Corey stands in the kitchen, scooping cookies-and-cream flavored whey protein into a plastic shaker cup. The protein powder tastes neither like cookies nor cream, but when you add it to vanilla soy milk and banana, it's passable. Like Splenda and apples-as-snacks (rather than peanut butter cookies) -- I'm getting used to it. But I still don't love it.
We've just finished an hour long workout at the gym, abs and shoulders and my body hurts everywhere. This is fairly normal.
"So are you starting to like it a bit?" he asks, shaking the cup with water.
"No," I reply stubbornly.
"It doesn't feel even a little bit good?" he asks again, kind of pleadingly, and I feel a twinge of guilt, but the fact remains: I still hate the gym. OK, all right, I like what it's doing for my body. When I lie on my back I have a six pack, and no amount of running and dieting has ever done that for me before. But every other component of the gym can suck it. Here's why:
1) The Heavy Breathing Dudes who Hog Two Machines
In every gym I've ever been to, there is inevitably a sweaty man in tight navy blue spandex, hurtling rapidly between the lat pulldown machine and the shoulder press. When you politely inquire whether he's done on this machine, he responds frantically, that no, he's using both. He's particularly annoying when all machines are taken and it's busy and does he really need two at once? But then: it's gym equipment, god, and it's not worth arguing. So I just simmer and think about how much my arms hurt and also: I guess I should just be grateful this is not a women's only gym because then I'd have to contend with overzealous perfume and 2-pound pink dumbbells and hoggy equipment dude is probably easier to deal with.
2) The Overeager Teenage Dudes who Stand Behind You, Breathing on You, While You Struggle at the Bench Press
A few weeks ago I was positioned feebly under the bench press, attempting to lift just the bar with my still woefully chicken-skinny arms. I struggle with this and make ugly, involuntary facial expressions and it's hard enough having my man look at me while I do this, let alone a gaggle of pubescents. But there is always someone waiting for the equipment you're using, at the gym, looking at you out of the corner of their eyes, and it makes me really nervous. It makes me want to build a gym in the garage and negate any possibility of people looking at me while I am red-faced and susceptible to escaping gas.
3) Water Fountain Talkers
I think that 50% of regular gym goers just go to gab and flex their muscles in front of stranger friends. Inevitably, these people chat lingeringly at the water fountain while you're heaving and chomping for a trickle of water.
4) Never Getting Stronger, Dammit.
I am stuck at 15 pounds. I've been going regularly to the gym for 4+ months now and I feel like I'm perpetually stuck at the same weights. Will I ever be able to lift more than 15 pounds? At this point, it seems unlikely, and it's often frustrating as all hell trying.
5) The Sweat, Gross.
I am not so sure about the water bottle and sanitizer, complete with little white cloth. So - you sweat all over a machine and get the water bottle. Then you spritz the tiny white cloth and run it all over the sweaty machine? And that's going to kill the multitudes of sweat and snot and body fluid from the people who seated all over that machine/mat/weight previously? No. No way. I can't think about it in the same way I can't think about all the people who have spit on the water fountain nozzle I drink from. Sometimes I think I would like never to go to the gym again so I am only forced to touch the sweat of the boys I love.
But. Well. Here are the 3 reasons why I'm going to keep going, dammit:
1) I am determined to do a set of 5 unassisted pullups by July of this year.
2) The whole visible abs thing? Is pretty underrated. It's worth all the heavy breathing equipment hoggers.
3) When Corey asks me again, this time next year, if I like the gym I want to say, yes, screw you, I conquered that demon and I love it now and onward and upward to the next big challenge.
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