David bowie
first ever post after reading for years....
A gym i used to go had one particular curly haired gent who seemed to be there every time me and Mrs KY went. Now this guy was quite well stacked and obviously enjoyed going. I mean REALLY enjoyed going
Who the fuck gets a boner lifting weights???? and if you're going to at least get some looser fitting trousers. put me right off going
(KaptainKY, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 13:25, 2 replies)

MMA...
Never been to a gym in my life, and it shows. Although I'm quite proud of my paunch, it's taken a lot of effeort, food and alcohol to get it.

However, me and my friends have decided to go to MMA - Mixed Martial Arts - classes. Basically street fighting with gloves on. Can't wait... can't fight for toffee, bleed like a monthly menstrural cycle and am out of breath walking up two flights of stairs... this will be awesome!!
(CornishStanley can't post hyperlinks, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 13:18, 2 replies)

I used to be quite fit
As a kid, I ran a lot, and enjoyed athletics. As an adult, I got out of the habit, but for a few years in my late twenties/early thirties, I was a regular gym goer.

I’d sweat and strain profusely as I did valiant battle with the treadmill, cross trainer, upright and reclined exercise bikes, and rowing machine. I wrestled with weights, remembering to breathe properly and use slow, deliberate movements like I had been instructed. I even partook in an exercise class, which I found I quite enjoyed. But mostly, I found going to the gym a chore, to be honest, but one that I felt duty bound to endure if I didn’t want to end up a bloated caricature of my former svelt twenty-something self. Fuelled partly by the knowledge that paying £35 a month or whatever it was, and then not using the facilities was a bit like buying a decent bottle of champagne once a month and then pouring it straight down the toilet, I persevered. For about three years, and four times a week, I’d dutifully toddle off to indulge in a 90 minute session of lung and limb torture, confident in the knowledge that it was doing me some good.

And then I injured myself, resulting in a nine month lay-off.

Did I break a leg trying to keep up with the speed on the treadmill, failing miserably and falling off? Did I sustain severe muscle strain as a result of being over ambitious on the weights? Did I, in fact, cause irreparable damage to my testicles following an unlikely altercation with a rowing machine?

No. I got pissed and stepped awkwardly off a kerb whilst wearing a pair of Cuban heeled boots. Ripped my Achilles tendon, but didn’t realise this was what had happened and spent the next few months hobbling around on it in agony before being eventually persuaded to go to the see the doctor who more or less called me a stupid twat for not getting it checked out earlier.

I haven’t been to the gym since, apart from an ill fated attempt a couple of years ago to rejoin with the missus and make an effort to go. I managed two sessions, and one of those was the induction.
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Fri 10 Jul 2009, 13:06, 8 replies)

I work in a gym
Well, I say a gym, it's a grotty council-run leisure centre with a very popular gym attached to it. I work in the bar/cafe area.

Our menu consists of burgers, chips, deep-fried crap of every conceivable type, and beer. We rarely have any healthy food or diet beverages on offer.

This means that people spend two hours in the gym, then they have a cheese & bacon burger with cheesy curly fries and a pint of Guinness. This pretty much cancels out any calories they burnt sweating like a fool on the other side of the building.

I meanwhile, never go to the gym ever, cycle to work and eat reasonably healthily, and don't sit around wondering why I'm fat - and am not having £50 a month debited directly from my dirty digits.

So what, really, is the point of that?
(MightyX5 living on a small island on, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 12:56, 4 replies)

Changing room goddess
Every gym seems to have them. They're the fit, toned types who strut around the gym with the sole purpose of smiling inanely and looking great, only exerting themselves to the point where they might break into a sweat before wandering off sipping from a bottle of expensive mineral water.

That's bad enough in the gym itself, but even worse in the changing rooms when the Barbie dolls insist on stripping off and wandering around sans clothes as if to remind everyone else how flabby and wobbly they are and rub their noses in it.

