proverbial gymmious

Current music in ear: American Idol 5 top 24 performances - expected TV program: die Perfekte Dinner; RTL II; Mo. 19:00 - watched dvd: Absolutely Fabulous season 4. Jennifer Saunders is hot hot hot.

Look. Everyone knows this proverb, right? The grass is greener on the other side of the fence. In german it will be like "Die Kirschen in Nachbars Garten schmecken immer ein bisschen süßer". Alles klar? Those may be applicable for a lot of things, but definitely not for my gym.

Last year, as I was living in Bremerhaven, I had to switch gym. And the gym sucked. I lifted much less that I used to as I came back to my original gym.

This week, I have to switch gym again, because it has to be closed due to a rennovation. And guess what, the gym that I attended to now is.. wake-me-up-out-of-this-dream- that-I-still-live-in-1980 kinda gym.

Personally, the gym was not terrible. The people were great, and I'll get back on this later, but all other things that bothered me.

First, you have to walk around 150 meters from the gym to the changing room. The changing room is located outside the main building. WTF???!!

Second, you know how soothing it is to take a hot shower after you work out? In this gym: hot shower? Hot shower my ass. It turns out, that it isn't always running, as I was being told by someone who wanted to take shower as I did my first training there. By the second time I was there, it wasn't even running. And I already covered in shampoo and soap.

Third, the free-weights are not increasing in an accustomed manner. I'm weak, and can't lift big and heavy weights. But I used different weights for my shoulders, biceps, triceps, and chest. Cuckooo.. And those numbers aren't there in the gym. So I have to improvise and change exercises which sometimes can be fun due to the trying of a new exercise, but sometimes troublesome because it takes more time to do the weight adjusting.

Fourth, you have to bring your own lock in order to lock your stuff in the changing room. They don't provide it. Your valuables can be locked in a tiny locker in between the rooms.

Fifth, there are two rooms for the equipments. Room 1 is for all electronic ones, and room 2 is for the free-weights. That means:

a. there are two clocks. For someone who has always been watch-less in the course of their lives and highly dependant on clocks, it is quite difficult to notice how long have you been resting and so on. Again, you have to improvise.
b. there are more front-and-back walk between the excercises, and even during the excercises. More time and cardio isn't exactly what I need.

Sixth, the policy of forbidding street-shoes to enter is weakly implemented.

Seventh, the swiss ball is dirty! And they have three but in one size! How inefficient is that..

Hah.. anyway, every cloud has a silver lining. Or Auf Regen folgt Sonnenschein. The best thing about this gym is that the ones who usually train in it are the students of Univerity of Hamburg who study sport. Or biomechanism. Or sport science. Or something like that. So your fella trainers really know what you're doing.

As an engineering student who reads Men's Health for fun, it wouldn't hurt to overhear some discussion about some routines and how it helps them on what or where. You won't be estranged by the terms that they are using, and you can compare it with your own knowledge and experience.

The discussions on the gym between the gym buddies are really gymmy. I have never heard, "I hate Prof. XYZ because he gave me 3.0 for Mathe..." or "..it was explained that organic materials are responsible also for COD this morning.." until now.

But as for someone who works out only because he likes to be fit and not to be big like Arnold Schwarzenneger, sometimes the discussions can be a bit too far and non-related. I mean, who cares if dips is better because it hits 60% of the upper area of pectoralis major as compared to incline dumbell bench press?

You? You? I don't. I only care that dips are a compound routine because you train your triceps at the same time, and my kinda of incline are beneficial because you switch your palm position during the movement that you can't do during barbell press. And I did both. So I get both benefits. Hahahaha..

And I get a bit too far as well by saying the end justifies the means. Or der Zweck heiligt der Mittel.

Proverb-hour is over.