, I need to work out. And I refuse to do what is already a necessary painful activity in a place that unnecessarily makes it more so.

Over the past 6 months, my gym has been going downhill. Carpet in the locker room was torn up and not replaced. Portions of the walls in the weight room were torn out due to some water damage and never repaired. Floor mats around the cable machines were mildew stained and had an unpleasant odor. The group exercise room's hardwood floor has buckled and warped so badly that there is a mini mountain range down the center of the room. All of these problems I've noticed and just gone about my workout. But as they accumulated, they became more than a mild annoyance as I began to wonder what other things weren't being fixed that I couldn't see.

Then I read an article today about resistant strains of bacteria. Apparently these bacteria are on the rise, have a pretty high rate of death upon infection, and outbreaks are often found in gyms and locker rooms. If my gym cannot fix things I can see, why would they worry about killing stuff I can't see?

But none of this stuff caused me to quit my gym. I even had a conversation with a friend today, during which he told me five times to quit my gym. I told him I would eventually if things didn't improve, but that I needed to weigh my options as a couple new gyms were opening in the area.

That plan lasted all of 45 minutes. I went to the gym after work and walked directly to a cable machine, but there were no handle grips on the machine. No problem, this occasionally happens. I found a couple grips and then noticed that there were no hooks to affix the grips to the machine. A minor problem, so I began to see if any were lying around. After a minute of this hunting and gathering exercise, an activity I am paying good money in every aspect of my life to avoid, I gave up. Not because I am a quitter, but because there are some things I think my gym dues should cover - like providing functional equipment.

As of today, my gym dues will be going elsewhere as I adopt a new principle: if you're going to hire a personal trainer, find a hot one.

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