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The HPER redefines ‘pumping iron.’
By TJ Stallbaumer
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It was warmer than average for the month of May, which meant the gym was colder. The blast of cool air that greeted patrons upon entering was supposed to be refreshing, but seemed misplaced—as though someone had failed to realize that one was only that hot upon leaving the gym and not upon arriving there in the first place.
The people who staff the gym are expected to extend hospitality, while at the same time remaining aloof enough to wipe people’s forgotten butt sweat from the seats of machines lost to the intensity of a hard workout.
A young man walks in and approaches the desk. He looks timid. He has headphones in, but he has begun to fumble with the left one noncommittally, as though he isn’t certain whether he’ll be required to exchange formalities with the student staffing the desk. She’s pretty.
She looks up at him: “How’s it going?” she asks. He is taken aback, and, as he attempts to remove the left earbud, his hands, shaking from the blast of frigid air that greeted him become his enemy. He drops the earbud, which pulls its partner out of his right ear and sends the pair cascading to the ground.
“Good, thanks,” he stammers, as he bends over to retrieve the tiny safety net lying on the ground in front of him.
“Would you like a towel?” asks the girl at the desk. This question was unexpected. He stands up too fast, like a soldier asked to come to attention early in the morning. He accepts the towel.
It’s the kind of towel used at restaurants across the world, responsible for cleaning bars, and now, pools of sweat that accumulate in the least ideal places. The towel is a rough white rectangle, so ruined from countless washes that any softness it may once have had is replaced by the kind of feeling that comes to a pair of fleece pants, after running them through the dryer just one too many times.
There’s a small blue line down the middle of the towel, as if to make it clear that this piece of fabric came into this world with one purpose—to wipe up things that are gross. No one who has ever worked in restaurants, or gymnasiums or places where such towels are necessary, has seen one that lacks a stripe. It’s indicative of the towel’s place in the world—the first real representation of the fitness this young man is trying to achieve.
His shorts, which fall just above his knees, are the kind once invented to straddle the line between gym wear and real life practicality—they were eventually abandoned, but not before he had time to buy a pair at Old Navy.
His shirt matches. The outfit is the same color, or at least it was once. He must like the shorts, as they have taken on a tone closer to grey than blue. The shirt is a dark navy and looks new. They were bought at the same time, but only one half of the outfit has seen the light of day, until now.
The shirt has no sleeves, but doesn’t qualify as a tank top. The garment hangs over his small frame, like a box bought at Home Depot by someone who was so overzealous about moving that he only bought size large, his flawed logic dictating that more space was always better, until the moving truck arrived outside their garage, smaller than promised.
He surveys the university’s Health, Physical Education and Recreation Building. He begins a slow walk toward the wing of the gym closest to him. It’s a strange mixture of machines, and at 8 p.m. on a Wednesday, those machines are dominated by men with well-defined muscles and the kind of shirts that do deserve to be called tank tops.
As he walks towards the only open machine available, his apprehension hangs in the air.
He sits down on a machine labeled “seated chest fly” and begins to read the instructions with such ferocity that his eyes can be visibly seen darting from left to right, consuming every word with the kind of fervor reserved for someone about to do something potentially embarrassing, who suddenly encounters written instructions.
In an unforeseen twist, he removes a pair of lifting gloves from his pocket, but keeps them relatively well-hidden, by placing them in his lap. You can see his Millennial mind turning—made constantly self conscious by social media, he has no doubt noticed that no one else is wearing lifting gloves. They’re a sham. He puts them back in his pocket, thankful that his gym shorts have so many of those.
A loud thud is issued from the opposite side of the gym. Someone had just dropped something very heavy onto the rubber floor, and it was time to switch subjects. There was a bro on the loose.
His skin looked paper thin, like the soy wrappers on those sushi rolls that are supposed to be good for you. His veins were bulging from beneath it, as if they yearned for the sort of escape that would be catastrophic to their wearer’s well being. His headphones were immense; the bright red “B” emanating from the side gave onlookers little doubt as to his status in the world.
He was wearing Nike socks pulled perfectly to his mid-calf. His shorts were black, without pockets, and his tank top was tight. His phone was stored inside one of those arm sleeves, affixed to his immense bicep. I wondered if iPhone sleeves were sized accordingly: Normal person, above average fitness, so buff that you can’t buy a shirt with sleeves.