I'd just finished my workout and was cowering in the corner of the changing room, struggling under a large towel and trying not to air too much flesh when one of these vapid nymphs floated into view wearing a small towel round her waist looking for all the world like a freshly lobotomized catologue model.

"Look at my breasts. Look. At My. Breasts. Aren't they perfect?"

Just then Barbie decides she's going to get into the shower and drops her towel when the whole illusion of perfection is abruptly shattered by her unfeasibly gargantuan muff. Honestly, it looked like she was trying to smuggle a cat under her towel.

I'm sure she looked slightly offended as I sniggered away in the corner.
(ChestyLaRue, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 12:55, 12 replies)

I didn't realise we were going to get measured today......
While working for the RAF, I got into circuit training a lot, I would go to the circuit sessions 4 lunchtimes a week, and do my own weights circuit on a Friday. Being an RAF gym, the blokes changing room is a room with benches and hooks, and some open plan showers. Generally the blokes would walk around starkers.

One day, after a good circuit, in walks a bloke in a suit. With a clipboard. And then from his pocket, withdraws a tape measure. Then one of the PTIs came in behind him to help him measure the windows in the shower room. He did get some funny looks tho....

for a while we had a Navy PTI on an exchange as well, and he did a "thousand circuit" - 10 exercises, with a hundred reps of each. I got to 700 and something before the end of the hour. And very nearly threw up all over the floor of the gym.

Length? Was a 13 foot tape measure, I didn't see what he wrote on the clipboard tho....
(vinny, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 12:54, Reply)

Gyms
Gyms are shit.

I don't need a treadmill, i like running outside.
In fact i can do all my cardiovascular work from home.
I bought my own weights.
I just don't See the point in paying to use gym equipment shared by huge steroid using bouncers/wannabe hardmen.

Still, my gym has a heated outdoor swimming pool.
So i got three times a week.

Plus there are sweaty, pretty ladies there.

Length?
When they groan on the equipment it gets longer.
(Margatemug, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 12:48, Reply)

Extended pearoast - The Naked Kick-boxer
I mentioned this before as a reply to someone's post but the story could probably survive a dusting off and adding to.

YMCA Central has a big area in the middle where people can do all sorts of things. There are all sorts of machines around the outside but, when there are no classes in the main hall, you can often find people juggling, skipping or, in this case, practising kick-boxing.

This guy was kicking a pad that someone was holding for him. He was pretty good. I mean, I don't know, I've never kick-boxed in my entire life, but he was managing to kick the pad every time and didn't look all that knackered for the experience.

I kept an eye on him from the various machines I was using. He was difficult to ignore as eye kick was accompanied by very vocal hissing and puffing. Eventually he blended into the backgound and I got on with my session.

Some time later, I went for a shower only to find Mr Kick-boxer in the changing rooms practising against his reflection in the mirror. I don't think anyone was too bothered by that. He was obviously hyped up from his training and needed to let off his aggression.

It raised a few eyebrows that he was kick-boxing with his reflection while completely and utterly naked.
(BearWithLittleBrain, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 12:39, Reply)

sandwich sauna
I used to be a member of a gym in northampton, where a mate is a personal trainer there...

well, anyways... there was the weirdest guy ever, who had very strange sauna rituals! (i think he was samalian - he didnt speak english)

i have witnessed this man, rubbing baby oil ALL OVER HIMSELF in the sauna (me and my gym partner and others in the sauna found this very hard to not stare and laugh at! - we all looked at each other bemused and a tad uncomfortable, especially as he seemed to enjoy the oil rubbing!)

he has also taken and eaten a whole sandwich into the sauna and ate it infront of us, while we were sweating to death! (he was later told off for this by the staff, esp when he had already been told off for fruit eating in the sauna the week before!)

my mate who worked at the gym later informed me the man "chopped" his toenails in the sauna room too! - which resulted in him getting kicked out of the gym!

it was entertaining for a while atleast!
(piggietress, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 12:38, 3 replies)

Gym didn't fix it
A few years back I joined a gym. I was two years off a big birthday and wanted to arrive there a lot less lardy.

For two years I had sessions with a personal trainer every week and went to the gym 3 or 4 times a week, working hard.

The result?

Buggered achilles tendons and exactly the same weight as when I started.

Curses.
(misspiggy In danger of having to get a job, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 12:35, 3 replies)

home gym
over the years i have accumulated the following:

pro weights bench with lateral pull down frame, leg press and butterfly attachments
over 100kg in free weights
various different barbells, dumb bells etc for isolating different muscle groups
chin up bar secured to my bedroom door frame
declinable sit-up bench
those little hand squeezer thing for strengthening your wrists
another kind of hand squeezer thing for making your hands themselves strong
one of those spring powered chest expanders
a heavy punch bag bracketed to the wall

it's all in the garage now and has been for well over a year. admittedly there was a period when i was 'almost' on the verge of looking a bit buff, but i'm soft as fuck now.

cheers etc.
(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 12:30, Reply)

You know when you get an idea which seems genius at the time?
Many years ago, at Uni, I caught the flu. Not full fledged man-flu, but it was still pretty bad. In my less than 100% state, my mind decided it would be a good idea for me to go 'run it off'. Stupid mind.

So I'm on the running machine at the uni gym. 'Running off' the flu. Fucking idiot. I've been jogging for a few minutes when the worst happens.

I puke on the running machine and slip in the vomitus. Which causes me to fall flat on my face and get fired off the back of the running machine.

So now, not only do I have the flu, many bruises and a nice covering of flu-bile, but I'm also being puke-pebbledashed as the treadmill continues to flick the remains of my yellow detrius at me.

And then the gym instructor guy comes running over and says, "Are you alright?" I love that.
( mrlogic is copying your beard, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 12:12, 3 replies)

I've never been a member of a gym
but a few years ago my housemate did persuade me to go with him to his usual gym to have a go and see if I liked it.

Off I waddled, dressed in my best trackies, trainers and T-shirt. He showed me the punchbag that he likes to pummel the shite out of on a regular basis.

I hit it. That wasn't too bad. I hit it again. I got quite a sweat worked up. I felt like Muhammad Ali.

Until I landed a particularly hard hit, only to find that the bag wasn't where I was expecting it to be. Because I'd put my entire body weight into the punch, I overbalanced, flew through the air with all the grace of a raped sparrow, and cracked my head on the wall, knocking myself out.

That was the first and last time I ever went to a gym.
(Flap Burger hasn't really got a burger made of flaps, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 12:00, 1 reply)

Daley Thompson
I've got a couple of gym stories that I've posted before - when the little chap escaped from my shorts in a "Body Pump" class and flapped up and down in time with the music; and the time I slipped in the shower and sat on a bemused naked Chinese man.

But I once joined a David Lloyd gym when I believed I could afford it. I was trying to make friends there but everyone was determined to be snooty, even the chavs looked down on each other. On one occassion Daley Thomson was using the rowing machine (does he belong to every gym in South London?!) and someone said quietly "look over there, its Daley Thompson".

I shouted "HA! DALEY THOMPSON" and mimed vigourously waggling a joystick - I knew him from the computer game more than anything. But unfortunately when he turned around it looked like I was calling him a wanker, and that was the last time anyone at that gym spoke to me.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 11:40, 9 replies)

Not very good, or funny, or moving...Just something that makes me smile
When I go to my gym and use the rowing machines: it's not bolted to the floor, and is on waxed wooden flooring - so I actually do physically move forwards with each rowing stroke.

Rowing past people on treadmills and weight machines etc to the other side of the gym is a simple pleasure, but it really does make the gym visit infinitely more enjoyable.

Sometimes I do a little wave and nod as I row past them.
(Pat_Gash, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 11:39, 2 replies)

.
I must be one of the few people who goes to the gym just for myself. Just do the 1 hour session 3 times a week and actually work at it without worrying about anyone else but yourself and you'll be ripped in less than a year. The big muscular steriod taking meat heads are nothing to worry about and are easily stared down and there are no hot women as I wouldn't fuck 99.99% of the women in a gym using someone elses cock.

