Mine, All Mine!

It's the holiday season, and in New York that seems to mean that it's also time to abandom the gym. At least that's the case at the particular midtown gym I've been training at the last few days, much to my delight.

On three separate occasions this past week there were good-sized chunks of time during which I was the only person on the gym floor, and I couldn't have been happier. Imagine: a gym to yourself! I savored every minute, purposely choosing exercises that had me spanning all corners of the gym floor. It was... sublime.

Now, before I start to come across as a complete anti-social nutjob (I'm only a partial one!), I will say that I also enjoy training around others. But it's who those others are that counts. Unfortunately, since moving back to Manhattan from Los Angeles three years ago I've not found a gym that has an even remotely inspiring atmosphere. Here, gyms are more about amenities—towel service, lotion dispensers in the bathrooms, hand sanitizing stations aplenty—and less about working out.

I belong to two gym chains here, both gratis, thanks to my job title and some generous souls, but between the dozen or so gyms I've trained at in the two chains there's just one gym that I would consider joining if I had to pay, and it's only because of the equipment. The clientele at each seems mostly disinterested in the task at hand, preferring to chat, text, and watch TV over lift weights.

Compare this to Gold's Venice, where I was a member for seven years. While there's certainly a lot of socializing going on, most everyone is there to work. There's lots of grunting and crashing of weights and sweat, and on the whole I find it energizing. I feed off the vibe of the place, and I'd like to think I help contribute to it when I'm training there myself (which I do whenever I'm back in L.A.).

But here in NYC, I find myself to be an outlier in the gym. I train hard and fast, with my earbuds firmly planted and my iPod Shuffle playing my favorite gym tunes, and with a focused intensity that I can only imagine is taken for either anger or outright insanity by my fellow trainees. I have the valume turned up to a point where I'm sure I'm doing damage to my hearing in the long-term, but it's to drown out the incessant conversing and rep counting by disimpassioned trainers to their equally unmotivated clients.

All of which is to say that I feel especially blessed this holiday season, because I'm not only celebrating family and friends, and the spirit of giving and remembrance that we all do, but also empty gyms!

Of course I realize that I'd better make the most of this elbow room while I can, because the sobering truth is that the ditch-the-gym season is soon to be followed by the new year's resolution season. Time to charge up the iPod...