ANIMALS IN TRAINING: THE ZOOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF GYM CULTURE

By David Shane
I recently read Alexandra Horowitz s Inside of a Dog, a book that examines dogs relationships with their human caretakers and the world around them, from a dogs eye and brain view. One of the main tenets of the book was that dogs communication skills are as intricate and direct as our verbal communication skills. Simply because we are not dogs and dogs are not humans and therefore the two species experience a limit to our abilities for direct interspecies communication, does not mean that a dogs voiceless society is any less precise and scientific than our voice and word oriented society. Human beings long ago evolved past physical communication. We still posses the capacity to read physical cues and to send messages with our physicality, though it s a tertiary aspect of society. There is, however, one final frontier in which our physicality is a primary and finely tuned method of communication and socializing; The Gym. There exists within gym culture a zoological overtone of primal posturing from all body and personality types, something that can say more to fellow gym inhabitants than any polite verbal communication could possibly hope for. Zoology breaks down technically as animal knowledge and is the study of all things animal, from the biological to the sociological. Despite our higher order thinking and impressively technology-oriented evolution, humans are still animals and we will always maintain certain animalistic qualities at our core. When I want to go to a veritable human zoo, I take a trip to my fitness club. When I enter my fitness club I am greeted by a number of pretty girls and ostensibly pretty boys, all college age. I took one of the girls to a dance some years ago in high school. She s a tall, fair skinned red head with a demure personality. We never acknowledge each other. The other girls are equally pretty in equally unique ways. All the boys and all the girls are skinny and toned, with use of the gym a perk of employment and I m sure an unspoken necessity as an employee. As I enter the gym I typically come across one of the two enthusiastic trainers. They re both African-American. One of them is in his 20 s and doing the job part time because he was cut from an NFL practice squad due to injury and needed the work. The gym took him on because their regular trainer suffered his latest heart attack and needed time off work, including a reduced schedule upon his initial return. They re both enthusiastic, ready to dispense advice or a helping hand with any and all gym members. They re expert schmoozers of the highest order, with an underlying goal of signing you up for a class or convincing you that 30-seconds of one on one tips should translate into twice a week hourly private sessions. I ve had a few trainers in my day, working with them at various gyms. Currently I d classify myself as a free agent or a loan wolf. I like being in my own headspace with just my accrued knowledge guiding me.

Accordingly, my max bench weight is 135 pounds. That s the gold median standard of bench pressing, as it s one of each of the heaviest weights on either side of the bar. I can do a few reps but then I have to stop. I won t do it without a spotter. I go to the gym three to five days a week, pertinent scheduled events allowing and taking soreness from a previous trip into consideration. I ve heard about all the different theories on how frequent, hard, long and vigorous a work out regimen should be. I ve read muscle magazines while waiting in doctor s offices or at the barbershop. I ve seen all the late night commercials with the roided out male and female Adonis fitness models showing you how some rinky dink new all-in-one fitness contraption can turn you into them in a month. I ve even seen the celebrity endorsed machines, such as the Total Gym, as hocked by former model and teenage male wet dream Christie Brinkley, and former action star, pop culture icon and currently downward trending internet meme sensation Chuck Norris, plus whatever celebrity friend they can find in need of ten grand and a two minute reminder that they exist. Oh, I also saw the documentary Bigger, Faster, Stronger*: The Side Effects of Being American, in which documentary filmmaker and competitive weight lifter Chris Bell went around discussing steroid use with athletes of all kinds, including the very fitness models that sell us home-exercise miracle equipment. All of them are on steroids and many of them have genetically preferential body types, which aided in their ability to look like human action figures. Obviously, as the disclaimer puts it, these aren t the typical results. In a real gym, or rather a regular gym, things go a little differently. In a real gym, the kind you pay a membership fee for, anybody can work out. Anybody. This makes the experience a veritable sociological nightmare of zoology in respects to human