THE GYM
E-mail this page 
Printer-friendly page
Without talking, we all scramble in like soccer moms to a Saturday morning game where our kid is playing goalie, occasionally holding the door open for the next excited, hurrying person to follow, and possibly giving a cheerful nod to the nice girl up ahead keeping the door ajar with her foot. One after the other, we congregants already have our membership cards out ready to swipe, already knowing we have to hurry if we want to get a head start on some of the best work out machines as those are the ones that always get crowded and taken up first.
Everybody seems to work out chest and biceps on Sunday, it's just a given here at one of the most popular, secular shrines of American culture--the gym. Like church, for some the gym is a spiritual place. It is not a place to simply get the body in shape. For some people fitness is a form of salvation. Like the fabled kingdom of heaven, seek ye first the gym and all else will be added unto you.
You'll:
- Geel better
- Look better
- Be better
- Lose weight
- Be stronger
- Live longer
You'll have:
- A stronger heart
- More endurance
- Less tension in your personal life
·
Your:
- Dietary sins will be forgiven
- On-the-job stress will be absolved
- Clothes will fit better
Not only might your love life get better. You might even find someone to love. Here again, like in olden days when guys used to go to church because that's where the nice girls were, now they're at the gym, and they look just as good in their speedos as they did in their choir robes.
With a gym bag slung over my shoulder, I bounded down the stairs with an additional item tucked inside with my standard New Balance sneakers, wrist bands, and back brace. The other little stowaway was a green, spiral notebook. I had decided to ask the regulars at my gym whether they felt they actually had to work out, whether working out, like redemption, was a need rather than a want.
When I got down the stairs, I filled my small locker to the brim. My gym is a crammed little house of worship with tiny pews not a spacious health club, a high-church Anglican cathedral. I paced down the hall to the weight room where already I could hear the chant of saints--one, two, ugh, groan, huh, huff, ah, with barbells clanging like space-age tambourines.
I took a quick glance into the cardio area, which was quickly filling up, then I rushed over to a guy I have seen frequently. He was rubbing his hands together and picking up the equipment he would need to get started. It wasn't hard to spot him. He never trimmed the rugged, yellow-topped crop that has become a constant tenant atop his head, and he wore his customary plain gray Cal Tech sweatshirt with blue shorts that just scraped the upper grooves above his knee caps. He was picking up two metal cross-over handles and rushing over to the cable cross-over machine, which works the side regions of the chest. I should know, it's my favorite workout. I can actually feel the muscles resisting my persistent tugs.
"Jeff Rubabusky," he said, smiling, when I asked his name. His eyes, calm and blue, squint back at me when I push forward the notepad I have in my hands. Nervously, not used to talking in the gym, I said that I just wanted to ask him a few questions about fitness as salvation. I asked if he'd answer candidly. "Yeah, go ahead," he snickered, apparently having no problem with the name I put to his addiction. "I mostly do it for self-image," he explained, his fingers curling and crunching on the metal handle.
At 20, Jeff really didn't have to come to the gym. He seemed to be in good shape.
"I feel really guilty if I don't come," he admitted, looking at me sheepishly. "I even come at around 5:30 in the morning (early mass) just to work it all in before I have to go to work," he said. I can attest to that. I've seen him here at that hour, usually working out legs. When I finally asked whether he ever hates having to come, he just shook his head back and forth and gave a half smile. "No," he said, "not really."
I moved on. It got more awkward and surreal as I approached people while they were working out. See, these aren't people I regularly cajole and punch in the shoulder after a bawdy joke, but people I had never talk to, strangers.
On a slim, red-sling chair, plopped down in the middle of a weight room designated for free weights, (weights that aren't attached to machines) a man was struggling to lift two dumb bells over his head, 50s in each hand. His sports drink sat nearby like communion wine.
I waited for him to finish his modified shoulder press, and approached him once he slammed them on the ground with a groan. He had a Tom Selleck moustache, thick and natural looking, and freckles that trailed up his biceps up to his shoulder blades. Amicably, he extended his hand and gave me a strong, firm handshake, "Hi, I'm Rich," I said, he nodded, "Well, Rich, my name is Vince, what can I do you for?"
I asked, he told.
"Well, I started out about 10 years ago. And I'm 43 now. I just kept on coming." He is an exception. Most people who join gyms stop after only a short while, before they are really born again into the new gym-centered lifestyle. Grateful for his cooperation, I propped up his arms, which were bending at the elbows as he struggled to put up the weights again. In the gym, we call it "spotting."
For many a spotter is like a priest: "Spotter, I have sinned. I didn't come to the gym last week."
"For penance do three extra presses and go in peace, my child."
"I don't feel like I have to come," Vince told me, panting after he'd finished his set of twelve. "I really don't, I actually like coming. It's like atonement for all your bad habits."
Tired of asking questions and wanting to hit the racks myself, I decided to ask just one more person before I started my own routine. My body had been practically pulling me by the shirt collar once Jeff had finished with the cable cross over, Hurry, somebody else is going to get to it. I walked over to one of the burliest guys. Now, this guy I didn't know him by name; I only learned that it was Louie when I once asked for help on a back exercise.
"Hey, Rich," he said, offering his hand before he even saw the notebook tucked underneath my armpit. "What's that you got there? You keeping track of your working outs now? Good for you." I told him what I was doing, and asked if he could possibly clarify why so many people who regularly attend the gym seem so addicted to its siren love song (which usually happens to be an old Beach Boys or Beatles tune on the speaker in the corner).
"Well, I can't speak for everybody, but I started in 1970, in my Phoenix, Arizona high school, Desert Vista High School, Home of the Thunder, as a freshman. I started with sports, and I kind of just stuck with it. I'm actually getting up in the years, I'm turning 50." This was the first time I ever heard his age.
When I thought about it, with his slightly tinged white hair, snug body and only a slight belly that protruded from the bottom of his green sweatshirt, he could have probably passed for 40. "It's not like I have to come, and it's not like I don’t like doing it, but it really makes me feel good to just lift these weights and get it done. It's like I accomplished something. Lifting weights to me is like eating to some other people, if you know what I mean," I did.
I thanked him and was happy to be on my way. And just then, it came to me. I do have to do this. I do have to be here. It makes me feel good to increase the reps, put up more weight and have my body respond to the pressure of putting up just 5, 10, or 15 more pounds. The gym has become a sanctuary for me too, a place to let my fuming anger spend itself in wrath against the triceps pull machine or treadmill. I work fiercely. Every sin committed against me by my boss, my ex-wife, my kids, my girlfriend is forgiven.
Louie came over after his set and slapped me on the back. He winked and said, "Looking good, Rich, keep at it." And I do. Not because I want to, but because I must.
E-mail this page Printer-friendly page
Copyright 2008 Soul Vibrations, Inc. All rights reserved.
i
Fitness for Health
