The End of a Love Affair

Not that kind. The gym kind. And beginning another.

The corporate gym business is failing, and failing big. It’s always been a challenging model. From the Nautilus facilities years ago to the lifetime memberships that bilked members out of their investments and then went bankrupt to all those big fancy shiny group gyms, the emphasis on sales as opposed to real service has always been hard to sustain.

Then of course the takeover of what I choose to call The Chatty Cathys, a whole new group of well-to-do white women with little more to do in-between eyebrow shaping appointments than to dress up and dehumanize others who can’t afford over-priced athleisure. My gym was WAY too Hispanic for that group. Good.

Because There Would Be Blood.

And of course then came a whole new wave of uber-expensive yoga studios and custom fitness studios and more and more and more extreme shit for the I Have To Be Special corps. Of which I am not a member. Because extreme shit for extreme money doesn’t make any better bodies than the absolute basics which most of my gym rats and I have been doing for nearly five decades and long before I ever came along.

Many are failing. They need to, for what excludes, insults. But that’s just me.

My marriage began forty two years ago

Back in 1978, I had just started going to the local Holiday Spa in Washington, DC. I’d begun working out at the all-male post gyms while on active duty. Holiday was right around the corner from my apartment. I fell in love with the place. Lifetime memberships were still legal. Some folks sold theirs, when they realized that they weren’t going to make that commitment (yeah, it’s a marriage). I found someone who was doing just that. Told my folks that’s what I wanted for my birthday, 1978. They paid the $700, and probably made bets that it was a waste of money. I know damned good and well my father bet against me.

Nothing my parents had ever bought, shy of my first horse, has ever paid off so handsomely. No inheritance, no land could ever have done me as much good for life as this gym membership has done. I am rich beyond measure because I am healthy and strong. Money can’t do that. Work does.

Some of you might recall that for years, one of the benefits of certain gym memberships was access to others facilities when we traveled. That served me well, for I moved to Denver in 1979. The membership came with me. Then I headed to Australia, where that same membership allowed me access in Oz.

I returned in 1987, and rekindled, but by the time I got back to Denver, my gym had been purchased by Bally’s. I was grandfathered in. Annual renewal fees have long been twelve bucks a year for me. I bought them in ten-year bundles. I knew I’d use them. And I sure did.

Bally’s made very little money on me, up until I purchased some training packages. The bad news was that their trainers weren’t very good. I sustained two serious injuries that dog me to this day. Lesson learned.

These days I vet my fitness trainers.

I worked out regularly. Three or more days a week, year after year. Forty-two years with that gym system. Six thousand forty-eight visits, roughly. So far.

When some girl asks me in the locker room how I “got” my guns, that’s my answer. Six thousand forty-eight gym visits, between an hour and two hours at a time, not including the pool, the stairs, the runs, the bikes, the hikes….. the sixty to one hundred men’s pushups a day.

YAH. As if I showed up at a counter at Dave’s Sporting Goods and asked for a set of biceps. Will you just.

Bally’s, like so many other predatory corporate gyms, got in trouble for bad business practices, something that has undermined corporate gym success. Local trainers got abused for not making aggressive sales goals, so far too many resorted to illegal practices. We lost excellent people who were completely dedicated. My gym was located in a very large, rather poor Hispanic neighborhood, so folks couldn’t pony up the thousands for personal training. Good people got paid pennies for having good credentials then bullied for unrealistic sales goals.

Then 24-hour came to town and bought out most of the Bally’s. I got grandfathered in again, but this time all my access got stripped. Didn’t matter. I kept going regularly, religiously. Because for the last ten years, the time I spent at the gym prepped me for some of the most difficult, extraordinary and physically demanding adventures anyone could imagine. I never stop training in-between trips. My gym work repeatedly saved my life, giving me the physical strength to stand up and walk to help or safety after breaking my back, smashing my pelvis and umpteen other injuries that could have maimed me for life had I not been doing the work.

