I used to have a great thing going with the gym in my work building. My hours were 7-3, so I would be in the gym before the evening rush and basically had my ideal workout scenario – completely alone.
There were a few annoying characters, like the guy who always wanted to talk that I avoided, and the finance bro who said it was his right to bang all the girls because he made a lot of money. In general, just quotidian pestering and douchebagery.
I was not prepared for moving back to a 9-5 shift and dealing with – whatever the hell is going on there in the mornings now.
It’s literally chaos and nothing makes sense.
Item #1: Short Stack and Big Stack
Short Stack and Big Stack both look like they are carved from marble. Big Stack literally looks like one of the freakish muscle mannequins from Under Armour came to life and got a membership at my gym. (I just hope that his biopic, Mannequin 3, features Kim Cattrall.) Short Stack is likewise just as chiseled, but only about a foot and a half shorter.
What is so confusing about Short and Big Stack is that they both work out about 20 minutes, never break a sweat, and in most cases their lifting form literally makes me wonder if they’ll have any joints left.
Big Stack one time picked up some dumbbells.
Before even starting that story, I think it’s also important to note that Big Stack has a lifting buddy that I just refer to as Chuckles. Chuckles is straight but has a huge man-crush on Big Stack. I gave him the name Chuckles because Big Stack can say anything and Chuckles will lose his mind with laughter.
Big Stack: These weights are heavy.
Chuckles: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAA. Good one, man!
So Big Stack picks up the dumbbells and walks over to Chuckles. He starts literally doing every shoulder exercise at once. All of them. He does lateral raises into front raises, into back raises (?), into a shoulder press. Not only is he just combining them all together, but the movement was an erratic sort of interpretative dance. If you’ve ever seen one of those inflatable dancing characters, that’s exactly what was happening.
Big Stack: This is probably confusing, but I like to combine all the exercises at once.
Chuckles: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
How? How do you have any shoulders left? The ligaments must wonder what the hell is going on.
Ligaments: We’re up, down, left, right, backwards, ope! Back up again!
Then Big Stack proceeds to go to the squat rack. As I mentioned, he looks like a veritable titan, so it’s not a surprise when he puts 10000 lbs of weights on each side.
Chuckles watches in awe as he goes under the bar. He takes a deep breath and lifts the bar on to his traps. He sighs as his eyes go skyward. The whole gym stares as the Mannequin King prepares to squat over 350 lbs.
He grunts. Blows out a breath of air.
And proceeds to do 1/100th of a squat.
Like – not even a quarter squat. His legs imperceptibly moved.
I was so intrigued by whatever this was, that I kept watching.
That had to be a warmup, I thought. It’s like some advanced lifting technique.
NOPE. He kept adding small weights while still doing his 1/100th of squats.
Meanwhile on the other side of the gym, Short Stack is just putting all the machines at max weight and doing like 2 reps. The weights crash down and he grunts, then moves to the next machine.
Does 3 sets of 2 reps do anything?
Whatever Short and Big Stack are doing, I want notes. I just hope the answer is drugs because it’s the only thing that makes any sense with what is going on.
Item #2: Bruce Lee
So while Short Stack and Big Stack are doing their 2 reps of 130000 lbs or 1/10th exercises, on the other side of the gym, a tiny Asian man is loading up 3 plates on each side of the bar for a deadlift and blasting out dozens of reps with perfect form.
This guy could literally be one of Big Stack’s droppings. He is maybe is 5’6” and 140 lbs. And lifting more weight than Big Stack.
Is it some kind of ancient Eastern art that none of us know about? How can he just blast that out for his warm up and I like am sweating and done after lifting the bar on bench press?
No idea. Why does nothing make sense at the Merchandise Mart at 7 AM?
Item #3: So. Many. Squats.
The other phenomenon in the morning gym sessions is the guys who literally just squat all day every day. 5 days a week they just go in and do squats. It’s not like it’s one guy, whom I can call Squat Guy. It’s at least 3 dudes who just squat their hearts out every day.
I think the pressure of “skipping leg day” go to them a bit too much.
“Every day is leg day. Just gotta squat, bro.”
I think it’s also important to note that they all do full squats. It’s not the weird “I’m moving my hips 10 degrees” squat of Big Stack, but full sets of squats.
Every. Day.
I have no idea how you would even stay motivated to go to the gym with that routine.
I guess it’s at least easy to know what your routine will be that day.
“Monday we got some squats, then Tuesday we’re going to really hit squats hard, but no too hard because we got Squat Day Wednesday. With what we got left in the squat tank we’re going to go full tilt squat on Thursday and then push out some big squats on Friday. Saturday we’ll take off but should probably practice some air squats so we’re ready to get back into the squat rack on Sunday.”
Item #4: Showers from Hell
If you manage to survive all the weight-lifting, non-weightlifting, and squatting in the actual gym, you then graduate into the final level of gym hell, which is the bathroom.
I think it’s actually one of those funhouses where everything is slightly smaller than it should be and you feel like you shouldn’t be running into someone every time you take a step.
Somehow, everyone is always concentrated into one row of lockers, all right by each other. No matter what time of day, I’m on top of Chuckles who is on top of Big Stack, who is breathing down the neck of Bruce Lee.
Normally it’s not too bad, but over the course of one week 2 of the 6 showers broke.
It. Was. Awful.
The line would extend 12-people deep through the locker room, making the ½ of foot of space you used to have to get dressed seem like a luxury.
It was during this week that I found my gym nemesis, not due to anything but the fact that he takes 100 years to get ready in the locker room and his locker is always next to mine. On one 12-person line day, I saw him enter the showers as I was opening my locker. The line grew to 3 people at which point I got in.
The guy who was first in line gets in, the second person gets in, then I wait for like 5 minutes.
The guy who had gotten in the shower first comes out.
I go in, quick shower, because I know there are now 10 people in line and I should be cognizant of this.
I get out, am half-dressed – THEN NEMESIS GETS OUT. HE HAS BEEN IN THE SHOWER FOR ROUGHLY 20 MINUTES.
Why do you need that much time?!
Over the next week I start to pay attention to this guy’s insanely elaborate grooming regimen. It takes FOR.EVE.RRRRR.
One day he was getting ready to shower when I got back into the locker room. He was right next to me and I’m like “NO, NEMESIS. YOU AREN’T GOING TO BOTHER ME TODAY.” So I go get on a treadmill for 15 minutes, stretch for 5 minutes, and think that he should be mostly done by the time I get back in the locker room.
When I’m back in, HE’S JUST GETTING OUT OF THE SHOWER. WHEN I LEFT HE WAS IN A TOWEL GETTING IN THE SHOWER. WHY DOES HE NEED SO MUCH TIME?!
In summation, I should take steroids, practice Eastern arts, bring dry shampoo and lots of deodorant to avoid showers,…or just find another gym.
Part of me feels some obligation to Chuckles, however. Who is going to be there to pick up his arm when it breaks off from doing a bench press into a squat into a deadlift into a shoulder press?