Life at 24 (Hour Fitness, That Is)

Have you ever been so annoyed at someone, so irritated at the actions of that person, so perturbed with their very being, that you just want to grab them by the sweatshirt sleeves and say, “Dude, what are you thinking? Why are you doing that? Just answer me that.”

Well, if you have ever felt like that, then I have a feeling you might enjoy this MAJOR rant. If the above-described situation seems a little out of context to you, then, wow, can we trade places in life sometime? I’d love to live life free of annoying people and situations like you seem to be doing. Either way, though, on with the rant.

I was at the gym the other day, and yes, it was a 24 Hour Fitness as you may have surmised from the title, and I was going about my usual fitness routine. I had just recently added about a half hour of weight training to my regimen of cardio and crunches during the past three weeks, just to give you a little background of the situation.

About twenty minutes through running on the treadmill, I look up and notice a guy get on the elliptical machine a few rows in front of me wearing the hood on his sweatshirt over his head and a weightbelt around his waist. Mind you, we’re indoors, it’s warm, and he’s getting on a stationary cardio machine with his weightbelt on and a hood over his head. I knew that this was a character to keep my eye on.

Ten minutes or so later, I was midway through my three hundred crunches when I heard the loud and heavy slamming of the weights on a weight machine smashing down on themselves. I turned around and I saw Mr Hooded Sweatshirt and weightbelt strutting around a shoulder press machine. Hmm. Interesting. Three minutes later, I hear the same crash, boom, bang coming from his little corner of the gym. Hmm.

So, when I finished my crunches, I made my way to the chest press machine right next to where he was resting after a set. Then as he finished his last set on that machine with the usual sonic flurry, I realized what he was doing. He was the kind of guy that likes to let go of the weights (the handles more aptly) and likes the sound of them slamming on the rest of the stack of black weights.

Guys like that just burn me up. He obviously needs the attention that the sound of slamming the weights down brings him. I mean, everybody looks to see what happened and there he is, all puffed out and pumped up, looking like he just hoisted a ten ton girder of steel in the air. And the hooded sweatshirt, come on man, don’t even get me started. Yeah, I get it, that you may sweat more, but dude, you look ridiculous wearing a hood inside a building.

But you know, at least you weren’t wearing sunglasses; I’ve seen those guys in the gym, too. With their hooded sweatshirts on and their clacking weights. Talking on the cell phone. Trying to chat up women, who wear makeup to the gym.

Yeah, don’t get me started.