beings and their vanity. I count myself as part of the elite regulars. I go religiously, I ve improved steadily and I ve learned the silent dance of gym space etiquette. I ve developed the requisite sixth sense for when someone is about to occupy a crucial space to do his or her squats, or which benches are within proper reach of me without offending someone else s sense of propriety. I can spot the serious athletes from those who use the gym in a more personal capacity, including the differences between people who are in their own world in the gym and those who are painfully aware of the people around them. By virtue of my observations for this piece, I suppose I must place myself firmly in the latter category. The painful awareness I speak of originates for different purposes depending on the age, sex and agility of individuals, but it still comes out in strikingly similar fashions. There s the cute older lady with her hair in a tight bun, her skin bronzed by years of sunlight and a natural olive complexion. She appears to me as Sally Field would, had Sally Field not been ready for prime time and not been concerned with looking cute for cameras. This lesser Sally Field zips around between the cardio machines looking for a gossip buddy. She speeds through exercises at an alarming rate, appearing to not be aware of her form or goals, but merely uses the machines as vessels in which to pull up alongside individuals she seems interesting or socially valuable. She gossips with them at a desperate rate, her eagle eyes constantly zipping around for her next conversation partner. Sometimes there s a lull in the opportunities, so she affixes her eagle eyes on a spot directly in front of her, only using peripheral vision and what I presume to be acutely trained hearing in order to

track down her next victim of gab. If one section of the cardio machines is dead, like say the ellipticals and bikes, she ll hop off and strut over to the other side of the gym, where the treadmills are located. Along the way she will pass a communal towel and shelf space. Here, people grab little one-foot by one-foot white cotton towels with which to wipe down their space and dab their sweaty foreheads. It s an act of common courtesy and perhaps a subtle way to avoid any embarrassing markings, such as ass sweat. In this area, she will find people congregating as they drop off or regain phones, books, sweaters and the like. She ll just happen to reach for a phantom object and overhear a conversation involving someone she s marginally familiar with and take the opportunity to guffaw incredulously, laugh with impeccable timing and self-restraint and above all, prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is both aware of and empowered by her localized social erudition. Thankfully, this Sally Field-character is an evolutionary aberration in gym culture, as she appears to be the only one of her kind. More ubiquitous, plentiful and immune to the formula of age are the Inadequate Male and the Impatient Male, both of which at least appear to be new to gym culture and therefore I try to forgive them their trespasses. The Inadequate/Impatient Male is the guy you see zipping around the room trying to get first dibs on a piece of equipment, going so far as to suggest someone doubles up on something with them simply because they re ready to pump iron and the guy ahead of them is taking a thirty second breather. They tend to avoid the hulking muscle bound folks and prey mostly on those with more modest definition, perhaps assuming that their leering impertinence will be mistaken for superiority and thus some kind of unofficial authority. Oddly enough, I am bothered more by the young teenager just beginning to explore his muscular potential than I am the middle aged man who should know better. I believe this is due to the assumption that if someone is nearing male menopause or eligibility for their AARP card, their personality has been set in stone for many years and it d be a waste of my time to expect them to improve upon their shortcomings, whereas a fifteen year old is still social putty, easily molded by superiors of official capacity or impressive nature. I d like to think I possess a subtly impressive nature, as I clearly know my way around the gym. Most people my age at the gym are there because they re amateur athletes of the scholastic variety. They all appear to ascribe to uniform style guides; you either have the moppish devil-may-care long locks or the carefully shorn buzz cut with accompanying helmet-strap-like stubble. No Tebowing allowed, though school pride is a must if you attend a prestigious university. They work out in pairs, talking about body fat percentage, increasing endurance, watching their diet and so on. Other people do that in the gym as well, but they tend to be middle aged folks who are staving off heart disease and diabetes, whereas these folks fret over going from one hundred forty five pounds with zero body fat to 155 pounds over Thanksgiving or a weekend of cookie binging and upping their count to seven percent body fat. They use colloquial greetings like dude and bro and wear perma-smiles on their faces that remind me of educated real world counterparts to those animated ne er do-well neophytes Beavis and Butt-head. Their true skills come into play when they switch from the baroque colloquialisms of testosterone fueled gym-speak to a more eloquent socialization if a family friend of the aging variety pops in for a quick Tell

