Why gyms are no good. No good at all.

I quit my gym a while back, on account of I never went. Apparently I hated money enough to give it to a place that was offering me nothing in the way of goods or services. Anyway, eventually I came to my senses, and realized I could spend my money on something better, like cookies.

The gym quit was perfectly timed: shortly after that we made our decision to leave Brooklyn and find a house in New Jersey, and my weekly bouts of ennui became hourly fits of plus-sized panic. I ran back to my psychiatrist, who told me that the best thing I could do for myself was get some regular exercise.

For a while I fooled myself into thinking I could exercise plenty without some stupid gym. The gym and I were through. Who needs a gym, when you have a park and good sneakers? I’ll jog! Okay, ha ha, maybe walk! Fast!

Whoever said walking was a good workout was lying. To me, a good workout means you sweat, and maybe I’m in better shape than I thought, because I couldn’t break a sweat, unless I wore two sweaters. Also, I kept tripping on the sidewalk. And I inevitably took my dog, because I would be lacing up my sneakers and there he’d be, watching me--and you try to get a workout when Charlie is tagging along. He has to pee on every tree, every hydrant, every garbage bag. He doles out his pee like it’s his gift to all of Brooklyn, to be evenly distributed to its residents. Behold his golden puddles! It’s Christmas, but not!

Lately my anxiety level has been ramping up day by day, as we near our closing and our departure from Brooklyn (I actually just screamed a little). So today I sucked it up, and called a local gym. This gym is not my ex-gym; it’s a gym that happens to be in the same building as Henry’s school, so I really have no excuse. I can drop him off and go. Mind you, during that 5-second elevator trip up those three flights, my brain will be screaming NO NO GO HOME AND EAT DING-DONGS. Nonetheless, the chances are not bad that I might actually get myself some exercise, sometimes.

So! “Is it possible to get a six-week membership?” I asked the nice salesperson. “No,” she said, “We don’t do short-term memberships.” Apparently this place hates money as much as I do! We were meant to be!

“Really?” I said.
“The shortest membership we could do is two months,” she said.
“I’ll pay for two months,” I said, and she said, “Well, this month would be prorated to start today.” So six weeks, in other words. Who was I to point this out?

She told me to come down to the gym, so I went to the gym, and when I got there she told me, and I quote, “The accountant doesn’t want to give you that membership because it’s too much paperwork for just two months.” Wow! They loathe money!
”Really?” I said.
“Let me see what I can do,” she said. I was getting good at this! “Why don’t you go home and I’ll call you.”
So I went home, and no joke, there was a message from her saying to come back, the membership was approved. I took my gym stuff with me! I was going to work out! Mental (and, I suppose, physical) health for me!

“The accountant said to give you a temporary six-week membership,” she said when I got there.
OH MY GOD WHAT OTHER KIND WERE WE TALKING ABOUT, I wanted to shout, but didn’t.

Then I exercised today for the first time in a long time. That in itself is not worth the effort it takes to type the words. I flailed around on an elliptical machine. I tried not to hurt myself stretching. I considered the weight machines but concluded that I had done enough for My First Workout in 2006. The End.

But here’s what I forgot: when you’re a nervous wreck, having had a workout is an excellent idea, but being in a gym is the worst thing you can do to yourself. First of all, you're surrounded by muscled, supple forms, and you're not one of them. You have to get naked in a locker room, which would not be a terrible thing unto itself, but inevitably, in this cavernous, mostly unpopulated space, a woman will stroll over and take the locker right next to yours . You will try not to look but oh god peripheral vision. You have to squeeze yourself into your five-year-old, pilly Lycra-infused pants and witness the horror of the visible panty lines. You suffer a glimpse of yourself in a full-length mirror, an object you have very wisely banned from your home.

Then you go to the Cardio Station (do they perform open-heart surgeries there? It would be a welcome distraction) and you put on your iPod and commence to feeling the burn and so forth. You imagine the elliptical trainer is the damn gym accountant and you step on his head again and again. Your freak-outedness begins to dissipate.

But then! A beefy personal trainer (is there any other kind?) keeps entering the room and peering directly at you, the sole enjoyer of Cardio. You try not to worry, but that’s what your brain is good at these days. There he is, back again. Oh god, is he going to come over and tell me I’m doing something wrong? Is he going to—oh please no—correct my form? Or did I commit some terrible breach of gym etiquette? Oh please let me be done before he comes back. And then you realize: you don’t have a towel with you. And you’re sweating all over the handlebars. You are gross. You are what you always loathed at the gym. The sweat-leaving person. You jerk.

