Tips for the New Year's Resolutionaries

 

 Re-upping my semi-annual greeting and guidelines to the New Year's Resolutionaries, aka the folks who vowed to get in shape. All this is offered with love, respect and a strong dose of reality.

• Hey, welcome. No, really. I'm glad you're here. You've made an admirable goal for yourself. Everyone you see here made a similar vow at some point in their lives.Yes, I may have groaned loudly when I walked into the weight room because it's suddenly filled with people and now there's more competition/wait time for machines. Don't worry, I'll deal. In the meantime, here are some best practices to help us both.

•  Speaking of wait times, don't hog a single machine for 10+ minutes. Don't just sit there resting between sets. If you wait two minutes, six other people could've gotten sets in between yours. Get up, move around. Make a rotation of several machines; if one's busy, just go on to the next. There's no rule that says you have to do all your sets at a station in a row. I will sometimes start and end my workout with a particular exercise.

• Carry a towel and wipe down a station anywhere your body touched it. It's just common courtesy. And some people are seriously stanky.

• If you hear a guy (nearly always a guy) loudly grunting/exhaling/verbalizing with each rep, drawing attention to themselves and distracting everyone, make sure to focus all your negative psychic energy at him. He is the enemy of all this is good and true.

•  Resist the urge to buy a bunch of brand-new workout gear as motivation. Wearing your old stuff is fine, unless it seriously doesn't fit anymore. If you want to buy an article of clothing that's like three sizes too small, wait until you actually reach that size and then buy it. It'll feel much better as a reward than a cautionary totem sitting in your closet, taunting you.

•  If you're not sure how a station works, ask somebody. Most will be glad to show you. If you're a total newbie hiring a personal trainer for a few sessions is a good move. If some muscle-head bro-dude interrupts your workout to say "you're not doing it right," feel free to ignore him because he's probably the same guy who grunts while he lifts.

• Don't be a muscle groupie. This is usually a woman, but sometimes also a young guy, who is smitten by muscles and feels compelled to compliment and ask questions of the bodybuilders. You can identify them because they're following the biggest person in the gym around like a puppy. If someone bigger walks in, they instantly migrate.

• Most serious exercise adherents don't actually want to get big muscles. We think it's gross and unnatural. Plus we're probably older and wiser and have better things to do with our time. The correlation between strength and size is surprisingly weak. If you lift regularly you will get stronger but won't necessarily get a lot bigger. Bigger is literally not better. Perversely, the steps people undertake to get really big -- pills, extreme dieting, water binging/fasting -- often impact their health negatively. 

•  For all that is good and holy, don't stand in front of the mirror flexing. Or even looking in the mirror a lot. You may need to do that when you're first learning an exercise, but once you've got the motion down it's kinda creepy.

• Look, most of you are going to be done by Valentine's Day. I'm not trying to be discouraging, just realistic. The business model of gyms is built around getting a lot of people to sign up for monthly subscriptions they end up not using very much. If everyone who had a membership showed up regularly they wouldn't have enough space/equipment/people to handle it. It's not very different from airlines overbooking flights or those gift cards you may have given or received during the holidays. Americans waste up to $3 billion on gift card funds that go unused ever year.

• Remember when I said in my first bullet point that I'll deal with the crowds? This is why. Because I know they will seriously thin very soon. This isn't a wish, just the reality I've witnessed year in and year out. I hope you're one of those who stays. Or tries again in six months or a year and this time it sticks. And then you can write the next one of these.

Gym etiquette for newbies

In the spirit of both encouraging and educating all the New Year's Resolution folks now swarming the gyms, I thought I’d offer some unsolicited but appropriate tips on etiquette and behavior. This will hopefully make them better gym users and increase their enjoyment of the experience.

But I’ll confess, mostly I’m just hoping to make their presence more tolerable to the rest of us. I speak as someone who started working out 22 years ago, and in that time hasn’t missed more than a week of going to the gym (and even then nearly always due to illness or travel).

1.    If you’re going to rest more than 45 seconds between sets, don’t just sit on the station. Get up, walk around, stretch, and let someone else work in. No one should hog a station for 10+ minutes. Three or four people can easily rotate on a single piece of equipment between sets.

2.    The spaces in between the exercise equipment are for egress. Do not grab dumbbells or other mobile equipment and stand there performing your exercises. Don’t make others walk around you.

3.    In many gyms there are clipboards on the cardio machines (treadmills, elliptical, etc.) for people to sign up for certain times. About 98% of the time, nobody pays any attention to these. When a machine is free, grab it. Don’t actually expect someone to get off because it’s “your time.”

4.    The locker room is where you’re supposed to change clothes. If you’re removing more than one article of clothing (winter coat, etc.), please don’t do it in front of the rest of us. We’re not impressed.

5.    Please wear appropriate workout clothing. If you’re a gym newbie and don’t want to invest in new duds because you think they will soon be too big for you, at least make sure everything that needs to be covered, is. Hint: Try Goodwill stores for good, cheap gym clothes.

6.    If you’re not sure how a piece of equipment works, feel free to ask someone who looks like they know what they’re doing. Most gym vets are glad to help. If you do some stations wrong, you could injure yourself.

7.    Unless you’re a member of a weightlifting team, you’re not in competition with anybody but yourself. Don’t worry about how much weight someone else can lift. Focus on making yourself stronger, not “beating” another person.

8.    If you need to make a loud grunt or exclamation when you’re lifting, you’ve got too much weight on.

9.    The operative part of the phrase “working out” is “work.” Most of us are here to perform exercise and leave. It’s not social hour. Confine extended conversations to outside the gym floor.

10.    Please don’t think we’re too cynical, but those of us who are here year-round know from past experience that most of you will be gone by Valentine’s Day. We’re happy to tolerate the January crowds, and applaud your newfound motivation. Those of you who transform into regulars are especially to be applauded. Next year, you can write this guide for the newcomers.