Going to the Gym

I hate every single moment of going to the gym, except for the very last, when I’m leaving, because that’s when I know I am the farthest moment in time away I can possibly be from having to come back there.

I don’t really understand working out. When I’m in there, all I can think is, what the fuck am I doing right now? What are any of us doing here? Are we training to be Spartans? Are we preparing for the next 300 battle? SOMEBODY ANSWER ME AND LEND ME A SWORD! SPAAAAAAARTAAAAAAA!

I was never really trained how to work out, so I usually just go in there, lift a bunch of weights up and down over my head a few times like a good monkey and then I do a little cardio. You gotta do a little cardio, that’s what everyone says. You tell someone you work out, they ask you, “Do you do any cardio?” And I say, “Yeah, I do a little cardio.”

I’m the asshole who uses the Ellipses or NordicTrack, whatever the fuck you call it. Let me tell you something, when I get going on that thing, the synchronized arm and leg movement makes every woman in the room simultaneously want to fuck me. But can you blame them? Minus the snow, I look exactly like an Olympic skier.

Gotta love the women who can read full novels while they’re on those machines. That’s how you know you’re getting a good workout in, when you’re going 1 mph on a treadmill and you’ve burned through fifteen magazines, while you’re sucking down a Java Chiller Frappuccino from Starbucks. These ladies would burn more calories by simply lying down.

I’ll jump on a treadmill every once in awhile. It’s a great way to meditate, a way to forget about everything else that’s going on in my life – all the stress, whatever’s bothering me – and focus my mind on one simple idea that I just keep repeating to myself over and over again, which is ‘when the fuck is this going to end?’

‘I hate this, I hate this, I hate this. Why am I doing this?’ And why the hell is this goddamn timer moving so slowly? Move faster! Andalé! Every second feels like a minute. This machine’s gotta be broken. Maybe I should just cover the screen with a towel, if I can’t see the timer I won’t focus on it. Great idea. I cover it up and keep moving. After a short while, I realize that I have lost all sense of time and being. My entire concept of time has gone out the window. � I have no idea if I’ve been running for five minutes or five hours. Did I have a beard when I got on this thing?

I decide to take a peak under the towel, see how much time I have left. I could be finished for all I know. But then again, I could have just begun…I don’t know, should I do it? It’ll kill me if I have a lot of time left. Fuck it, I’ll compromise — I’m checking thirty seconds.

And that’s when I reveal my worst nightmare. NOOOOOooooooo! I lifted too early! I made the cardinal mistake. And now I want to die.

00:04:31

Four minutes, thirty-one seconds. That’s how long I’ve been running, not what I have left. I convinced myself to do ten minutes. But I can’t quit now, this is bigger than you, Steve, this is bigger than the gym. If you quit here, it means you’ll quit out there, in the real world. Push it! You can do it buddy. You can do it! Okay, it’s been a little while, let’s check again….

00:05:49

It’s only been a minute! Ahhhhh! I’m now crying in public.

The gym I work out at in Hollywood smells like one giant set of man balls. So whenever I don’t feel like going, I just put my underwear over my head and run a bunch of laps around my house. But the coolest thing about LA Fitness, centered in the music capitol of the world, is definitely the house DJ, whoever picks the music. That 49-year old spinster is totally tapped into what’s hot right now. Here are three tracks that were actually played (in a row) at my gym on a Saturday during the busiest time of day:

“Believe” Cher
“We’ve Got it Goin On” The Backstreet Boys
“Shake Your Bon Bon” Ricky Martin

Bet you feel like pumpin’ some iron right now, huh? So glad my iPod was broken that day.

After people workout for a few months, suddenly they’re experts on what you should be doing. Love when people come up to me in the gym to give me pointers:

“Hey, you know, you shouldn’t arch your back like that when you’re pulling the bars down.”
“Oh, really? Because my last trainer told me that you shouldn’t open your fuckin mouth to people who don’t give a shit about how they’re doing it in the first place because maybe they’re just trying to get the fuck out of here as fast as they can so they can get back to their real life.”

And then I pull my back out.

Exercising is for gay people. Literally gay people love working out. I mean that in the straightest way possible. It’s kind of tough to tell who’s gay at the gym though and whose not, so I usually just assume that everyone is. And that’s why I make no eye contact with people and walk with a limp and have people spread rumors about me that I’m HIV positive. “Rumors.”

One way to tell for sure though is if you are using the steam room alone, standing there on the first step naked minding your own business and another guy comes in and sits down right next to you so that his face is 12 inches away from your penis which is 4 inches away from your body and he decides to start exhaling directly onto your penis. That’s how you can tell. When a guy starts blowing on your penis, it’s safe for you to assume that he’s gay. And that you just received a blowjob from him in the steam room.

Another way to tell is if two guys are jerking each other off in an open shower in the men’s locker room screaming, “We’re gay guys!” Equinox was just awarded gym of the year by the way.

Sometimes I think about changing gyms, but I don’t know. I guess the only thing stopping me is I don’t want to pay that bullshit initiation fee or go on another one of those mandatory fuckin tours after signing up. Why do they make you do that? Like I’m some fuckin Sioux Indian who’s never been to a gym before:

“That right there is a bench press and those are free weights….”
“Ta-tanka.”

Two last things:

1.)� You know those people who wear those Bluetooth things in their ears while they’re working out? I want to drop a 45-pound dumbbell on their heads. When the hell are those things going to go out of style / give everyone using them cancer?

2.)� Here is a video I made which explains my feeling about gym trainers: