Originally Posted: 2006-10-26 03:57 (no longer live)
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RANT: To The New Young Gal @ My Gym...

Oh hi there New Young Gal @ My Gym!

I hate to bother you New Gal but there are a few things that perhaps you didn't hear during your orientation tours (you've had more than one I see) and that you obviously didn't think to ask about either...

And by the way let me disgress right off the top by complimenting you on the stunning{ly fugly} tattoo that adorns your entire neck (take-out Chinese food menu is it?) or arm (spent a while in a Fijian tribe as an outrigger-paddling warrior-princess did we?) or the entirety of your lower back (was it fun being a biker chick?), exposed seemingly permanently by your too-short tops and your too-low pants - which oddly enough are also too short at the bottom - à la a hip huggers sensibility combined unfortunately with a "flood pants" hemline.

In fact, let's start with upper wardrobe. Now no one is asking you to run out and spend your entire month's pay on a heapin' helpin' of Lululemon gear or anything like that. We have enough S&M (stand and model) happening around the gym as it is. But you could perhaps hit the Footlocker or Athlete's World - or hell, even Walmart to get a few basics? Those bizarre tops you've been wearing that don't quite reach your navel and that plunge dramatically down the centre of your cleavage are making many strong statements (hooker, floosie, cheap 'n' skanky ho, space cadet, drug addict, slutty bitch) but one thing they aren't saying is "I'm here to get strong and healthy, I'm serious about it and therefore I am going to dress appropriately."

How 'bout a nice plain t-shirt? Doesn't even have to have a fancy logo on it... how about for now we just settle for covering your boobs and navel? Don't know if you've noticed honey but of the few men here, most of 'em are either gay or with their wives (or both) so your intended viewing public ain't here. So there's no point in giving any men the evil eye for standing and staring at you gape-mouthed. They're not lusting after you honey, they're in shock at how tacky you look and they're giving you a fashion critique. Your smouldering "get lost you perv!" glare is lost on them altogether. Get over yourself.

Two more words for you" "jog bra" - find one. Buy it. Wear it. If you let The Girls fly around too much you'll pay for that in middle age when they fly right down to your knees.

Ditto the workout pants - meaning yes, please wear some next time. No, not those short-shorts. Not your daisy-duke sized whoreshorts. Nor your silly, practically TRANSPARENT, lightly "tinted" camel-toe showing, polyester "capri" pants or those weird, clingy, saggy-bum-exaggerating sweats some women favour (do these women NOT look in a 3-way mirror when they try on clothes???) How about some running pants or some kind of leotard and shorts combo? Hey how about even just loose sweat pants? Pretty much anything that doesn't show the SKID MARKS visible on the shiny pair of weirdly translucent pants you wore today - with the colour and contour of your thong and bum cheeks showing through... Hint: if your pants are so tight that I can read your lips, they're not going to be too comfy for working out. And the post-workout aroma down there will, I'm sure, be enough to stun passers-by for miles around.

While we're about it please take note that we exercise on a fairly hard surface. I'm glad you're young and perky and that you enjoy making your tits flop around while you do too, but those cheesy discount, plasticky "sneakers" you picked up a decade ago at the dollar store (and wear with BARE FEET!YUCK!) are not doing your feet any good. In fact they are probably helping to erode your joints and cartiledge as you leap about (completely out of time with the music and the rest of us, naturally). Do us all - and yourself - a BIG favour. Go and get some proper gym socks and drop some bucks on some REAL training shoes. Those scuffed little pink numbers with the flat, worn soles are painful even to look at. Even you can afford the $50+ it will cost for REAL shoes.

Let's turn to conduct and deportment whilst exerting yourself, shall we?

First of all classes start at the time on the schedule you were given - the one visible at the front desk too - or perhaps a minute or two later than stated -- at the absolute max. They do NOT start when you wander in 20 minutes or more late, when we are one third to halfway done. Coming late might even be alright provided you were to sneak in at the back and stay there, out of the way, but apparently you don't have the tact to do that, do you? Nope. You have to strut your way smack into the midst of a bunch of moving bodies. Are you curious as to why you've been hit with a flying hand or kicked a few times? Could it be because we are already in mid-routine when you come sauntering amongst us? What you don't know is how lucky you are that some of the women who are your betters have not decked you or tripped you or worse for this brazen, brainless rudeness you've been perpetuating with your casually late wander-throughs.

And for someone so young and so pleasing in shape {from a distance}, you sure did turn out to have ZERO muscle tone. And now we know why!! It's because you have ZERO gross OR fine motor control over your bodily movements. And you have absolutely NO sense of spatial perception either. In fact I looked up the word SPAZ in the dictionary and there you were - in your skimpy top, your practically transparent, skid-marked capri pants and your cheap-assed runners.

