You're Doing It Wrong: Follow These Expert Gym Rules Today!

Leg machines are for selfies ONLY.

Hey, it's me! I did do some Timbers snarktography and other contributions last year, but it's been a long time since my last actual Do Nothing post. At the time I posted Area Woman Disappears, Reappears (and the subsequent end-of-post updates) I thought I was about to start getting back into shape, running sub 4 minute miles, ripping apart phone books, etc. The process went slower than predicted, but now I'm finally back to weight training!

I started cardio during the summer, but then I added in weights 11/17. Wow, gym life has changed. There are so many new customs and rules to get used to and it's taken me months to figure it all out. I know that many of my readers might be heading back to the gym soon to work on their beach bodies, so I'll tell you all about what I've learned so your learning curve won't be quite as steep. You're welcome.

Locker Room Rules

Mingette waiting inside to accost anyone that opens her unsecured locker.

1. Don't use a locker. Your bag goes in the middle of the gym floor, or against the wall near an outlet with a phone charging on it, or in between two circuit training machines you're not using right now.
2. If you do use a locker, don't lock it. Pile all of your crap inside and then get mad when it gets stolen.
3. If you're looking for a locker to use, and you open one without a lock and it has someone's shit inside, prepare to get attacked by the owner. You clearly should have x-ray vision and it's your fault.
4. Spread everything you own across all of the benches. 
5. Turn on the shower, do not use it, and then go out to the pool area or get dressed to go home. Get mad if you notice someone else turning off the shower you never used.
6. Talk on the phone. Put it on speaker. Make it loud. Indicate your displeasure to everyone around you that they are disrespectful for listening to your call.

Mingette puts her phone on speaker like a good girl.

Weight Room Rules

1. As mentioned above in Locker Room Rules, leave your gym bag in the center of the floor or in the middle of two machines you're not using. If you do not have a bag, leave your lanyard, keys, water bottle, and wallet on the bench of the machine next to you. Leave them there the whole time. Roid out if someone wants to use that machine.
2. Any machine with a seat is perfect for 30 minute phone calls or magazine reading; try the Crunch Machine, Dip, Rotary Twist or Pec Dec. Incline Press and Low Row are for reading texts or changing songs. Do not take less than 15 minutes doing so.
3. Sit backwards on the Dip and Lat Pulldown machines. Do some made up exercise that completely contradicts the instructions clearly posted on the machine or as stated by gym personnel. On Lat Pulldown, you could also sit in the right direction, but lean all the way back and tear out your spine while doing 50 fast repetitions. It looks so painful, you must be gaining so much, BRO!
4. Don't wipe anything down, ever.
5. Men are only allowed to wear a choice of two scents in the weight room: Cologne Factory Explosion or Eternal Shitpants.
6. Women are required to use Bluetooth headphones and leave their phones anywhere in a ten foot radius around them. You may leave your phone on an adjacent machine's seat, or balanced precariously on top of a weight stack, or in the middle of the floor for convenient stomping.
7. Grunt loudly. DO NOT STOP.
8. Follow the rules for gym bag placement for your gallon jug of mystery fluid. Don't forget to spill it all over the floor near the free weights.
9. Take 30 seconds to do a set on an upper body machine. Then sit there for 10 minutes talking to a friend. Repeat this process for 20-30 minutes. Roll your eyes at anyone who even approaches to use the machine. If you get off the machine for 10 minutes between sets but still hover next to it, tell the woman that gets on it next, "It's okay, we can share the machine, Sweetheart." Make sure to insist she pulls out her earbuds so she can hear your toxicity.
10. Required uniform: pajama pants and hoodie with hood pulled up and cinched tight so you can't smell your own continuous crop dusting.

Mingette forgot to bring her magazine for the Rotary Twist. She'll do better next time.

Cardio Rules

1. Follow the urinal rule: find a person all by themselves and get on the machine right next to them even though all the other machines are available. 
2. Stare at all the boobs. That poor chick over there on the elliptical needs three sports bras to keep everything in place. Go find a nearby table and sit there, just staring at that chick, until the front desk staff notices and asks you to move.
3. Again, don't wipe anything down.
4. Required cardio uniform: flannel shirt, jeans, and socks with sandals.
5. Put your bag in the middle of the floor or right behind your treadmill. Pile everything else you've ever owned on top.
6. Watch the TV with Fox News on it and try to make a person nearby take out their ear buds to talk to you about it.

Pool Rules

1. Never take a shower before getting into the pool or spa. In fact, wear your sweaty workout clothes straight into the pool.
2. In the pool, stop the lap swimmer and tell her not to get your hair wet.
3. In the spa, elderly gentlemen are required to put their groins up against the jets. Constantly. Talk about politics with each other while you do so.

Bonus Tip

The yoga studio is a pleasant, calm space with dim lights and often warm temperatures. It has free mats for naps. Do it!

Working out is exhausting. Our heroines deserve a break.

Yours Truly also wrote about the gym in a previous post, her most successful entry to date: Sexy Women's Locker Room Secrets Revealed!