It hurts no matter what age you are or how fat you are because exercise hurts, it's called effort and hard work which is alien to some people, just suck it in. Also when you're sweating huge amounts because you're so unfit please wipe it off the equipment and keep it clean as people who go more than twice in thier life don't want whatever germs you have.

Thank you.
(DrBob, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 11:24, 5 replies)

Let's get Physical...
The words "physical" and "physique", like the word "physics", comes from the Greek word phusis. In turn, phusis comes from the verb phuein, which, in its earliest form, means "to grow". However, it has been suggested¹ that the verb shares a root (pha) with words such as phos – light – and phainesthai – to show oneself. Physical entities, on this understanding, are things that are visible.

Meanwhile, the word "gymnasium" comes from the Greek word that literally translates as "place where people are naked".

So one might expect to see quite a lot of flesh on display at the gym. HOWEVER, if you happen to be so large that, were you to jump into the air, you'd get stuck... well, could you please think of the children and try to wear something a little less figure-hugging and midriff-baring? There are some sights we really don't need. And, men: it's OK to wrap a towel around yourself in the changing-room when chatting with a vague acquaintance or making a phone-call, you know. Etymology is not an excuse for having quite so much of your physique quite so visible or flapping around quite so much...



¹viz F. Sprecht, “Beiträge zur Greischen Grammatik”, Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung 59 (1932):31-131
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 11:14, 2 replies)

Dispiriting (1)
I go to the gym in Battersea Park, in London. It's dead convenient for me as it's just round the corner, but as it also has the only proper athletics track in that part of the world it also is used for training by some of the most spectacularly fit people you'll ever meet. Both Kelly Holmes and Christine Ohuruogu have used it for training before their gold-medal wins at the olympics, for example.

These people might be incredibly fit, but I'm not. I go to the gym because I have an abiding love of cakes and I want to avoid them giving me a heart attack so I can live longer and eat more of them. Over the years I've got kinda used to being surrounded by people who look like they relax by jogging up mountains with a couple of anvils inder each arm, and I just get on with it, but sometimes...

I was on the rowing machine, looking not unlike what would happen if you popped an elephant seal onto a rack. I was puffing and wheezing and struggling away, when I realised that the chap on the next machine over was - to put it mildly - thrashing the fucking hell out of it. Looking over, I realised that was because I was sitting next to Daley Thompson; twice Olympic Decathlon Gold-medal Winner and four-times world record holder.
As I looked he gave me a broad smile and a wink and put the difficulty setting on his machine up to 'murderous' before setting an even faster pace.

I think that was the point that the last remnants of my masculinity finally died.
(davywavy, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 10:35, 4 replies)

Failure
There was a time, many years back, when I hit upon a genius plan.

Women like buff men, visists to the gym would make me buff, a buff monkeyboy will need a shitty stick to beat the ladies off.

With such logic how could I fail to be knee deep in promiscuous young ladies. And surely I could transform my body in a month or two, can't really take more than that.

So off I pootled, down to the local gym.

Now, I wasn't exactly unused to physical activity, I worked in a brewery lugging barrels around, but fitness, pah! I couldn't run for a minute without wheezing like a asthmatic rape victim. After 45 imnutes of strenuous-ish activity, I decided enough was enough and it was time to leave.

Now, not only had I done the buff=women sum, but also the virtuous activity in the gym = I'm allowed to be a little naughty equation. So, as soon as I leave the leisure centre I spark up my congratulatory spliff, pre-rolled in preperation.

Now, it's a half hour walk home, and I couldn't be arsed with that after my *ahem* marathon gym session, so I decide to go to the pub and order a taxi. A couple of hours later, six pints down and feeling it after my gym burnout, the taxi arrives and I'm on my way home.