your folks I said hello and are you getting your money s worth at that prestigious school? conversation. I m the rare lone wolf. I don t come in with my parents, I don t come in with a partner to spot me and I don t have the benefit of mingling with old high school buddies or family friends. I recognize faces here and there, but I mostly keep to myself. This means I can t impress others with a dangerous max out of 200-plus pounds on the bench as a friend helps me lift up and lower the bar, nor can I make polite small talk with discerning family friends. It s safe to say I take pride in my actual limits as opposed to my perceived affluence of strength or other social assets. As an aside, the rare shadow boxer is a lesser-known member of the twenty-something group of young men with something to prove. The shadow boxer usually a sinewy young man who lifts lighter weights and must therefore prove his worth by displaying his fists of fury against his reflection in the vanity mirrors, as if pretending that nobody is there to witness his triumph. This over-activity and over compensation of self-image expands into the arena of personal space and can be problematic as some people, even the most serious of athletes, view the gym as a social club with all the trappings of a high school. I ve witnessed fifty-something year old men commandeer strategic corners of the gym by standing around and talking while doing their exercises. It s rude to move around them while they hold court and if they continue some form of exercise, you d be hard pressed to argue that the space deserves your presence more so than it does theirs. Therefore, while being cognizant of others locations and next potential exercise station, one must still be their own advocate in making a direct line towards their next desired station. If someone takes the extra step of boldly asking you to give up your spot for them for no logical reason beyond petulant desire, one must hold the line and decline to surrender primacy. The wiliest of selfish gym goers get around this by staking claim to empty ground and expanding their exercises to the limits of their body s stretching capacity. After all, you can t very well begrudge someone their natural girth or wingspan, can you? On the flip side of the equation, there are the pleasantly outgoing types and the silent but deadly types that stalk the corridor of mirrors and dumbbells with nary a sense of ego or pomposity. The pleasantly outgoing type is best personified in a sixty year old who I can only describe as a bear of a man. He has a shock of boyishly flowing white satin hair and a trimmed beard. He consistently jams quietly to classic rock on his iPod as he does his free-swinging stretches, looking like a frat boy mocking karate. His exercise regimen is of a curiously personal variety. He enjoys swinging his weights wildly, though he appears to have complete control of his actions. He drives an old Ford Bronco and wears an roughly aging Cal baseball cap, often sporting large Aviator sunglasses if daylight is still upon us. He s the most animated and pleasant of fellow gym goers to behold, in this writer s humble opinion. These are the few in the gym who can kick anybody s ass on any exercise and out lift even the most proud of pique physically conditioned collegiate athletes. They re so rare that in my gym I only count two or three. I suspect that another one of them, an equally salt and peppered man in his 50 s, is on steroids. He s quite affable and social, but his muscles bulge as if sculpted from an action figure. If the aforementioned 60 year old is the clown prince, then my gym s true, identifiable Adonis is his jock counterpart. I try to avert my eyes for the sake of mutual privacy

