Gloom in the Weight Room
NEIRAD enilno edition
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Have you ever been caught in the weight room when an athlete gets carried away singing an awful rendition of a particularly bad song? Well it is not pleasant: apparently there are some people who need to be taught proper gym etiquette and some common sense.
“People often get carried away during their work out and start singing, often badly,” Physical Ed teacher Jared Cross said. One moment you’re working out in peace, the next you’re getting an off-key version of “Baba O’Riley” by The Who.
Then add to that off-key equation the unseemly grunting from your neighbor. You might, or might not have realized but there is always that one person in the room with the obnoxiously loud grunt. Now that is annoying. A person just wants to enjoy some time calmly working out and someone on the other side of the room grunts while struggling to heft 160 pounds on the bench press.
The weight room is known as a place of competition where guys always want to lift or bench more than the next guy, and from this rivalry aggression ensues. Most times in a high school weight room physical violence isn’t present, but the strong words between lifters most certainly are in abundance. When someone lifts five more pounds than another it is always a big deal for the guy who lifted more but played down by the other kid. But to be honest if the roles were reversed we all know who would be bragging how much he could lift.
Nudity in the gym is always a challenge. Indecent exposure is most definitely a punishable offense, and so it should be for some people to take off their shirt while in the weight room. I mean honestly no one wants to see a body dripping sweat.
The worst part is that as this is occurring and these bodily fluids are secreting onto the equipment many people forget the basic act of wiping the machine or bench they were on. This reporter can recall at least one example where no one approached a lifting bench because of the unappealing sweat mark that went up and down it. In most gyms there is a “clean-after-use” policy, and when there isn’t there should be.
These are just some extreme cases; most people have the common decency to understand when they are doing something that they are not supposed to. Some people just really need to be taught some rules proper etiquette, it may seem to be quite basic, yet there are enough people that forget to do these simple acts, that it can become quite a hassle working out.
Let’s hope as we begin the new school year that people read this column and make a resolution to improve their etiquette in the weight room or at the very least squelch those unseemly grunts.