This cycle continues for a couple of months, I'm not noticably buff, and I don't seem to be any fitter, so, like I do when anything fails to go my way, I quit.

Moral of the story. Sod it, just go down the pub.
( monkeyboyalpha jumping on the bandwagon since, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 10:23, 1 reply)

Lazy bastard parking
There is a gym not too far from us and it happens to be right next to the nursery that baby hamster goes to, there are a nice load of easy parking spaces for getting nippers in and out right outside the nursery...

Fine but here's a message to all the lazy sods who take up our parking spaces when there are plenty a little further away from the gym WALK YOU LAZY TARDS.

Sorry not much of a story more of a rant
(bluehamster, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 10:23, 1 reply)

Overdoing it
I myself get most of my exercise by walking everywhere (mainly motivated by being too tight to use the tube/buses), but I do work with a guy who's totally gym obsessed, to the point that if he doesn't go for more than one day he starts moaning that his muscles feel like they're shrinking.

Thing is, he thinks he looks incredibly buff and manly and ripped, and all these things, and he's kind of right, but he's got to the point now where he's so ripped that he just looks... well... gay. The skinhead doesn't help.

I would struggle to point to exactly where the line is, but there is a line, and when you cross the line, you go from looking buff to looking like you should be in gay porn. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with looking like that, but I really don't think it's the impression most of these men intend to give.

Famous example of this: Vin Diesel.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 10:02, 4 replies)

I had a picnic once
In a gym.
With a horse.

The horse looked rather confused.
He had never eaten French bread before. Nor blue cheese.
His expression seemed to say
"Why have you bought me to the gym? I was perfectly comfortable chewing hay in my stable. But my, these radishes are tasty!"

I opened
a bottle of wine.
And poured some out into two glasses.

The horse sniffed at the bouquet from the red liquid in the glass.

He could not drink it, for his nose was too big for the glass. The glass broke
and left
splinters of glass
in his
face.

Realising my mistake, I held
the bottle
to his mouth
and let him drink from it.

He enjoyed that.
He enjoyed the rich, full flavour of the Burgundy, and the intoxicating effect, as
he
began
to
sway.

He tripped over his own hooves and went headlong into a rack of barbells.

The moral of this story?
Don't go to the gym to have a picnic with a horse.
(LongJohnBaldry, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 9:53, 4 replies)

Underdogs
Some time ago I actually owned and ran my own gym. It was tremendously fulfilling, and the people that came were amazing. All rather unique shall we say (there was one who dressed as a pirate!), but the nicest people you could hope to meet.

Unfortunately I was rather disorganised about the whole thing, and it wasn't really making any money. A huge corproate gym run by a total wanker tried to take us over, and they sent some hottie from the bank to check the accounts. Turns out that I needed to get $50,000 or I'd lose the gym. I was devastated - that gym was my life.

One of the members came up with a plan. There was a dodgeball tournament in Vegas with $50,000 first prize - talk about happy coincidences.

Somehow we muddled through the qualifying stages - none of us had played before. We did get some great coaching from an ex-professional - Patches O'Houlihan - but he got crushed under a casino sign. Bummer. I got an attack of the nerves after that, but after a pep talk from Lance Armstrong I was good to go.

We finally prevailed, and beat the team from the other gym in a thrilling final. I'd made a wise betting investment too, so I was able to buy their gym! Revenge is sweet. Plus I got to bone the hottie from the bank and her girlfriend!!

Peter LaFleur
(thefuckestuppest cheapened this, on, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 9:32, 4 replies)

Just found out
One of the guys using my local gym is a cage fighter and has a championship match coming up this weekend. Oooh!
(RVD420 has his world coming down on, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 9:31, 2 replies)

Physics
Cosmologists have, for several years, been grappling with the problem of the universe's missing mass. My limited understanding of the situation is that, in a body such as this galaxy, there doesn't seem to be enough mass - and therefore not enough gravity - to hold it together.

