Thanks to CJ for proofing this post. I know it comes as a shock to you, the reader, that someone cares to proofread something like this. Don't worry, I usually don't! I'd rather look at myself in the mirror to compensate for my lack of will to correct myself. Enjoy!
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Signing up Online
Last time I was spotted exiting Planet Fitness, an employee informed me that signing up online would shorten my time at the front desk, waiting for some chump to clomp around on a keyboard... more or less verbatim, actually. And so, in the better interests of not having my time wasted while a simultaneous attack was staged on my eyes by the purple-yellow walls drilling into my retinas and the horse-like clomping of fists on a keyboard, I listened to a PF employee. Don't get used to it, buckos.
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| "Uh-huh. Wow. This is fascinating. Please, tell me more. No way." |
However, there were some concerning things that caught my attention on their website. For instance: you receive a free t-shirt when you sign up, which was a nice touch, but not as if I'm ever gonna wear that sucka. That same free shirt is available up to the tent-like size of 7 X-Large. Beautiful ladies and gentlemen, I knew that this is the Land of the Brave, the Free, and McD's, but what exactly entails 7 XL? I'm having trouble imagining this size. I can see now, dozens of small, Singaporean children dressed in rags with dirty feet and faces, nimbly sewing a garment the size of a small city block. Days later, the shirt is loaded into an entire shipping container and sent overseas. The entire container ship leans dangerously towards the side the container is on. Upon arrival, the t-shirt is draped over the Empire State Building to ensure a snug fit, and then brought to a local Planet Fitness to be given away to a new patron. This is the story of a 7 XL, more or less from start to finish.
As for myself, I did not choose a 7XL shirt, because my house does not need an improvised fumigation tent anytime soon. Instead, I went for a regular ol' large. That way, there's just enough fabric leftover when I tear off the Planet Fitness logo and my pecs are scandalously exposed. It's ok, though, when people faint from such a magnificent sight. Why? Because I'm a very well qualified nursing student, so I can confirm they have a pulse and assess the texture of their hair, both quite important things to monitor.
Anyway, two of the options on "How you heard about Plant Fitness" were the 'Biggest Loser' show and then simply Drive-by, without any elaboration. I'm just going to go ahead and leave you to fill in the incredulous comments I have about both of those.
Entering the Pagan Abode
For those of you who haven't read my brief thoughts on the accoutrement of PF, feel free to check my last post. For those of you who had the opportunity to appreciate such fine literature, read on! To summarize, a normal Temple of Swole is built as a monument to the glory of the muscle-bound human body. A few chest hairs of Arnold Schwarzenegger are buried under the foundation to imbue the entire room with pure excellence and Austrian testosterone. This, as opposed to a PF, which is a poor adulteration of true Temple- small, weak machines surrounding an island of unspeakably horrid cardio machines, all slowly sinking into a foundation of pizza grease, pure sadness and beer sweat.
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| It turns out beer sweat and sadness are not stable building materials. |
I walked in with this in the back of my mind, and as I attempted to retrieve my ID from them the two women fumbled around and clomped around on the keyboard, much to my chagrin. Eventually, I was on my way. Stashing my things in the locker room, which smelled vaguely of sadness, alcohol, and BO, I began to circle the entire gym like an agitated jaguar, searching for muscle-prey: weights. Horrifyingly enough, there were literally no free barbells. That's like running a hot dog stand with only soda and overpriced pretzels, and no hot dogs. It's wrong by principle. In the place of real barbells were a few Smith machines. After I picked myself back up off the floor after weeping for want of a real barbell, the diesel-swole journey continued. Along the way though, I ran into a few interesting characters...
No Judgment Zone?
I'm not sure what the big deal about the 'No Judgement Zone' at PF is. Maybe I'm not in the position where that kind of thing benefits me, but the concept of settling in an athletic setting doesn't sit well with me, like an amateur fakir sitting on an extra sharp bed of nails. When I go to a gym, I don't scoff condescendingly at the guys that are smaller than me or fatter than me... and that's because I'm pretty focused on me, quite honestly. That, or admiring (admittedly for a little too long) the crazy brolic dude who's squatting an entire tractor in the corner and how phenomenal his form is... and dude, did you see his sick hams? Dang, bro. I don't care about someone chugging away on an elliptical. That thing is literally just a sadsack excuse for cross-country skiing. It looks like you're flailing in midair. It's the exercise machine version of being thrown off a building and wishing you were a bird with the added benefit of burning a calorie every now and then. It's physically impossible to look intimidating while actually using an elliptical, mostly due to the fact that you look like a duckling that's been raised by rabid chickens with all your flailing.