Now he’s back with another trainer, and they’re standing in the corner, pretending not to be talking about you. One of them has a towel wrapped around his neck. It’s an obvious message.

You finish five minutes early because you can’t stand it anymore, rush past the trainers, get a wad of paper towels from the bathroom, and purposefully wipe down the handles, as the responsible gym-goer you are. Anyway, with your iPod off you can hear what they’re talking about and it’s something about their hours or their quads, or both, but anyway it’s not about you.

At least your conscience (and the elliptical machine) is clean.

So after you’re done with your comic approximation of stretching, you return to the locker room, where Next Door Locker Lady is just emerging from the steam room and she says hello. Oh god do you have to talk with her now? Sweet Moses, do you have to make small talk when you’re both naked?

After a quick retreat to the showers and subsequent drying, dressing, etc, you head to the elevator. Standing at the elevator is a cadre of seven-foot-tall, confident athletic types, all dressed in revealing workout costumes. Undoubtedly they Take It to the Max on a daily basis, right after they Push It to the Extreme. And you have to stand among them, with your workout clothes in a plastic shopping bag. The group includes the "your money is not worth the effort" salesperson and the trainer who had been staring at you over at The Cardiac Center. No.

You duck into the stairwell and head down the stairs.

And you set off the alarms.

While racing back up the stairs, you see the sign, cleverly angled so that you can’t read it as you head down the stairs: DO NOT GO DOWN THE STAIRS ALARM WILL SOUND. You get back to the elevator, and there they all are, looking at you. “Ha ha!” you say. “That sure woke me up!” No one says anything.

Anxiety: returned!

Comments

[Nancy]

I think this is the best blog entry ever. You can work out at my gym -- I will make you feel thin and fit, instantly. It's a strange power I have over other people.

[Elizabeth]

I'm sorry for your anxiety, but this was a really funny story. Especially this:
"Undoubtedly they Take It to the Max on a daily basis, right after they Push It to the Extreme". BWAhahahaha!

[Jessica]

Hilarious! Thanks for the laugh, I needed it. And I too am in need of the gym.

[mom on a wire]

I'm always worried my butt will sweat and everyone in the gym will make fun of me. It could happen.

[sweetney]

honestly, starting to go to the gym a few times a week has done more for my mood than i imagined. this despite the fact that i had to endure a locker room run-in with Naked Chatty Lady Who Doesn't Seem To Care That She's All Naked And Nude And Without Clothing Before You the other day. that didn't do a lot for me in terms of anxiousness-reduction.

[Faith]

Wow, it sounds like so much fun.Maybe I'll join a gym.Or Not. It is hard enough to go walking at the park and be constantly lapped by 80 year olds! ;D

[HolyMama!]

you ROCK. after the whole 'go home, no, come back, no go away' routine.. I NEVER would have made it as far as the lockerroom. So, really, that was quite good. You survived their stupid administration stuff, AND the workout, AND the stairwell alarm. You conquered. No reason for anxiety - probably Nude Lockerroom Lady didn't have to do any of that.

[weaker vessel]

I'm not sure which is worse, ridiculously nubile and perfect Naked Chatters or horrifically wizened and wholly un-self-conscious Naked Chatters.

I've also been known to weave complex and multi-faceted, Crying of Lot 49-level paranoid persecution fantasies while exercising with earphones on in a public facility.

[leahpeah]

the gym - it's working for me. i enjoy the most my time in the rqball court hitting a ball furiously against the wall. i don't really know how to play. i just love to feel the power of it.

[ozma]

You are funny! I will work out for two hours just so I can have 20 minutes where I am not anxious. I go to the all women's gym because no one ever looks at each other. Much, anyway. And there are no mirrors but instead there are TVs. But you do occasionally get Sweetney's Naked Chatty Lady Who Doesn't Seem To Care That She's All Naked And Nude And Without Clothing Before You.

I used to go to a gym similar to the one you described with the scary healthy people and it really felt like I was the genetic reject who sneaked in to the astronaut training center. If I stepped on the treadmill I feared an alarm would sound alerting them to my defective presence.

[Deb]

Since you have deemed me an un-creepy commenter than I will continue. (would it be creepy to tell you that i got very excited that you responded to my comments and felt Noticed by a Celebrity, it is so dorky!)
Anyhoo....I abhor the gym with a hatred of a thousand suns. I avoid it like the plague. My own depression is rearing it's ugly head as well and I know exercise would help as well. I have the opposite problem, I sweat thinking about putting my shoes on. It is disgusting.

[Mignon]

What's an ellipititbical? And you sweated (swat?) all over its handlebars? And an alarm sounded when you walked down some stairs? Holy Mother Of God! Gym equals torture chamber. Thanks for the warning!

