This week, I cancelled my gym membership. After three years of trying to train in a public gym just three miles from my house, I called it quits. The lack of proper gym etiquette, the daily viewing of poor technique and dumb exercise choices and watching the club’s personal trainer lead his lemmings over the fitness cliff finally reached critical mass. I even tried to ignore the comic tragedy for awhile but the inane visions of clueless movements and hearing the regurgitations of some muscle rag pap broke through my defenses. It was time to leave. In fact, it was long past that time. Like a bad marriage, I kept taking to make it work but now it was over.
When I handed my cancellation letter to the club owner, I offered to make some suggestions that I thought might help the club. But before I could begin, she put her hand up, clearly a “talk to the hand” jesture, looked down at some make believe piece of paper and said, “I don’t want to hear it”. I wasn’t being a smartass; I was sincere in my intent to be helpful. Her reaction clearly revealed why the club’s environment pushed me out the door. From the top down, no one really cared about the club’s training environment. Most members moved around in an iPod cloud, unaware and uncaring how their actions affected others around them. They paid their $19.95 per month to workout and leave. And like spoiled children, they assumed that someone would cleanup after them. If not the underpaid staff, it would be another member. It really didn’t matter who, as long as they didn’t have to be bothered about such menial responsibilities.
The young staff didn’t feel that they should approach a wealthy member about being more considerate of others and tell them to put their toys away. They seemed to be intimidated by engaging much older and more successful members in such a confrontational manner and they feared the reaction of their employer. After my interaction with the owner, it is my impression that she would rather fire a good employee than lose a $19.95 per month raging asshole member. Ownership and club management just let the brats run wild in the sandbox and the brats seemed to clearly out number those who knew and respected the rules of gym conduct. In fact, it seemed that few members knew that such gym rules even existed. Yes, of course, I know that there are always going to be inconsiderate assholes wherever you go but the ignorance of the code of gym conduct compounds the problem and results in unexpected assholes and that, unfortunately, equates to even more difficulties for the good guys.
Somewhere along the health club historical timeline, the tradition and the instruction of proper gym conduct broke down. Now, I get to play, “old fart remembers”. I believe the lineage and communication broke down in the 1970’s with the onslaught of strength machines and the rise of national health club chains.
Machines pushed free weight training into a distant, dark corner of the clubs like the wife of a mid-life crisis male leaving her for a twenty year old blond with huge sweater puppies struggling to get out. In this new environment, members were directed to march with their little workout cards in hand from one glamorous machine to another. Adjusting the seat height and selecting weight plates did not require the skilled coaching of free weight gyms. Other than taking too long on a machine or leaving a sweaty mess, there was very little one could do to piss off another member. The staff didn’t need to be on floor either. They could focus their attention on the sales of new memberships needed to feed the beast. The members were left unsupervised. As far as the clubs were concerned, the members were either marching from machine to machine, on a treadmill Death March or better yet, they were at home, which meant another membership could be sold to take their place. The members who stopped showing up were pure gold and were actually planned for within their operating budgets.
This comfortable and profit full little world became a lot less comfortable with the retro movement to free weights that began about five years ago. The concept of a minimal staff focused mainly on sales and members left to police themselves simply doesn’t work in this new free-weight world. Old school free-weight etiquette is now needed more than ever but few people from the free weight only-era have transcended the 35 year gap. The few of us who still seriously lift are appalled by the current situation. The concept of the “gym” was ruined by corporate greed and incompetence and by membership naive gullibility. These two unlikely alleys conspired together to create the chrome-plated health club we know and hate today. “Sell the promise and cash the check”. And for those who wrote the check, had the privilege of watching their new best friend ”trainer/sales person” grab the check and turn away quickly to chase down their next client/victim. Serious free weight training simply cannot exist in this training-toxic environment.
So what are the alternatives? I see three possible options: 1) a rare enlightened health club with a serious free weight section that also has a group of experienced lifters who set a high standards for behavior and technique (good luck finding that option), 2) one of the newer small hardcore gyms that limit membership to serious like-minded lifters or 3) the creation of your own home gym within which you can train alone or with friends who could perhaps share the cost of equipment.
If you choose the latter, the equipment list should consist of a power rack with a pullup bar, a flat/incline/decline bench, two Olympic bars (one for the rack and one for the floor) with enough weight plates to almost live up to your fantasies, dumbbells with weight that exceed your fantasies, and a selection of kettlebells and sandbags. Also, it would be wise to allow room in your space and the budget for future new must-have tools as they become available.
As you can see, the equipment is very low tech but it is the knowledge of what to do with these tools that reveals their true immense value. What to do and with what will be the subject of future articles. I’ve done enough ranting about the fitness industry. It is now time to focus on training.
One last thought. If you are still training in a large health club and you’re not pleased with your training environment, you have two options: 1) bitch up a storm for them to make things better or 2) leave and take your money elsewhere. Your money is hard earned and your training environment should support your fitness passion. Since machines were created to keep the geeks out of the free weight area, what are you doing in a place that has a lot of machines and geeky machine users anyway? Man, that has to be soul crushing. Run Forrest, run!
