This time of the year, one of the most common conflicts I see on social media as well as select groups of peers is the one that stems from the onslaught of people who embark on a New Year’s resolution to lose weight, and crowd their choice gym to begin their ascent into physical improvement. As the story goes, 99% of the people that set out to get in shape give up after an extremely short denomination of time, whether it’s a week or a month. However, it doesn’t change the fact that for whatever denomination of time that is, they’re still there, clogging up the gym, taking your parking spaces, locker spaces, (ill) using the equipment you want to be using when you want to use it, and just plain taking up space.
There are people that believe that it’s of poor taste to shame those that are simply just trying to improve themselves, and roll their eyes and scoff at those people who bitch and moan about how their gyms are all clogged up and crawling with n00bs. Then there are those people who are, and have been regular gym goers, which are all often times creatures of habit, never liking when the norm is deviated from, especially the influx of n00bs that are now encroaching on their routines, and they will bitch and moan about how such is occurring, and exclaim how “they can’t wait until next week/month when they’ll all give up and stop coming.”
Frankly, I can understand both sides of the story. Ultimately, I’ll tend to err on the side of silence and keep my words to a minimum, even though I do understand the frustration of the influx of n00bs who are using the locker I liked to use, and occasionally somehow manage to perfectly time getting to a station I want to use, when I want to use it. When the day is over, I still am supportive and encourage people to hit the gym, break through that intimidating wall of n00b-ness, and actually succeed at improving themselves. I’m not nearly as apt to make the snide January remark, or be the tryhard that deliberately tries to go out of my way to intimidate and scare off a n00b.
However, there is the other side of the story, which is often times the reason why gym tryhards tend to shame gym noobs. Simply put, not every single n00b is an innocent sapling, needing to dodge the harsh terrain of predators, bullies and self-doubt. Sometimes, there really are just obnoxious n00bs that really shouldn’t be at the gym if they’re not really going to take things seriously; they’re only wasting their own time and money, and giving regular goers more justification and fuel to make fun of resolutioners.
For example, I’m running on the treadmill, and this Chinese couple walks up on my six. Blabbing in Cantonese, the male commands the female to get on the treadmill next to me, because running next to this fat guy will help you feel like you’re better than someone. Because he’s fat and clearly a n00b as well, so you should be able to build confidence by running near him. And then the male goes off and does 75 lb. lateral pulls and the row machine.
Okay, so I don’t speak Cantonese and they probably didn’t say that, but the fact of the matter is that 90% of the treadmills were empty at this time, yet she just had to set up shop on the one right next to mine. That is one of my gym pet peeves. However, it’s what I told myself in my head what they said, which gave me the additional drive and motivation to sustain my run.
By the time my 30 minutes plus five minutes of cool down were up, both the male and the female had already left the gym. I know they’re douchey shirts, but this is one of those prime examples where I could literally wear “YOUR WORKOUT IS MY WARMUP” and it would be 100% valid.
A more valid scenario would be this one day where this one n00b was trying to check in, but there was something amiss with his membership, on account of it being new, and the fact that it wasn’t fully paid for yet. Instead of yielding aside to let the queue of regulars check in, he insisted on tying up the sole employee up front until she essentially became so exasperated and anxious by the growing line of members becoming impatient that she let the guy go without any further argument.
He and I exited the locker room at roughly the same time, and he dove into the field of machines (of course), while I went to the treadmills as is the norm for the start of any of my workouts. Despite the fact that I do it regularly, I’m not going to agree that running is really that fun or great of an activity; save for live, outdoor runs, running kind of blows. It’s a necessary evil for me. Needless to say, I’m often looking for absolutely anything that helps me get my mind off of how much running sometimes sucks. People watching is something fairly useful, and I decided to watch the n00b asshole who stalled my workout by five minutes.
After he finished doing one chest exercise, I watched him pull his phone out and begin fervently typing something. While doing this, he sauntered into the locker room. Moments later, he was wearing his coat, and exited the gym. I made a point to look at the timer on the treadmill to see just how long he had(n’t) been working out, and it was 11 minutes.
I could list things that I know take longer than 11 minutes to accomplish, but nowhere on that would a day at the gym be included on it. Ultimately, the fact that this guy took nearly half of the time he worked out to simply get into the gym, and then to leave after one lift (and I say that loosely, because when at machines, they’re the ones lifting, you’re not) is kind of what spurred his train of thought of why gym n00b shaming exists in the first place.
There most certainly are two sides to the story, whenever it comes to the debate of gym tryhards versus gym n00bs, and those that feel the need to defend one side or the other. Sure, there are people who may not have the drive and fortitude to actually succeed at being able to improve themselves and will quit in a month, but there certainly are those who lack the respect and consideration for the gym and its members, to whom we hope are gone within the next week or at the end of the month.