The missing mass gets labelled "dark matter"; one hypothesis is that dark matter is made of subatomic Weakly Interacting Massive Particles - "WIMPS" for short.

I was contemplating this at the gym, and I think I have made a breakthrough that'll guarantee my immortality among cosmologists. The "missing" mass isn't missing. It was fighting to escape from the lycra of the creature on the treadmill in front of me.

And the missing matter isn't dark at all. It's pasty. In fact, such is its albedo, I think that I might also have stumbled upon the explanation of gamma-ray bursts as well.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 9:25, 7 replies)

My one and only Gym story is monumentally depressing.
Being on the running machine, alone, at three in the morning, with Beverly Hills Cop on the gym TV, in a Chicago hotel while you have tears streaming down your face beacuse your fiancee has just told you she can't marry you pretty much makes for the worst experience you will ever have.

Fuck you Valentine's Day 2001, I still haven't forgiven you.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 9:23, 6 replies)

I cancelled my gym membership a while ago
giving the required 1 month notice but I miscalculated the date of the direct debit so actually canceled that before I should have. I assume they wrote to me about it but because I'd moved flat never heard anything from them about it, so had no idea I actually owed them £40-odd.

About 2 years later I got a obscure text message with a number to call which I duly did. Turns out it was a leg-breakers debt-collection agency who had had the debt passed to them which had now increased to over £100 with "admin fees".

Unfortunately for them, I had never given permission for my gym to text me so I told them they had no right passing my number on to the debt agency. So having liberally quoted the Data Protection Act and the Electronic Communications Act, I got a fulsome apology from both parties and the debt written off.

Technically though, as I was a customer of the gym, they were fully entitled to try to contact me using this method to reclaim their money. Thankfully, everyone is so scared of the DPA now, you can use it to get away with almost anything.
( thirdman Ia! Ia! R'lyeh Cthulhu ftagn! Ia! Ia! Mglui nafl, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 9:18, 1 reply)

Bastard Bannatyne's
You might remember me - my wife took her own life in May 2007.

It wasn't until August that year that I realised that I was still paying membership for Bastard Bannatyne's. She'd got us a joint membership on a discount offer the previous summer & I had been a total of 2 times - once to attend the mandatory gym equipment 'induction' & then a week later for a steam & a swim. That was in November 2006. Sue had gone about once or twice a week but her attendance dropped off a couple of months before she died.

I phoned them up informing them of her demise & told them I would be cancelling my membership & could I claim back the last 2 months membership fee since she had died and as, clearly they could see from their records, we hadn't attended the gym then.

They said no. In fact they tried to screw me for 2 more months as they have a 2 month cancellation notice period.

They didn't get it as I cancelled the direct debit immediately. As I was drinking heavily at the time I also considered firebombing the place but sensible people made me see reason.

I still regret not doing it though, the utter cunts.

Mind you, Bastard Bannatyne's only came a close second to Waltham Forest Council. They sent Sue a Summons for non-payment of Council Tax 3 months after she'd died. (They'd been informed of her death a month earlier) My god, I made them squirm over that...
( Dunks, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 8:45, 2 replies)

Gym fail

Just in case you haven't seen this pic before; I give you a gym with escalators (not my pic; found on failblog possibly). Apeloverage's post about his being the only bike in the gym car park reminded me of this; epitome of laziness.

They've probably got personal trainers who actually do the exercise for you.
( LemonEntryMyDearWatson This time, Moriarty, the hand is on the other foot, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 8:21, 3 replies)

I'm currently in a wrangle over payment with my Gym
I've not paid since Nov 08, not been since around July 08 and they've long since changed the access keycards so I CANNOT even get in, yet they decided to send me a letter last month demanding £400.

Now watch them use the 'you didn't officially give us one month's notice' routine to stitch me right up*.

*I'm aware this is fundamentally my fault. Bugger.
(Galahad is out of his gourd on yellow bentines, Fri 10 Jul 2009, 8:01, 4 replies)