He may as well not have been wearing a shirt at all—his nipples stood at attention the entire time he lifted, and I found myself unable to look anywhere else. Each time I tried to sneak a glance at my subject matter, my view fell on his left pectoral, where one of the world’s puffiest buff nipples had found its home.
The rows and rows of average weights do not interest him. He strolls casually past the 50-pound free-weights.
As the 60-pound weight is lifted from its position, he lets out a large grunt, thus solidifying his small patch of space as that which would be unwise to infringe upon, unless you too, have no neck and arms the size of man-eating pythons. The first grunt is merely a show, intended to signal to others that this space, along with this weight, are both accounted for.
He removes his cell phone from his pocket. The lack of noise being issued from the massive red headphones around his ears suggests his current song has ended, and lifting cannot resume until new hype music has begun.
43 seconds pass.
The phone is placed back inside the sleeve and then the head begins to bob, slowly at first, but then with more fervor, as the alpha male prepares to lift. He slowly wraps one hand around the dumbbell, taking care that each finger finds its home on the worn metal.
The lift begins, and he is transported to a place far away. In his mind, he must be alone, though in reality, he is far from it. Surrounded by people, he grunts louder with each curl. Beads of frothy saliva spew forth from his agape mouth, landing gracefully on the mirror a few feet in front of him.
With the final curl, he releases a grunt bordering on a yell and then throws the immense weight to the ground with the kind of certainty obtained after years of picking up heavy things, and then setting them back down with reckless abandon.
He takes stock of his surroundings. There are at least six people looking at him. He turns back to the mirror. He flexes. His nipples alone could kill a man, to say nothing else of his physique.
The HPER contains a sort of natural sexual energy, as the place on a college campus where a large group of men and women are able to gather simultaneously, some of them scantily clad, and make appeals to the others’ most basic Darwinian nature. Everyone knows sexual reproduction is about fitness, so what better place to look for a mate than one with a built-in metric to decide how fit they are?
The building itself makes looking easy. With wall-to-wall mirrors, men and women steal glances at one another from every angle. There’s a gentleman seated on the bicep machine, which faces directly into a mirror. Where the walls meet, maybe 2 feet away from him, two mirrors arrive at a corner. His eyes are distracted—their trajectory isn’t challenging to assess.
He’s using the mirror in front of him as a buffer. His eyes continue to dart to the right, where he can catch reflections from the mirror diagonal to the one he’s seated in front of. From mirror No. 2, and at the right angle, he seems to have realized that he can catch a perfect view of a butt if he uses a third and final mirror, positioned on the adjacent wall. He’s probably majoring in geometry.
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If only I had a laser, I could shine it into mirror number one, and end with a tiny point of light on one of the smaller pairs of spandex shorts on display this evening.
She’s in the middle of lifting something very heavy. Maybe that’s why he’s so interested.
Once you’ve witnessed another person in the throes of battle with heavy weight, you have seen a window into their soul.
There exists that rare moment, somewhere near the end of a person’s lift, when they reach a striking realization that the weight they are lifting may in fact be too heavy for them. At that moment, most people throw caution to the wind, and in a last-ditch effort to get pumped, they place every amount of energy within them into lifting that weight.
People’s faces contort, as they exhale and then inhale in sharp, forced breaths. Lips curl upward uncontrollably, eyes open to levels previously thought to be impossible and people omit grunting noises that cover an incredibly broad spectrum.
The fact of the matter is this: Never have you been closer to witnessing total strangers mid-orgasm than when you glance their way as they reach the paramount point of physical exertion.
Days passed before I returned to the HPER. After my realization about orgasms, I couldn’t help but to feel as though I was entering the most private public room in existence.
Fridays are sparse. People have alcohol to consume, and fitness can fall to the wayside. I was surprised to see a new combination of people. It was a group of five guys, all wearing shirts demarking different formals they had once attended.
“Dude, that pre-workout you gave me makes me feel like I did meth or something!” said guy No. 1. The excitement in his voice was palpable—the way his pitch rose as the word “meth” left his lips symbolized that he had probably drank way too much pre-workout. Had he been holding a piece of paper, it would have revealed his shaking hands.
Five people is an odd number.
There’s no way that everyone can be helpful, and the way the boys amass around a single machine makes it seem like a watering hole on the African savannah. They all stare at it, until one of them finally sits down. Two on each side, the other two watching Sports Center, they all work out ‘together.’ Their rotation is tiring. Each person does three sets, containing 12 repetitions. At the next machine, I start a timer on my phone when boy No. 1 sits down. 24 minutes and 16 seconds later, the group of five has finished a single workout, on a single machine.