To say I am grateful is a monumental understatement.

This morning, I saw on Linked In that 24-Hour has closed many of its facilities. My club is among them. I had just paid my annual dues in January. Good thing I didn’t buy a ten-pack this time. No way to get that money back now.

The last time I saw my long-term gym peeps was March 13th. I never got a chance to say farewell to the many men and women who populated my gym through all those changes and buyouts. We regulars probably saw each other more over those years than we saw our closest friends. I know I did.

I was planning to stop in for a few last workouts when I headed back in a few weeks to pick up the rest of my furniture, as I have since relocated to Eugene.

Now the building is shuttered, certainly for the time being. That probably pulled the final blinds down on my Colorado history more than just about anything else. Even home ownership. For the gym was ever my home during times I rented, couch surfed, traveled. The benches and barbells were and still are forever my besties, a way to dissipate pain and frustration, build strength and gain confidence. The people who share my gym space are fellow travelers, through our ups and downs and wins and fails.

I lived my body’s many iterations in the gym mirror. Still do.

Thirty cents a visit

After forty years in the gym system, one owner after another, my membership had cost me $27.50 a year (including the annual renewal fee).

Effectively thirty cents a visit, after taking into account the hours I spent, my parents’ initial purchase.

Given the thousands of hours I have committed to that gym, the superb results that dedication has afforded me, the number of times that dedication and work have saved my life on my adventures, I’d say this was one hell of a good investment.

Honestly, I don’t think my parents ever fully realized how important that gym membership gift was. How it has shaped the direction of my life and informed my body and muscles, given me strength and confidence and energy and agency.

I’m sure they forgot all about it.

I didn’t. This is what being a lifelong gym rat gives me (this is a photo pre-quarantine):

The only enhancements in this photo are the boob job (we bodybuilders almost all have ’em, that’s a whole other story) and the hair color. I still am negotiating the gray thing, but I’m getting there.

Those results aren’t from genetics other than my bone structure. This is hard, hard, hard damned work, consistent over forty-six long years. There’s plenty I don’t like about my body. Aging isn’t one of them, however, for the older I get the more I really enjoy the body I have worked my entire life to build. This vehicle, assuming I stick with it, is primed to carrying me well into my nineties and beyond. But only if I stick with it.

Here in Eugene, I am about to head over to Planet Fitness, which serves as an interim gym home. I’ve already begun working out at a real old-fashioned chalk gym with a trainer once a week. I absolutely, positively need to curl my gloved fingers around serious weight. Planet costs me more per month than what my old gym used to cost me for a whole year.

My trainer is a lot more than that, but it’s worth it. Because at 67, the body needs a different kind of attention, and a greater awareness of how to work around injuries. I’ve already seen benefits. We’ve identified precisely how I injured my knee and how to strengthen that body part to stabilize the joint and prevent further problems. We’ve started new exercises which are excruciatingly painful. Because I’ve done this my entire life, I will do them religiously because they will pay off. And, in no time they will stop hurting because I will get strong fast. That’s just one reason I so love gym work. You can see and feel the results.

As can we all.

Gyms do that for us. But not if people stand around in their expensive leggings and full makeup barking about the old babes in sweats struggling to get their aching joints to loosen up. Not if the only reason we’re at the gym is to feel superior, brag about our biceps or to slime ourselves on the chicks in the weight room.

A true gym is a safe gym. A good gym is a place to have kind conversations with your body at any age and at any weight and in any shape. It’s where we coax the best out of ourselves, have a good laugh when the six-pack disappears (as mine has lately), and recommit to the hard damned work of getting and staying strong. The best news is that you and I can start any time and gain serious benefits.

I’ve been married to my gym(s) for 46 years. While I am deeply sad to have to say goodbye to my gym home in Colorado, I begin a brand new love affair here in Oregon.

The only love affair in my life that has never ended.