I pick things up & softly, nonthreateningly place them down

I just had to.

So I Left Amy and the kids home on a beautiful Saturday morning to go train at Planet Fitness. I had to be there anyway to advise a past patient on some training matters. Paul the manager kindly grants me access in order to help clients transition to a long-term fitness routine.

I walked in and immediately...waited. I watched some guy use the only free weight rack to do about 19 sets of bicep curls.

When it was finally  my turn I proceeded to do it all wrong. I completed only one exercise for "chest," hung from the smith machine to do chin-ups, and didn't have time to isolate anything. 

The gym was mostly empty, which was nice. I tried to keep moving without making much noise or demanding attention. Things went well until it was time for dead lifts, the amazing epitome of lifting things up and putting them down.

Thump - thump - thump, is the low pitched sound of rubber plates bumping off rubber flooring. I've definitely heard people sneeze louder than my thump. After the third of my four work sets, a girl on staff came over from the the front desk. "Excuse me sir but you're not allowed to drop the weights. I'm sure it wasn't on purpose, but..." Then she turned and quickly walked away.

I could feel her discomfort in confronting me. So I grabbed the nearest dumbbell and tossed it in her direction, "You don't know what's dropping weights." Then I proceeded to quietly roll the loaded barbell back and forth across the open gym floor, asking the other patrons if this is too loud and intimidating.

No, that didn't happen. But I did say "oh I'm sorry" before completing my fourth set with a little extra impact control at the bottom of each rep, watching the Lunk Alarm out of the corner of my eye. It was a long, miserable set. The Lunk Alarm held its applause.

      - - - - whew- - - -

I completed a couple finishing "core" moves and hogged the free weight rack with barbell bicep curls. I went over to peer at my nemesis, the hip abduction/adduction machine. Forty five minutes and my work was through.

Concluding remarks:

I caught a nice workout at Planet Fitness without having to put up with the typical gym culture tomfoolery.

Planet Fitness should decide if they want to be a gym or library.

I was definitely feeling a little judged. Make no mistake - Planet Fitness does (and should) judge in order to uphold a certain atmosphere. They should try to design a Lunk Alert that's less sensitive to dropped weights and more sensitive to a critical and hot-headed spirit.

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