D-Day: The Gym Gets a Princess (Part 1)

7 January 2015

Due to the personally epic nature of my very first night in a gym, my post will be broken into multiple segments, giving you the ability to savor the hilarious humiliation that actually reinforced the reason I joined a gym in the first place.

The day when the rubber of my shoes' soles would hit the purposefully utilitarian carpet of the gym I joined was now upon me. Honestly, I had absolutely no idea what to expect, and because of that, my mind played out many different scenarios, all of which had me looking like a complete a**hole in front of a large room filled with people (something I would much rather avoid at all costs, as would most people). In order to stop myself from panicking, I decided to focus on something truly important: which of my new athletic outfits was I going to wear. After all, even if I was going to look like a fitness a**hole, I could look fabulous doing so. Most of the day, I mentally mixed and matched outfits until I decided that I would go conservative and color coordinate with my hair--I went with a monochrome color palette of grey.

By the power of grey polyester!

The gay calculus (a gay variant of math, used to calculate exactly what to wear and when--even simple formulas can require hours to calculate) I used to find a proper outfit for this 'event' led me to the conclusion that wearing grey was understated enough that I could go relatively unnoticed by the more seasoned clientele. My ultimate hope was that this first official night would be more along the lines of a formal tour, a discussion about equipment and the various options that would be available to me in terms of exercise programs and regimens, going over gym rules, and answer any questions I might have. As it would turn out, I was only partly correct and was in for an evening of one personally terrifying surprise after another. By the end of my very first evening in what will eventually become a second home, I was smacked in the face, repeatedly, by that rude bastard known as reality.

The Initial Interview

Though partially dreading my first day, I arrived on time and was greeted by the person who signed me up for my gym membership, C (I'm not using names, so I will refer to people by the first letter of their first name). After a brief hello, C introduced me to A, one of the personal trainers on staff. Prior to my first night at the gym, A reached out to me via text message welcoming me to the gym and asking to set up an appointment to introduce me to their Functional Training Program and to do a physical assessment. Slated for the evening, I informed A that if the assessment was physical in nature that:

1. She should just consider me as never having formally exercised before and that I was largely sedentary (apparently moving from one's bed to get the television remote, then back to the bed, then doing near bicep curls to lift the remote to channel surf does not count as physical activity)
2. I had to be careful initially because I have a slight heart murmur and my doctor would kill me if I killed myself by pushing too hard

In the course of our text messaging, and based on my response to her in regard to a physical assessment, A had certain assumptions about what she was going to run into when meeting me--a sedentary 400 pound Jabba the Hut physical nightmare. When C introduced me to A upon my arrival to the gym, she did a double-take as I was nowhere near what she thought I would look like physically. After the usual handshake greeting, we sat down and began to have a conversation about the gym, my experience, etc. For the most part, I was a deer caught in headlights. She patiently explained things and I made witty analogies so that I was able to remember and understand what we discussed. At this point, the only thing missing was a delightful adult beverage, as the conversation was going swimmingly.

Just as I noticed that we were missing adult beverages, the conversation turned in a direction that I was dreading, the part where we had to do the initial assessment. Of course, like an animal that knows that it's about to become prey, I was desperately looking for a conversational exit back to non-assessment territory. Unfortunately, my tactic didn't work (I am sure that she has seen the same tactic used by just about anyone new to the gym-world), and thus began the moments which led to hilarious personal humiliation and validation.

End Part 1