Joining the gym made me recognize the different types of weight lifters. During my workouts, I observed each person fit into one of three categories. At a health club, one can expect to find the show-offs, fashionistas, and grunters. The first type is characterized by his arrogant attitude and flashy appearance. He always comes to the gym wearing a tank top to display his well-defined muscles. He hogs the machines, leaves sweat everywhere, and barely looks up if someone falls off the treadmill beside him. The show-off likes to emphasize how strong he is by working out at the very front and center of the gym. The routine consists of endless bench presses, curls, and pushdowns. Once in a while, I’ll see him throw in a few crunches just for fun. Occasionally, he will look in the mirror, admiring the muscle group he’s working on. He refuses requests for help and seldom talks to another soul. For instance, he loaded the bar up to its capacity without noticing he never put the clips on. As he went down to squat, all the weight toppled over causing him to fail miserably. Because of his blatant overconfidence, things didn’t go as planned. The show-off is left red-faced, but it’s hard to feel sympathy. …show more content…
For them, exercising is just another excuse to buy clothes. They wear perfectly matched leggings with color-coordinated shoes. For example, a woman I encounter at the gym often is one such person. I always run into her using the hip abductor machine. Her face is always covered with a pound of makeup and fake eyelashes, complete with the latest Victoria’s Secret outfit. Even though the only thing I know about her is that she works outs with a full face of makeup, my assessment of her character is less than charitable. Based on her appearance alone, I suspect she strolls around the gym solely to attract men. However, her wallet may be getting skinnier than her
Another key strength for Planet Fitness is the Judgment Free Zone philosophy. This attracts the average person instead of the body builder type that typically dominates work out centers. By adopting this policy the gym can reach a larger demographic, since majority of the Oshkosh population would be considered average in terms of work out usage. Other key strengths that are associated with the Judgment Free Zone are a free personal training, and easier to use machines so that members feel comfortable in the gym. As a part of the marketing mix we plan to implement a new member orientation to help members feel more comfortable when they come into the gym. This would greatly improve our product and is a key strength to Planet Fitness
A college campus is nothing without a gym. College sports, and cultural events take place in the T.M. Elmore Gym on Alabama A&M’s campus. This gym is located on the west side of A&M’s campus between Louis Crews stadium and Dr. Ernest L. Knight West Campus dorms. This building has made a large impact on the culture of the school considering that the gym is home to sports teams, classrooms, pep rallies, guest speakers and convocations.
bond we share as human beings. The paths we take in life can be of great distress, but the outcome will determine the will of who we are. These paths are a “sign of where we’ve been” (line 11). Doty challenges us how to balance the weight of the world through self-confidence and consideration of others for guidance. According to Doty, this guidance can be found in common places.
My teammates would cry and complain and quit. They could never see the appeal, and it was not until I took a weightlifting class during my freshman year that I found people who did; but they were all boys. For the first few weeks in the class, I continued to hid behind cardio machines and two pound weights, afraid to venture across an invisible barrier to the free weight section, bustling with sweaty boys in an assortment of Nike and Adidas. While other girls in my class sat texting on the recumbent bicycles, spouting gossip, I hovered closer and closer to the boy’s club, as I had dubbed them, rotating between weight stations. Then, on unexpected Friday afternoon, after an hour of listening to mindless drivel about fad diets and fake eyelashes, I breached the invisible line separating me from who I wanted to be. In doing so, I began a harsh journey of calloused hands, sweat stains, aching knees, and soreness in muscles I did not know existed. I has been two years since my evolution to heavy lifting
At the Gym, written by Mark Doty, dramatizes the conflict within the mind of a bodybuilder and his desire to change who and what he is. The speaker observes the routines of the bodybuilder bench-pressing at a local gym, and attempts to explain the driving force that compels him to change his appearance. The speaker illustrates the physical use of inanimate objects as the tools used for the “desired” transformation: “and hoist nothing that need be lifted” (5,6). However, coupled with “but some burden they’ve chosen this time” (7), the speaker takes the illustration beyond the physical use of the tools of transformation and delves into the bodybuilder’s mental state. The speaker ends by portraying the bodybuilder as an arrogant, muscular being with fragile feelings of insecurity.
Social psychology is defined as the study of the relationships between people, their community and their environment (King, 2011). People tend to conform to society to feel accepted. However, their circumstances play a role in their capability to conform. For example, people are inclined to wear specific attire to the gym. The typical workout outfit is gym shorts, a t-shirt, and running sneakers, and typically, females put their hair up in a ponytail holder. Wearing anything other than these articles of clothing is abnormal and breaks the social norm.
When it comes to choice of where to workout it is a complete personal preference. Some people do not like the thought of people staring at them or watching them workout because they are not at the place they wish to be at yet. This is only one other thing that sets people in this discourse community apart from themselves. In some instances, this can become a disadvantage for the person pushing towards a specific goal. Certain goals can be pushed to the side or completely forgotten about because of the discomfort people feel placing themselves in a place like a gym for the first time.