[Nothing But Bonfires]

I used to go to a gym where frightening men wearing large woolly sweaters would always come up and talk to me while I was on those thigh exercise machines were you open and close your legs again and again and again.

It (obviously) wasn't doing much for the anxiety to have large men in activity-inappropriate clothes harassing me, so I switched to a gym that bills itself as the city's "only adult health club." Which totally sounds like there might be orgies going on in the locker room, right? It hasn't helped much with the anxiety either -- yesterday I spent my entire (very vigorous) elliptical machine workout worried that my butt cheeks were hanging out of my shorts.

[Michelle]

I belonged to a gym once. ONCE.

Is it gross that I never saw the inside of the locker room there? Really, I walked into the place already wearing my workout stuff, and went home to shower and change. Someone please say I'm not the only one.

[Sarcomical]

oh my god, the gym, it is FULL of evil reasons not to go!

but i'm impressed that you did. ;) hmmm...maybe i should do that.

[Annie]

Cookies are WAY better than the gym.

That being said, good for you for hopping back onto the elliptical trainer. I'm woefully out of shape myself owing partly to having a baby last May, partly to knee surgery last month, and partly due to sloth.

I was planning on teasing you about taking the elevator up and down to work out until you got the part about the alarm. Eeek! Who thought this made sense?

Don't let the scary parts discourage you. By the end of your six weeks you'll be back in the habit of working out and you'll want to continue in New Jersey.

[Sandee]

You're not the only one, Michelle. No way will I go into the locker room. I always wear my workout clothes to the gym and then shower at home. And, Alice? I, too, must loathe money because I am donating to my local gym each month without partaking of their services. I like the idea of cookies better, so maybe I'll stop the nonsense and just quit already.

[Katie]

I went to the gym ONCE. My sister, who is tiny, thin, tan, and the oppisite of me, dragged me. She signed us up for a kick boxing class because she thinks such things are "Fun". Ummm...not so much. Seems I am better at falling on my ass than Taking it to The Max. I like cookies though!

[Tracy]

So funny! I love that you had your workout clothes in a plastic bag. Gyms always make me feel like a huge fraud because I never have the right accessories.

Of the two gyms to which I donated money, I only one I went to even semi-regularly was the one with a hot tub and a sauna and a steam room with eucalyptus spray - I would go there in winter just for the heat places and wouldn't touch the workout stuff. Plus, one of the Nekkid Chatty Chicks in our locker room was a rather prim 40-ish woman with whom I worked, and something about her talking to me as if we were at the office while she unabashedly rocked the female Full Monty was deeply disturbing.

[marianita]

Alice:
I like the girls over at Go Fug Yourself as much as the next guy, but you can write circles around them, any day of the week. And like the rest, I am sorry about the gym-induced trauma (but happy that you chose to write about it). I feel you.

[jenB]

i never shower at the gym either. i arrive in my workout clothes, embarass myself, and then run home to sit in my own fetid stank. then i shower.

[victoria]

mwhahahha. I had to quit my gym when I discovered that my least favorite person was also a regular. I can hardly deal with this person in my real life; it was just way, way too much to try to talk to her while naked.

BTW, the elliptical machine works for you? I wasn't able to break a sweat using it.

[Belinda]

I LUUUUUUUV the elliptical! Wish I could afford the pro-quality one for my home so I'd never have to run screaming from a house of public workout ever again. Hubby is currently planning on putting his Blowflex, or whatever it's called, in my dog-grooming room! When he has an 850-SF shop yards and yards away from the house to use any way he wants!

And incidentally? I love those businesses where they hate money. I like pointing out that that is why I am taking mine back home with me.

Or, a scene like this, recently, when I stopped at a feed-store I don't usually go to, have had the dock-boys load up nearly 2 tons of feed, ready to load it into my truck, and then hear the owner-guy holding forth to a small audience of old men, gracing my ears with THIS tidbit: "Well, if it weren't for the blacks and the queers and the women running it into the ground, this country wouldn't be going to hell in a handbasket." HELLO? I was handing him my money AT THAT MOMENT. He could SEE me. I am obviously a WOMAN, of the running-the-country-into-the-ground sort. I just smiled and said, "Well, I certainly wouldn't want to taint your fine establishment with this WOMAN'S money, so you can unload my feed and I'll be going." Much hemming and hawing about "just joking," but I was there, and he wasn't.

And then I went home and called my gay, black, multiple horse-owning neighbor and told him. Which lost they guy probably another $200/week.

Like you say, some businesses just HATE money.

