When you walk into my gym, you are immediately flanked by the Men's Locker Room on the right and the check-in desk on the left. The Men's Locker Room was recently renovated, and looks absolutely beautiful now; the lockers give plenty of space for everything you brought, the showers are nicer, and there are a few bathroom stalls. If you walk past the check-in area, you will be able to go in one of four directions. Straight ahead, you find a miniature restaurant, where you can buy food, protein, workout gear, drinks, or watch sports and bullshit. To your right, there is a room with a pool, sauna, and hot tub, the perfect place to decompress after a grueling workout. To the left, you will find hall leading to the aerobic room, along with a few racquet ball courts. Up the stairs, you will find yourself in another hallway. On the second floor, to your immediate right, you will see a personal training room, if you opt to pay extra for someone to yell into your ear while you work out. To the left, there is a short walkway with more racquet ball courts, which will lead you to the weight room.
This morning, after changing in the locker room, I headed towards the aerobic room. I planned to start off by rowing intervals on an erg; six intervals of 500 meter sprints (For me, 500m done at a minimum under 1:40.0), followed by a 2:00 rest. On this day, I happened to see a friend who graduated from the same high school as me, also on the erg. He rows crew for Princeton, but his semester recently ended, so he has to workout back home.. His workout was slightly different than mine was; four 10:00 intervals, followed by a 10:00 rest. He averaged somewhere around a 1:50 split in what is essentially a grueling endurance workout. On this day, I also happened to catch sight of another man, leaving the locker room around the same time as I did. This man looked to be about 35 years old and out of shape, but in otherwise perfect health. He plopped his body onto the exercise bikes, which are located right next to the ergs, and started cycling at a lackadaisical pace. After I finished my erg workout, I headed upstairs to work on my legs. Luckily for me, the middle-aged man finished his light bike warmup the same time that I finished rowing, and headed upstairs the same time that I did.
The weight room in my gym in a very large room. When you reach the end of the hallway leading up to the weight room, you will find yourself close to the right-side wall in the room. If you walk the length of the weight room going straight, there is another hallway leading to rooms used primarily for the classes offered with membership, such as Yoga. These rooms are filled to the brim with medicine balls, BOSU balls, and light weights. Coming off of the right-side wall, there is about three rows of machines that work on your entire lower body, from the hip adductors downward. If you go to the left, there is a dumbbell rack, followed by benches, followed by more machines for the upper body, and two Icarian cable crossovers. All the way on the left wall, there are machines for core workouts. In the far left corner, there are two real squat racks, and one smith machine. My victim, middle aged man (MAM) headed straight to the right for what I'm sure he believed to be a tiring day of lower body exercises. Seeing as how I was working legs today, I thought I'd keep an eye on him.
I headed to the squat rack, and loaded up the bar. There was weight on it already from the last person, who didn't take the weight off, which slightly annoyed me. Nonetheless, I did a set of squats, and then headed to the leg machines, where I followed up with a set of prone leg curls and calf raises. I noticed my target, MAM, was on a machine for glutes. He would do sets at explosive movements and awful form (Impressive considering he was using machines), exploding during the concentric phase, and letting gravity do the work for the eccentric phase, in a somewhat violent manner. He also seemed to be using weights heavier than he was realistically able to handle. Following a set, he would stay on the machine and stare at the clock. After finishing the calf raises, I went back to the squat; I repeated this cycle four more times (The fifth time using a leg press instead of squatting). MAM went machine hopping, doing three sets per machine. When I went back to the prone leg curl for my fifth set, he had just gotten off of it. After finishing the cycle five times, I finished off in the weight room by doing two sets on each side for hip abductors, and hip adductors. It became increasingly clear that MAM would not be squatting, or using any free weights for that matter, on this day. He also wasn't doing a full-body exercise, leaving the weight room the same time I did, an hour after coming to the gym. He went straight home; I headed to the indoor field (Past the aerobic room, in a room with heavy bags) to do work with a plyobox for another 30 minutes.
If my gym sounds nice, that's because it is. And unsurprisingly, my gym is also very expensive; a $200 start up fee, and $70 a month. The workout that MAM did today was a workout that could be replicated at Planet Fitness for $60 less a month. MAM is clearly a person that doesn't understand how to work out properly, and would probably benefit from a personal trainer for a little bit, assuming he's too lazy to learn the dynamics of working out online in his free time, and too proud to ask for assistance from the supervisor in the weight room. I'm not doubting that MAM has the honest intention of getting into better shape, and I'm not going to criticize some intangible factor such as heart which he may or may not have. Maybe he is genuinely lazy, or maybe he just doesn't know how to work out properly*. Nevertheless, if you're going to invest that much time, money, and effort into a gym, or anything for that matter, make the most of it. Learn what you're supposed to do, ask for help if you have to. If you're investing time into doing something improperly, then you're just wasting your time, and everyone else's (Damn asshole made me wait for him to finish his horrid set of prone leg curls before I could get a set on, and yes, he sweated all over it).
*And yes, nutrition and lifting go hand in hand, and there's a pretty good chance he isn't eating properly either. Don't bother going to a gym if you're going to neglect something as important as proper nutrition. Proper fitness is not a "One hour a day, three days a week thing."
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