Sights and Sounds from the Gym

Last week as I was working out in the gym with my headset on and not looking at anyone, a man stopped by my machine and kindly told me that if I continued using the machine the way I was I was going to blow out my knees. He then proceeded to show me how to use that machine and many other machines giving me helpful hints on all the other machines as well. He told me that I should only work all legs or arms or shoulders or my back not a mixture of them. Then when I got ready to go up and do cardio, he told me that I needed to make sure that when I was on the treadmill, I needed to make sure the elevation was at 15. Oh my!!! There was no way that I could do that...I only ever went as high as 7. He also told me that he had weighed 253 and now he was 23o something. Ummm, he only had lost 20 pounds and he's giving me advice...oh wow! By the end he had added at least 15 min. to my workout that I started late and given me some useless advice.


In the locker room at a gym, you should make sure all your goodies are covered at all times. There should be no hanging out in nothing or blow drying your hair in socks alone. Yet today as I walked into the locker there was a chick in tennis shoes and black socks and nothing else! She was toweling off, so I thought maybe then she would put on clothes, but oh no! She grabbed her bag and went to the sinks, where she proceeded to blow dry her hair, naked! I walked over to the sinks and brushed my teeth, but couldn't stop thinking that she needed to put on clothes. When her hair was dry, she brought her bag back to my section and then FINALLY got dressed. On went the bra, on went the shirt, on went the skirt. Then she walked out. Ummm.....no underwear! What!?!?! Oh my what a crazy lady! I kept wanting to say something to the ladies in the locker room, whom I've been changing with for over a year now, but I worried that the crazy lady would over hear me....oh just wait till tomorrow.

Hates The Gym!!!

and it's not because it's kicking my butt!!! It's because it's January and every January the gym becomes packed out! Everyone makes New Years Resolutions (NYR) to get thinner and they all think that going to the gym is going to help them achieve their goal. I'm not saying that I don't believe that people shouldn't make goals like this. All the more power to you, but for all of us that go to the gym regularly throughout the year, we really hate January. We now have to wait in line for OUR machine that we used daily before the NYR people showed up. We, regulars, are subjected to too tight gym clothes on too big NYR people. We have to use a different locker because the NYR people don't understand that the lockers are really assigned even though our names aren't on them! The showers are different than the lockers, showers can't be reserved, but the NYR people think they can be reserved by hanging your stuff on the hooks. Oh they have so much to learn!!!

But the crappy thing is that they won't learn the rules of the gym because they won't stay around long enough. They tend to make it 3-4 weeks and then the gym is back to the regulars for a bit anyway, until people decide they need to get thinner to fit in their bikini's for summer.

I'm In the Process!

The process of switching gyms! I've been at the YMCA ever since I lived in Alabama. When I moved back up here, I joined the Auburn YMCA and have loved it. In the 6 years that I've been there, I've made some really great friends, have lost enough weight to equal a 4th grader (or one of my bigger 2nd graders), and have enjoyed the benefits of a new facility, but now I think it might be time for a change.

With my move into Kent, I'm now further away from my gym (that is down by the Super Mall.) Also with the gym being so far away to make my hour workout, shower, and drive time, I have to plan for 3 hours before I need to be at work. Therefore I'm waking up at 4:30am and leaving my house by 5am. Lately I've been rolling out of bed at 5:12am, which makes me late for the gym. Going to bed by 8:30 to get 8 hours of sleep has also been really hard lately too, soooooo

I'm trying out a new gym. It's an LA Fitness. It's less than 5 min. away. It sports a swimming pool, free weights, weight machines, 4 racquet ball courts, a basketball court, spinning class, and multiple cardio machines. I've been in 3 times already and love it. I love the getting up later, I love the workout, I love the less time it takes me to get to work (i.e. the less gas I have to pay), so far I pretty much love everything. The one thing I can't figure out though, is why the heat is on in the morning up in the cardio area!?!?! Anyone? Anyone?

I will totally miss the people at the Y, being able to wear whatever I want and not caring who was going to see me ( I worked out with all the old men), the relationships I built with the machines (-you know what I'm talking about. You always go to the same machine too, for some reason it's your favorite machine), and being able to plug into a machine to hear the tv and not having to have an ipod to hear it. But I'm pretty sure I'm switching...now comes the hard part, telling the YMCA I'm leaving.

Gym Antics

So I always thought that the shower at the gym was the same as the public toilets. YOU DON'T GO IN THE ONE NEXT TO ANYONE, unless it is the only one left. So this morning, I was in the shower all by myself leaving 11 open showers, not including the one next to me. Mind you most of these showers are open and 4 are closed with walls. I was almost done showering, just about to rinse all the soap off of me and in walks a lady from the pool and turns on the shower right next to me. She proceeds to shower and I proceed to turn my shower off to dry off. Now when you are trying to dry off and the person next to you is showering, the spray of the water tends to hit you. And this is exactly what was happening this morning as I dried, I became instantly wet. For the Love! I grabbed all my stuff and finally moved to an open area to dry off.

While I was working out, well practicing hula, I was looking in the mirror at myself and realizing that I look like I have lost a lot of weight, therefore, after showering I weighed in... and have lost 5 more pounds, so now I am down 17 and overall 67. Yeah! That much weight could be one of my heavy 1st graders. Oh my