[Claire]

hahahahaha, open heart surgery a welcome distraction at the Cardio Station! I just laughed coffee through my nose...

[gkgirl]

i hate to
revel
in your apparent misery
but good god
not only was that
FUNNY
but it beat the hell
out of my sad stairclimber story

teehee
loved it
:)

[LaurieM]

Yeah. Walking is better.

You just need the right terrain. Something with a lot of hills and a dog park where Charlie can run free and gift the trees. And from the sounds of it, terraforming may be just as easy as getting a gym membership.

[Sherry]

I'm sorry, but that, my friend was HYSTERICAL.

[christy]

I know at the gym I hve never ever once seen a person that I think looks worse than me. They could have fat rolls on their skull and I would think they obviously looked 10 times better than me somehow. So, if the rest of the world is anything like me, people are looking at you and thinking "Wow, she has awesome calves" or upper arms, or whatever.

The moreal of the story is making other people's insecurities work for you.

[Just Linda]

Man, I think just getting signed up for 6 weeks would have been all the exercise I could take. Well, I mean, until next Spring, then I'd be willing to do it again.

Too bad eating red Skittles isn't considered exercise. I could excel at that.

[Weeze]

If your gym is the gym I think it is, check out the Sunday sculpt class taught a nice lady named Karen. I went back this weekend for the first time in months and months, and her class was thorough and thoroughly unscary.

[Erin]

I finally joined a gym. I've never really worked out in my life, but I'm 32 and figured it's time to start. So the first time I make myself go and I walk in all anxious and self-conscious and head purposefully toward the treadmill (the only machine I know how to work) and who do I bump into but my ex-boyfriend from 5 years ago! That sinking feeling in my stomach was enough of a workout for me. And he's there every time I go. I mean each of the three times I went. I haven't been back.

[Nancy]

I don't know about the gym, but this entry gave my abs a work-out, what with the laughy-laughy guffawing it engendered.

Actually, I am officially two-months in to a gym membership and know well the naked chatty and judgmental trainers of whom you speak. I've never cottoned to the classes, but have been regularly dragged to Total.Body.Conditioning with a deceptively diminutive teacher for a month. She scares the pants off me, especially when she shrieks, "WORK IT BLUE TANK TOP! DO IT FOR YOURSELF, NOT ME!"

[dirtgirl]

I think you mentioned you were moving to Bloomfield, NJ. If you're willing to drive a bit, the YMCA in Montclair is really great -- better than most NYC health clubs, and does monthly memberships (at around $35 or $40 for a family). Maybe there's a good Y closer to you. Just a thought. I hate those awful fitness clubs and all their stupid contracts and rules.

[Alexa]

I donate to a gym that is across the street from my apartment and still I never go. I keep meaning to cancel but am afraid I will be confronted by a sinister cabal of professional-healthy-people demanding that I stay and get in shape. I do think exercise is excellent for anxiety, though, I just prefer to do it in relative privacy.
I hope your nerves stop whirring and give you a break, already.

[Amber]

Haha I swear you wrote this about me. I definitely rock the plastic shopping bag as the ultimate gym accessory. Oh, and it doubles as a great lunchbag too. So versatile, those plastic bags.

[E]

Bless your heart.

[(another) Nancy]

LMAO. I am sorry about your difficulties -- the membership hassles! the alarms! -- but wow, what an awesome story.

[SparklieSunShine]

Oh geeze. That sounded like a whole lot of mental stress, but you WENT! I, like yourself, hate money and have been paying a monthly gym membership since December to a place I have gone 6 times. I should really start going. You also just made me realise that I can not use my Shuffle at Curves because I won't be able to hear the station changes. Hmm....

On another note: What is wrong with the people who run your gym?
No six weeks! Two months! No two months! Six Weeks!

I would have been taking out my anger on the machines as well.

[spaulson]

Your awesome post reminded me why I hate gyms. I like exercise (er, sort of), but IMHO there are other ways to do it that are more fun and less scary. Like swimming. Okay, so there's the whole bathing suit thing, but while you're in the water, no one can really see you.

The other day I went for a walk in the giant park that's half a block from my apartment (where I've lived for a year, yet I've been in the park about four times). There were women jogging while pushing baby strollers - you know, the expensive, trendy ones with huge wheels. There were also nonscary people. But I was sore after an hour. Of walking!

This from a person who harbours fantasies of being an extreme-outdoors-adventure sort of person. Day hiking (which I've done), long-distance kayaking/sailing/canoeing, mountain climbing, rock climbing, backpacking, touring on horseback or bicycle... Sigh. Roughing it sounds exciting, but I bet I'd actually hate it.