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| "This week, on "Is He Using an Elliptical or Actually Falling?!" |
But just for your amusement, and of course not anyone's judgment, let's recall some of the interesting characters that I had the pleasure of running into at PF on my first real visit. Let's start off with some sensory buzzwords to warm up: beer sweat. Inverted muffin-top. Confused vagabond. So let's start off with one fella who walked out of the bathroom with two 35lb dumbbells... like, what was he doing with them? Was he simultaneously droppin' a deuce while doing curls or shoulder presses? I feel like there'd be some mind-sphincter-muscle confusion there that couldn't possibly end well, or at the least some odd grunting noises that would sound like he was rhythmically pushing out his Taco Bell lunch with a great deal of pain and effort.
Then there was elliptical boy- believe me, there's a reason I was making fun of that machine so much. Some skinny teenager in a bro tank that he didn't deserve kept staring at me while I was working out. I'd sense white pupils drilling into me and just look up at the mirror to see this guy jolt up and look back to some lame TV show. When he was going to wipe off the elliptical from all the sweat that wasn't there, he accidentally knocked one of the spray bottles of suspiciously murky green cleaning liquid into the trash can with an audible thump, not unlike a small child being knocked unconscious. Perhaps awakening some repressed memory from that sound, he straightened upright like a middle aged man during his prostate exam and shot me a deer in headlights look right before scurrying off quickly. I would've said something just to scare him, but I was legitimately afraid that if I said something his poor ol' heart would give out at the young age of 15 or whatever.
Next was mushroom head. Ladies and gents, I'm sure you're all familiar with bowl cuts, and if you're not, that means you're likely sporting a mean one at this very moment. However, what I saw was nothing like that- it can most accurately be described as 'mushroom head.' The hair was nonexistent up to his brow-line, at which point it erupted outwards to look like a respectably sized volcano erupting from a young Hispanic teenager's head. This man could've had his whole body covered in tattoos, but his haircut still would've completely destroyed any street cred he had. Also, he walked between me and the mirrors in the middle of a set, which is one of the most inexcusable things in the history of the world, right below the Inquisition.
Last, we feature a myriad of interesting smelling men, and by interesting, I mean those who proudly spread their aroma like a dog marks their territory: sloppily and liberally. One guy, a short, middle aged Puerto Rican man with oversized jeans, could be recognized by the trademark beginning of puberty middle schooler scent, 'Eau de Drowned in a Bathtub of Axe.' On the other side of the ring was someone who bore a striking resemblance to the previous fellow, but trains with the philosophy that a tipsy workout is better than no workout, and broadcast his lovely cheap beer breath like a dragon breathes fire at dwarves stealing his gold, and with similar range, too.
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| "This feels like a movie refere-AHHH A DRAGON'S EATING ME!" |
Ready for Round 2
Between duct-taping weights together to achieve respectable weight and sobbing like a lost kid at a supermarket because deadlifting is straight up outlawed there, my first visit at PF had come to an end. Unfortunately, I did not set off the Lunk Alarm, but fortunately. I was able to spend most of time in front of the 1 mirror panel in all of PF that was not in the bathroom. It's like they don't even want you to see yourself at this place, and isn't that what the gym is all about?
So it turns out this place is more of a club than a gym, with free pizza, pathetic free weights, and only Smith machines. This is a place Arnold Schwarzenegger outgrew before he started growing pubes, and where swarthy Hispanic men come to gloat that they're lifting the biggest weights on the rack. I'm not about this life. This isn't living the dream, at least not for me. It's a cardio palace, sure, but between bouts of travelling far and wide, I'm going to be looking for a carved-out-of-stone, monuments to the Rock, bona fide Temple of Swole with grunting, sweaty men (no homo?) and weights that a 15 year old punk won't be able to lift. If you need me, I'll be at the nearest quarry squatting a boulder while googling local temples of swole.
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| Terrible form, buddy. |
