It has been approximately three years (since the outbreak of COVID) that I have even remotely considered myself something as a regular “gym-goer”. I mean, I’ve gone once or twice since the pandemic restrictions have loosened, but I’ve never really been able to reestablish the old regular habit of spending any serious time at the gym lifting weights, spinning, getting sweaty and getting fit.

Nope.

I ate a lot of jellybeans, collected stools (click HERE) and on-line shopped for stupid shit.

Lest we forget (click HERE).

Go me!

I remember those glory days of doing push-up challenges on medicine balls, ridiculously long spins, “mental toughness” sessions, the weekly “Brick Run”; not to mention the regular weekend ‘Friday He-man Night’ with the heavy iron for 60 minutes of hot “me on me” action in the mirror with my guns out and a-blazing for all to behold and admire while I’m getting myself all jacked and SWOL n’ shit. 

Ya feel me, brah?

(That’s exactly how I remember it, by the way.)

I even had “Commandments”, dammit! (click HERE)

However, now that I have only recently reestablished something of a regular morning routine once more, I have noticed that many things—ie. the “gym culture” as I remember it—has changed, well, rather significantly I suppose. Especially in that I am no longer what you might consider to be the “cool guy” that everybody knows and likes—but rather the creepy, old dude in the corner instead that everyone avoids—and, somehow, I’ve managed this incredible fall from fitness grace in only a matter of three years.

WTF?

This past January I had hoped going back to the gym would be something like this:

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But it wasn’t.

Far from actually.

More like this:

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Personally, I blame the Millennial’s.

I mean, why not?

It’s not like they haven’t practically ruined everything by this point already right?

Now I don’t want to say specifically that the culture has been ruined per se, just that things have definitely changed—and maybe not for the better.

For starters, unless you’re starting a Lynyrd Skynyrd revival band, no one wears paisley print ‘doo rags’ on their head anymore. I guess it’s not considered a typical ‘tough guy’ look anymore and judging by the weird the looks the Millennial’s were flashing me, they either thought I was pretending to be a pirate, or I was about to break into the chorus for Sweet Home Alabama—which to them, probably means Kid Rock—but, still, it all boils down to the same thing:

HANDKERCHIEFS ARE OUT.

Also, I would hazard to you that the most popular piece of gym equipment now isn’t a specific weight or fancy new cardio machine, or anything else that you might actually work out with, but the little shelf by the entrance of the gym where the sole ‘charging station’ happens to be instead; a spaghetti of wires snaking out to attach and recharge every piece of digital equipment you could ever hope to connect, unless you’re me of course—the guy with the dead technology—made immediately obvious by the two wires dangling out of my ears that attach the “earbuds” in my ears to my own device, which I then rather awkwardly tuck into the waistband of my Under Armour compression shorts.

Pretty fancy, eh?

No ‘air pods’, ‘Bluetooth’, or anything!

My technology is basically operating on witchcraft now.

This means then that this same small shelf with charging station is more or less the hub around which 99.9% of the gym activity is centred, and from which there is a constant ebb and flow of gym-goers who flow back and forth between their phones and workout stations like a human tide. If you ever want to get anywhere near the drinking fountain that’s also inconveniently located in this same vicinity, you will have to time your visit perfectly to successfully coincide with this constantly moving sea of people, lest you get caught up in and swamped by a group of panicking, sweaty gym-goers all desperate to get back to their phones having been away forty-five seconds too long—it’s an end too grisly to contemplate. This leaves everyone then to wander around the gym between stations and equipment like mindless pod people completely tuned into their own little world, ever-powered by the little smart device sitting on the shelf at the back of the room …

It’s weird.

Oh, and where before it was practically unthinkable to cut between someone and, say, the mirror while their workout was in session, I have learned that it’s now even more grievous to come between someone and their charging phone mid-workout.  The other day I unwittingly managed to do exactly this by sheer accident, where I inadvertently came between someone and their charging iPhone on my way to return a weight to it’s proper position on the rack.  The reaction was nothing short of Invasion of the Body Snatchers …

That shit is likely to get you killed!

Also different this time around, well, particular to this gym anyway, is that there’s a television in the corner which, for some strange reason, is almost always tuned to the Home & Garden network.

Now even this might be considered somewhat tolerable, if only for the seemingly endless commercials for women’s incontinence that I also have to endure. Seriously, I’ve seen so many adverts for the new Always Radiant ‘Flex-Foam’ maxi-pads that it’s become like some slow, twisted form of Chinese water torture every time I step on a cardio machine, knowing full well what I’m inevitably going to have to watch on the TV screen in front of me. It’s inevitable. Before I used to try and not stare at the fit, perfectly pear-shaped rear ends on all the young gym bunnies working out around me, now I’m practically begging for anything that moves to stare at aside from the large, flex-foam cushioned derriere’s on the screen before me.

Shit, I’d happily stare at another man’s sweaty junk given the opportunity!

(Okay, maybe not …but still!)

Where I’ve always been an advocate for ‘mental toughness’ training, but this is taking it to new and unprecedented—not to mention scary—levels.  So I can either be the creepy old dude checking everybody and everything else out or, say, become the next Richard Simmons, risking per-mature male sterility after one too many forced viewings of the Always Radiant commercial.

Now doo rag or not, neither is a particularly good look at ‘50’ if you ask me.

Truthfully, I’d rather stare at the rack of tools in my garage (click HERE) as my nuts freeze, turn blue and fall off.

God help me.