And how do we know you are so uncoordinated? We know this because instead of using the common sense god gave a goat, and making yourself somewhat of an invisible observer, so as not to embarass yourself and annoy the rest of us when you came to our workout classes the first few times, you've insisted from the start on standing right smack at front and centre --- even though you've had absolutely no idea which way to move, or when --- and you've then proceeded to flop around like a demented fish out of water for the entire class. We also know you're a spaz because you spent the entire class edging closer and closer to the poor instructor until she literally had to start backing up to get away from you. Pay attention to your surroundings SPAZ!

Tip o' the day for you sweetie: when you are NEW to any established class, try to sniff the wind a little, use some manners and fucking clue in: Your proper place until you know what the hell we are all doing is to stay out of the way, preferably toward the rear and/or side peripheries and watch what the other people do... i.e. that would be the rest of us - the ones who know what the hell we are doing. Get some powers of observation and USE them.

Also, when the instructor enthusiastically urges us to "breathe deeply" while we work out, this is not a license for you to continue to inhale and exhale raggedly through your slack-jawed, loosely opened cakehole. I know you've probably earned your keep performing more fellative manoeuvres than most gals, but please try putting those lips back together and using your nostrils for more than spurting out previously-ingested softdrinks ok?

Further, please do not get all disgusted and sniffy when you see the exercise mat you took off the pile is a bit dusty when you go to lie on it. It's a bit dusty because your lazy ass dragged it all the way across the entire floor rather than using the minimal effort required to pick it up and carry it like the rest of us do (which you would have noticed if you possessed even the most rudimentary powers of observation and/or mimicry... but you don't).

Oh, and as it's your first class, may we suggest you try using the lighter available weights rather than the heaviest ones offered? It's obvious you don't have the muscle tone or coordination to go through the entire weight routine carrying the 5-pounders - and you if you didn't make that obvious by standing there, weights in each hand, arms at your sides, doing absobloodylutely nothing during most of our weight routine, you certainly made it obvious when we started the overhead portion and, in trying at last to emulate us, you immediately dropped them from over your head onto the floor. Unfortunately for the rest of us, they did not happen to fatally concuss you on the way down. But you made a nice big noise to disturb us, so thanks for that.

New Young Gal, when you come to our step classes, please take note that when there is an entire half of the room that is still empty, it is preferable and advisable to take your step and risers somewhere in that direction to set up rather than crowding in a mere six inches away from people (who know what the fuck they are doing) who are already set up in front of, behind, and on either side of where you've just plunked yourself in your perky spirit of communal movement. People need SPACE for step class you twaaaaaaaat.

And when we're working out in a mirrored room, please be aware that other people take great pains not to stand DIRECTLY in front of other people, so as not to block anyone from having at least a partial view of the mirror. Unless you want to be inadvertently(?) kicked in the ass or tripped, please extend the same courtesy. 'Cuz if you arrive late and come and stand RIGHT in front of me one more time I'm gonna stomp all over your Achilles heels and send you flying.

Late arrival? Well sometimes it can't be helped. But please don't make things worse by walking in front of half the class participants in the middle of the routine. If you're late, use both your neurons: stay in the back, or wait until a break to move up. Don't just barge your way across the floor.

Let's talk about the music. The music has a thing called rhythm. Sometimes it's also called a beat. The slightest googling about aerobic exercise classes of most types will tell you that the beat for these classes is somewhere between 115-130 beats per minute and that generally speaking, all of the moves are done in time with the rhythm or beat. This isn't free-form ballet. You're going to need to speed up from your no-gravity-environment, slow-mo loping. NOW. If you can't find the beat in the bland 4/4-time, pseudo-disco-blather we exercise to, then you need to get a hearing test.

When the instructor says "if you don't know what to do, just march or jog to the beat until you start to get the hang of it" that is NOT, contrary to what you seem to think, an invitation for you to suddenly break free and create your own improvised choreographic masterpiece, complete with wild gesticulations of flailing arms and legs. That means stay in your own fucking space until you get at least the most rudimentary of moves somewhat figured out and know to move right when we do rather than left.

Lastly, New Young Gal, if you wonder why we all fell about the floor snorting with only partially supressed hysterical laughter when you left last time, it could have something to do with your unnecessarily loud and cheery pronouncement to the class leader (but meant for us to overhear and admire) that you were planning to start a new career as a certified fitness instructor... by next month.

Finally, have some respect NYG. Think for a moment about the fact that you are new in a room where some of the people have been working out together and have known each other for years. We welcome newcomers yes of course, but take some time to ingratiate yourself into an established setting, take the temperature of the room so to speak. Appearances can be deceiving. There are some incredibly strong people in these work-out rooms. They may not have the perfect shape, as they may have given birth once or twice lately, or they may be in their middle or later ages, but please note carefully that while you are gasping for air 5 minutes into your arrival, they are putting out twice the effort you are and they are sailing along just fine - and could exercise your young but untoned, uncoordinated sorry ass into the ground. Watch and learn -- from a respectful distance.

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