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The 10 people you'll find in any gym

by Chris Sparling (Subscribe to Chris Sparling's posts)
Oct 2nd 2007 1:43PM

Categories: Diet & Weight Loss, Fitness, Men's Health

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Step in any gym in any city in any state in this entire country and you're sure to find the same people. Of course not the exact same people, but the same types of people. Though their accents may differ when they yell their rep count out loud and their music selection may vary as it blares through their oversized headphones, these same people seem to magically appear in every gym throughout the nation. Some of them work out hard, some don't work out at all, and some do exercises so bizarre that it's clearly not safe to be within a fifty-foot radius of them. Who are the people in your neighborhood gym? Pretty much the same as those in everyone else's.

1. The Gamma Radiation Victim – While they aren't green (yet), these guys are so large that they look like they could either live forever or die any second. Their clothes fit them like paint and their veins practically form roadmaps on their arms and legs. Fortunately for them, if they ever get lost on the way to their steroid dealer's house, they can use their bodies like a AAA Trip-Tic. These are also the same guys that you should never ask to spot you, because if you are struggling to bang out your last rep with what you believe to be a respectable amount of weight, they will simply lift it off you with one hand ... and then beat up your dad with the other.


2. Thomas Edison – Stay the hell away from this guy or girl, or else you're bound to get hurt. There's truly nothing scarier in the gym than the people who feel the need to invent their own exercises. As you and everyone else go about your daily grind, these people are rolling around on a physio-ball while balancing a soft-spoken Peruvian child on their head. A common explanation for the purpose of their whacked-out maneuvers is that this new exercise is great for working their 'core.' The truth? It doesn't work their core at all. In fact, it doesn't work anything...except to bring utter chaos into a weight room. Get these people on a treadmill and that's when things really get dangerous.

3. Sparkle Motion – Remember the girls in college who used to get dressed to the hilt for an 8:00am class? Well, ten years later these same ladies are still going for cosmetic gold, primping and teasing their early morning glamour for a pre-work trip to the gym. The hair, the nails, the matching pink running shoes/zip-up sweatshirt ensemble, and even the unabashedly applied glitter lipstick...all at 5:30 in the goddamn morning. Most people with even an iota of sanity are still asleep at this hour. These glimmering gals, however, are already into their fourth cup of iced coffee and forty-third minute on the elliptical machine by this time.

4. The 'A Bit Too Personal' Trainer – Signing-up for a gym membership in itself can be a rather daunting process for some people. When you factor in a personal training session with someone who feels the need to tell you about all of their life problems, things can quickly go from uneasy to downright weird. "That's it...one more...good...you can do it....good........my mother died from advance stage syphilis." Uh...what? Who needs to hear that? And how is that possibly motivating? I may be wrong, but I don't recall a single scene in Rocky where Mickey told Rocky that the reason why his skin looks so healthy is because he refuses to poop after 8:30 at night.

5. Bob the Builder – Fancy health clubs may be the only place where this guy doesn't show up, but for the rest of us whose annual gym memberships cost less than the price of a new Nissan Maxima, this unfashionably coarse fellow is a staple (Puns, kids. That's what they're called.). Sometimes it's a pair of work boots and jeans, other times it's a pair of overalls, and on some occasions it's a line of clothing seemingly purchased from the Paul Bunyon collection on QVC. How do these people work out in all those layers? The grunge epoch may have ended in the late nineties, but flannel somehow managed to survive thanks to carpenters whose parents clearly never made them put on their 'play clothes' after school.

6. The Unworthy Screamer – Although it is true that the huge guys do sometimes yell while they work out, it is most times the mostly-fat-but-partially-muscled guy who feels the need to grunt and groan at the top of his lungs each time he curls a thirty-five pound dumbbell. Even worse, when it turns out that the dying moose sounds you hear emanating from the far corner turn out to be the Herculean cries of a one hundred and fifty pound man wearing Puma sweats and a Riptide headband, banging out his last two reps of triceps extensions. Feel that burn, you annoying S.O.B.

7. The Teen Titan – Obesity rates for youths and teens are at an all time high, which is why you see less and less fat kids getting picked on today (fat is the new skinny, or at least it would seem). So, to see any teenage kids in the gym is, in and of itself, a good thing. Problems usually arise when a group of four of five teenage boys collectively decide to dive head first into a workout regimen that would make Ronnie Coleman sleep in. Their form is all out of whack and they do their best to shove around as much weight as their barely post-pubescent bodies possibly can. All goes to hell once a 45 pound plate slides off the side of the bar during an attempt at a one rep max bench press and the other side comes crashing down onto their spleen. Even worse is when they use far too much weight on the cable crossovers and end up being violently yanked backwards like Sweetchuck in Police Academy 2.

8. The Doctor of Style – Look, we all think it's very impressive that you work at a hospital. You're clearly a very intelligent and noble person. And, depending on your particular occupation, it's likely that you probably make some serious money, too. But, is it still necessary to wear your powder blue scrubs to the gym? These people work all day long in these draw-string pants and v-neck shirts...don't they want to change out of them? They may be comfortable and they may "breathe," but that's still no excuse for wearing your work clothes in public. Do the world a favor and pick-up a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, will you please?

9. Scarface – Though he's not a cocaine drug kingpin, this guy is still to blame for leaving the weight room looking like the backroom of a bakery. Despite the fact that the signs clearly say that "Weightlifting Chalk is Not Allowed," this dusty fellow claps his hands together with pride before each set, leaving everything and everyone around him covered in a layer of white powder. Only making things worse is the industrial size weightlifting belt this guy straps around the waistband of his ultra-tight spandex shorts, essentially forcing everyone in the gym to 'say hello to his little friend.'

10. The Senator – Treating each visit to the gym like a stop on a campaign trail, these types want to talk to you and everyone else about utter and complete nonsense. They never, ever shut up. Ever. Even while you attempt to finish your last five minutes of an hour run on the treadmill, or even worse, as you labor through your last set of squats, this person will find that to be the most opportune time to ask you how your family is doing, or how your job is going, or if you know a good place to buy deck stain. Your best attempts at ignoring them or hint dropping for them to leave you alone are about as effective as using gasoline to put out a fire. Maybe these people really should run for office.

Don't believe that these people are at your gym? Try looking around the next time you go and you'll see them. All of them. But, if for some reason you have trouble identifying one of them from this list, well, I hate to break it to you, but that person might be you.

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