Let's get physical

I’ve become a gym rat.

Yeah, you read that right.

Sure, I’ve been a member at my club for more than two years, but it wasn’t until recently I actually started getting something out of those monthly dues.

I like going to the gym. I know it’s crazy, but in college it was my one-hour of quiet time -- when everything slipped away and I would elliptical like a crazy lady.

Since January I’ve been hitting the gym, working out and doing the fitness thing. (No it wasn’t a New Years resolution, I’m calling it a life style change. Stop laughing.) Now I’ve learned something very important – there’s a gym culture and maybe one specific to Jersey.

The thing is, you only see the cliques and the “types” when you go to the gym often and on a regular schedule.

I’ve learned that there are the “hard cores” those men and women who look like Arnold Schwarzenegger of years past.

The odd balls – you know, the people who show up in jeans, a t-shirt and sometimes wear boots. That can’t be comfortable on a Stairmaster.

The rookies who are too shy and timid to go beyond the basic treadmill -- you can spot those easily by their inability to work the TV remote on the machines.

Then you have the well -- how do I put it -- the big men in the tiny shorts and wife beaters, with chest hair everywhere (yuck!). Often they will stare at you with a head nod and “how you doin’ ” look. Usually they are covered with copious amounts of sweat that seems to be coming from everywhere.

The spandex people, mostly women (but some men) who’ll only wear spandex to workout in. The problem is some of them wear it the wrong way (you know what I’m talking about ladies.)

Then there are people like me; we wear comfortable shoes, loose clothing made of natural fibers and are sort of the hippies of the gym. A very relaxed, almost Zen-like quality of to us, we’re often found laughing at the shows on the TV while others stare at us and smirk.

Of course those are only a couple of the top clique. And like high school they’re subsets, offshoots, and those that defy labels.

Like a certain group of high school boys -- who wear baggy shorts circa Kris Kross of the early ’90s, wife beaters and backwards baseball caps while using the weight machines. Often they slam down the weight stack (a big no-no in gym culture) and can be found saying, “No man, this is how it’s done.” In all honesty, I don’t think any of them really know how to use the machines. Plus, those backwards baseball caps must be a hazard to those knuckleheads. I bet money one of them gets it suck in a machine and that most defiantly is not “how it’s done.”

Moral of the story: Please wear spandex wisely, don’t slam down the weights stacks, and don’t laugh at the girl on the elliptical machine laughing her butt off to The George Lopez Show. Thank you.

On Tivo: The New Adventures of Old Christine