Our table is dismissed. I head back to gym with a full stomach, something that shouldn’t happen. Third block is the lunch block and the eighth grade special block. This shouldn’t happen and as principle the first change that would be in immediate effect would amend the schedule to be specials during first, second, and fourth block. This will cause improvements in health with gym being at least an hour away from lunch for the eighth grade; dietary habits considering people eat as minimal food as possible to preserve their stomach, and enthusiasm because students will see any change to the current schedule as a robust change. In addition, I would change the current format of the schedule. Extend math and English to 3 hour classes, but on an
The gym is a place where a typical American college student goes to work out their bodies. Based on the fact that I personally could be considered a gym rat, a stereotypical name for someone who spends a lot of time in the work out area. This is partially by choice being on the swim team requires the strength training equipment that is available to our disposal in the gym. While I have been to the gym many times I haven’t really taken the time to take in the other people around me. Within this ethnographic exercise I will explore the college gym norms within Roger Williams University.
Entertainment has been an established part of the American culture almost since its founding. The types of entertainment that most Americans enjoy in today's world are going to the movies, going out to eat, and exercising. Different forms of exercise vary from running and playing sports to weight lifting. Those who enjoy weight lifting can choose to do so in the privacy of their home, in a community center like the YMCA, or in a health club. At a health club one can expect to find a wide variety of people; however, some of these people add to the downside of working out at a local health club because they can be annoying and obnoxious. Three types of these annoying, obnoxious people found at the weight room of a local health club are the show-off, the know-it-all, and the wanderer; these types can be identified by their physical appearance, their social behavior, and their attitude.
The gym is relatively square with widows covering half of the room. The other half of the room has a wall of mirrors with the last wall having a hallway to bathrooms as well as the fitness trainer’s office. On one of the window walls it has a row of cardio equipment (that has attached TV’s on them) facing the outside. In the back corner near the cardio equipment is a stretching and body exercise area (kettle bells, mats, exercise balls, medicine balls, and stepping stands). In the center are weight machines that range from leg, arm, and abdominal equipment. The wall with the mirrors contains the free weights and other bench press and weight machines. Overall...
Although fitness centers and gyms may appear to be a place to break a sweat and work out with the intention of not being seen without makeup and in grungy clothes, this may not be the case, in particular when it comes to college gyms. Contrary to the findings Tamara L. Black displayed in her dissertation for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology from the University of California in Los Angeles, in which she depicts the situation of the classical fitness center as exercise dominated, after observations made while participating in the Boston College Recreational Complex, fitness centers may be more heavily focused on expressing sexual and social relations than for health related issues. Although she does not elaborate on this view of the gym, she does recognize that “popular media, cultural stereotypes, and some empirical literature depict gyms as places to meet people, where sexualized interactions are likely to take place, where bodies are on display as objects of desire” (pg. 40). This may be the perfect definition of the situation that I found in my observations. Shari L. Dworkin and Faye Linda Wachs, in Body Panic: Gender, Health, and the Selling of Fitness, acknowledge “mainstream media construct men as active and women as inactive. In this view, women are often shown as ‘being visually perfect’ and passive, immobile, and unchanging’” (pg. 40). Perhaps we have media to blame for this hyper-sexualization of a situation that was initially intended for self-fulfillment and health related practices.
Personal space, body language, and overall interaction between the participants in the gym was something that I hadn't paid enough attention to in the past, from the distance I could see that their interests. The intimate couples that I noticed in the gym seemed again sought to have created a private space for them by erecting invisible barriers through their private body language directed only at each other, resulting in considerable more space between these couples and other groups of people in the gym. It was a clear and present body language of please do not bother us attitude left a sense of diffused power that would be involved power relationships that operate without covert commands and requests. The dynamics of the couple was something that was very obvious, in that I was able to note the dominant and the submissive person. The person who had a tendency to meet the needs and the one who had the ability to be demanding.
The gym where I train and workout, the Dubuque Martial Arts Group, is a place where I know who I am. It is a place I can go to escape my problems for a while and release some stress. It's not the actual physical building, but rather the events that have occurred there over the years. It's where I have formed some of my closest friendships. It is the place I have invested years of hard work for many of my accomplishments. To some it may seem odd that a place associated with sweat, blood and physical pain mean so much to someone. However, in my eyes it's almost like a second home.
Ancient Egypt placed education on a high pedestal. The more educated you were increased the chances of you being wealthy, as well as determined your status in the society. Although there were not many schools during that time, there were a few, and only a few attended. “These schools were only attended by boys. The ordinary people were educated at home.” (Alchin, “Ancient Egypt Education”). Many people in Ancient Egypt did not receive a formal education. Several of them had manual labor jobs, which were usually the same occupation their fathers had before them.