in this man s presence, but sometimes his acumen in the arena of exercise is undeniable. He has a counterpart in a young man who appears to be of Latino or Pacific heritage, who is friendly with the gym staff. This man sports a mop of overflowing jet-black locks that frequently get in his eyes. His shoulders are hunched and he holds an awkward smirk on his face as he moves around the gym in decidedly inappropriate attire of old dirty sneakers, long heavy jeans and a baggy Cal university t-shirt. He also stands no taller than sixty-five inches in height. I ve never captured his name, but I ve had the honor of exchanging basic pleasantries with him. He can do twenty five pull ups without slowing down and he can bench press two hundred and forty five pounds with relative ease, requiring no spotter. I m not sure of his purpose in the gym- certainly not vanity- nor of his athletic prowess, as he appears to own no athletically designed clothing. I can only surmise his origins, means and purpose. It s quite a wonder to behold him. Lastly, there are the men whose size can only be described as being Shreklike. These men of less desirable girth and weight tend to show up in baggy t-shirts, sticking exclusively to aerobic machines, usually the treadmill, and go at lethargic paces. They spend an hour covering the same virtual ground I cover in fifteen minutes. Some of the bolder in this group do a few reps on the bench press. Often times these men display impressive strength, but their massive and blubbery shape precludes them from being the bolder of the gym goers. I d be remiss to not include gym goers of the female variety. As a heterosexual male, it can be quite delightful to see a woman exercise, as she tends to be wearing flattering gym attire: form fitting spandex, the wonderfully flattering sports bra and the most proud body owners consistently bear their mid drift, so that other gym goers may witness their hard earned flat bellies, if not their curvaceous abs, with the indented side muscles replacing more commonly held love handles. Like the peacocking male gym goers, female exercisers come in their own pre-packaged types. The younger females, mostly high school and freshman college types, can be hard to pick apart according to age, as many of them appear to focus their athletic prowess on the gymnastic or dance arts. These body types are usually uniformly petite with large calves, small breasts and truly awe-inspiring flexibility. They normally stick to the aerobic machines and ab mats, though some boldly venture into the free weight area where they lift the smallest of weights, no more than ten pounds per arm, or they lay down a mat and do the most complex and demanding of stretches. For all the heavy lifting men can do, the women match us in their ability to comfortably and efficiently contort their streamlines torsos, bending their rib cages in rainbow arches in order to rest their second knuckles firmly across the arch of their toes, teetering from their fully outstretched legs. One can t help but admire the younger women both for their athletic prowess and for less honorable aesthetic qualities. The older women provide a much more interesting observational experience. Like aging men, aging women come in varying levels of confidence and prowess. There are the gym addicts; the types who have no body fat and you can see every muscle s outline along the contours of their revealing neon bright sports bras with their exposed skin sporting requisite sun damage and the occasional liver spot. At an age during which people s bodies are losing their elasticity and firmness, I find this kind of gym goer to be the most fascinating, as she has eschewed classically

sensual curves, such as a plump bust, for a toned physique that has its own unique benefits and detractors. Then there are the women who seem to go out of habit and a sense of duty, but put no real effort in. They slowly do ten reps of a two-pound dumbbell and awkwardly look around at the more rambunctious, younger gym goers in a mix of awe and fear. I feel a mixture of pity and frustration for them as I believe anybody with the proper motivation and guidance can use the gym to its utmost potential, but like high school, some people are victims of typecasting themselves. And that is at the heart of the sociological make up of the gym. The overweight aging female gym goer is the probably the one keeping these gyms afloat as they are the mothers paying membership fees in the belief that they ll go into the gym and regain the bodies of their youths, meanwhile their daughters and sons come in taking advantage of their peak physicality, sculpting, admiring and admonishing themselves in vanity mirrors as they try to keep up with the physical rat race and stave off the inevitability of physical decline. Some go on to become life long athletes, such as the Adonis or the liver spot sporting female, others woefully go on to obesity and obstinate resignation that they are long past their prime, while most fall into the category of those casual, social gym goers maintaining what best they can in their physicality while relinquishing the cat walk of zoological propriety to the next generation of gym rats. My brother is one of the Adonis , my mother is one of the average elite and my father is right there with her. I was blessed with uncommonly athletic prowess through my genetics. I ll never be the strongest, fastest or most cut in the room, but I can run with the pack and if my zoological classification is that of the most average gym rat, that s a classification I neither have to live up to nor live down. I m a gym rat, neither large nor small. I bench one hundred thirty five pounds. Average.