Day 285: Gym Diaries Part 3

     The techno beat starts, and I bend over into a dead lift, sliding the bar down my thighs to my knees.  Standing in one spot, with only your arms and occasionally legs moving, you tend to get bored, so my eyes wander about.  Surprisingly, there are more fit people here.  You’d think a gym would be crawling with overweight people, but they seem to be a minority.  There are a few heavy-set women in the back rows faithfully lifting their bars into overhead presses.  A guy near me a ten and five pound plate on either side, double the weight I have.  I wonder if I should have tried to put more on my own.

     The class moves onto the next segment, squats.  We’re supposed to put the heaviest weight on.  I watch that same man struggle to lift the weight onto his shoulders and begin.  Another person in the front sat on his bench while people were adding weight onto their bars.  As the track begins, he’s slowly adding weight to his bar and joins us close to the chorus of the song, a subtle way of cheating out of doing reps.  I notice the girl to my left stop to check her phone at the beginning of the second verse.  The weight man in the front has put down his bar to take some weight off.  I can’t help but grin that his cocky attitude had gotten the best of him.  That grin quickly melts off my face as we move into the third segment of the track.  The burning in my legs is almost unbearable now as we do eight bottom-halves, pulsing reps that stay low and don’t allow you to stand straight.  I remember seeing a little Asian lady in class that looked like she could hardly move, let alone do a weight class.  I think, “If she can do it, I can do it!” and pulse on.  Finally, the track ends and I gratefully heave the bar off my shoulders.