[Sara]

I am in a similar situation - I have been sending money to Curves, my gym of choice, for close to 2 years now. It seemed ideal - lots of women older/fatter than me! Huzzah! And no men! Also, 30-minute workouts, in which you change your activity every 90 seconds... perfect for my ADD brain. And one benefit that I'd clearly overlooked, never having been a member at a "real" gym before - NO NAKED LOCKER ROOM.

So how is it that with all those great benefits, it's been well over 16 months since I've last set foot in the building, yet I still let them take my money (direct from my account - these people are so clever) every month?? I must hate money too.

[Beth]

I also gave money to a gym that I always *meant* to use. Prior to that, I joined a Big Gym for Lots o' Money and cancelled in the same day. That one sent out the Lycra-clad Amazon to try to dissuade me, and talking her down was apparently enough exercise to last me for years. ;^) Good for you for actually going!

[kristin]

this was a quite brilliant post. during my brief gym tenure i tried the elliptical 3 or 4 times, and whenever i thot i was getting it, i'd end up falling out/off of it somehow. kind of like breathing i guess. when you sit there and think about the breath going in and out in and out, you get all screwed up and hyperventilate. anyway. good for you, alice. and i know the house stuff i super stressful. hang in there.

[Robin]

when i asked to have a trainer show me the ropes with the circuit machines, they signed me up with the geriatric specialist. which at first i was kinda bummed about, but then i realized it made me much less self-conscious. after all, if granny can do it, so can i! and since there ARE a lot of grams and gramps at my gym (hence the geriatric trainer) it takes some (but not all) of the loathsomeness away.

[Melissa]

I just started back to the gym after an ankle fracture (on my honeymoon, no less). The gym is attached to my PT's office.

I am v. v. out of shape having been in a cast for 8 weeks. And I have a limp.

One of those beefy personal trainers you wrote of came over this morning and tried to correct my form (egads! leave me the hell alone!). I had to lift the leg of my loose workout pants to reveal my ankle brace. "Oh," he said "I thought you were just weird."

Seriously, that is what the man said to me. After the gym? I may've decided never to return while downing a creamy beverage from the local coffeehouse.

[Melissa]

I just started back to the gym after an ankle fracture (on my honeymoon, no less). The gym is attached to my PT's office.

I am v. v. out of shape having been in a cast for 8 weeks. And I have a limp.

One of those beefy personal trainers you wrote of came over this morning and tried to correct my form (egads! leave me the hell alone!). I had to lift the leg of my loose workout pants to reveal my ankle brace. "Oh," he said "I thought you were just weird."

Seriously, that is what the man said to me. After the gym? I may've decided never to return while downing a creamy beverage from the local coffeehouse.

[J]

Ah, the humiliation we put ourselves through in the quest for sanity. I recently started a class at a dance studio that involves a lot of painful stretching and the mircophone headset wearing instructors call you out by NAME when your form is incorrect. They demoted me from full size ballet bar to the American Girl Doll size ballet bar as I have the flexibility of an 80 year old. Even with the constant humilation- it's like catholic school all over again- I am finding that I feel much better afterwards. It really will help, and it's only for six weeks! By the end you'll be able to walk into any gym in NJ and Take it to the Max with the best of them.

[grad03]

Oh, did I laugh at this one...

First time poster, long-time lurker. I work on a college campus where I belong to the rec center gym because it's super-cheap for staff.

Now, imagine trying to squeeze in a quick workout in a room absolutely packed with noo-bile 18-year-olds. Not so motivating when you're in your early 30's, trying to bounce back from your first pregnancy. Well, rather than bouncing back, perhaps jiggling back. Not only is everyone more lean, flexible, and beautiful than I am, but large numbers of these young women (and the occasional man who braves the circuit-training room instead of the raw-brawn free weight room) have more muscles than Michaelangelo's David. They all have I-Pods and gear from Outdoor Divas, while my really great brand-spanking-new self-motivating workout pants came from the sale rack at Target. And I will not go into locker-room detail except that, dear god, some of these girls NEVER get off a cell phone.

I take secret glee in imagining them in 10 years with c-section scars occasionally. I have accepted that I am an evil person.

[Krissa]

Just think - in that beautiful new house of yours, there might be enough room for your own elliptical or treadmill, thus avoiding sweaty Naked Chatters forever!

[Tricia]

And I thought I was the only person whose gym life mirrored a Lucy episode. I revolve my workouts around the least amount of women in the locker room as possible. I rush in and try to change in the least amount of time as possible. (I think I'm down to 30seconds).

[Steph]

Thank you. You just lived my worst nightmare, and you're still alive! I now have faith in the future! lol!