But guys are less guilty of grouping than their female counterparts. Research has shown me that if anyone is to come to the gym in groups of odd numbers, it’s women. Even when the number itself is even, the groups tend to stay odd.
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I studied two separate groups this particular Friday. The first was a group of three. They were intent on learning, or so it seemed. I gathered that this was an early attempt, after one of them tried to do a back workout on a leg machine.
Though I could see where her confusion stemmed from, the way she blatantly ignored the highlighted instructions astounded me. She placed her chest where the butt belonged and, bending her knees at a 90-degree angle, the front of her shins extended to the top of the pad that was supposed to be supporting her back, her toes clipped perfectly over the top of the backrest, where you may have seen her head had she known how to use the machine.
Her shoulders extended past the butt pad, onto the padded foam bar that was supposed to be supporting her outstretched legs. She wrapped both of her arms under the foam bar, cradling it in the same way one might hold a newborn baby—she pulled the lifeless foam close to her, as though she cared for it. Her head extended into space, her eyes affixed on the same taupe carpet that had borne witness to so many failed attempts.
There’s a theory in psychology called the bystander effect. Essentially, it notes that if enough people witness something bad happening as one, they all assume that the other will say something and a result, no one says anything at all.
Other gym-goers were distraught. They looked over quickly, the only way people look at anything at a gym. Then they looked at the ground. Eye contact would almost certainly have allowed an opportunity to gently correct the problem, which would have been a problem within itself. No one speaks to anyone here, even in dire circumstances.
At this point, she was positioned to begin her back workout. She leaned forward with all her might, the bar barely budging. Her face was red. From exertion, yes, but from the embarrassment that comes with realizing you can’t do something—or perhaps that you just don’t know how. She looked at her friends. Their defeat was collective, and a decision to switch machines was made. The bystander effect was proven, and I felt a small tinge of guilt for bearing witness to something I either didn’t want to fix, or didn’t feel I could. After all, my allegiance lies with the story.
Group No. 2 was a different breed. Blonde and bouncing, these two co-eds were sure of themselves. They were wearing leggings as pants. One pair depicted the galaxy, awash in pink and purple. The other pair was plain—black, but with more purpose, like the logical counterpart to the universe being depicted on her left. One pair of leggings was a star, the other its ancient cousin, devouring space itself with reckless abandon.
They didn’t work out. Not really. They mostly blabbed, but their ability to multi-task was extraordinary. The elliptical machines on which they walked never quit turning, but neither did the rest of their lives. As they walked, so too did they talk. And text. And Tweet. And watch TV. The way they managed to do everything at the same time as they did nothing is a testament to the power of a generation raised on getting trophies just for showing up to practice.
On the wall, one of the HPER’s only decorations caught my eye. It’s a piece of floating glass, spotlighted so that the words etched on it are cast in a shadow on the wall behind it.
“Physical fitness is the basis for all other forms of excellence,” it reads. It’s attributed to John F. Kennedy.
It’s interesting, in light of what I’ve seen here, that this particular decoration was chosen. For every person within whom confidence lives, there is an equal and opposite person, maybe only feet away, staring at so much metal and so many hard bodies that the thought of ever surmounting their own personal mountain must seem impossible.
My own time at the gym began as a freshman. I was deathly afraid of the freshman 15—those pounds people tend to pick up when they move away from home and find freedom in fast food and beer. I was young and skinny, and determined to remain so.
And now, I’m wondering what it would be like to look back on my freshman self. What kind of fear was I trying to work out? It wasn’t just the possibility of 15 new pounds. It was the fear of being away from family and home, in a new place that according to the internet, would inevitably make me fat. And so I went to the gym often.
Over the years, my ambition waned. I went less, and some weeks I went more. Sometimes I would wake up so sore that I could hardly dress myself, which would make me feel accomplished, so I would avoid the gym for days after, as I waited to return to normal. Once my muscles quit hurting, I would promise myself that this was the time I made it a part of my routine, something I called normal. One day, I forgot to go back.
That’s why all these people are here. From the buffest, to the most confused, there must exist a belief within every person that the past president was right—physical fitness is the rock upon which one must build a church.
Had she ever looked up, the girl using the leg machine for her back may have seen Kennedy’s words.
But she never did look up, because she was more intent on living those words than on reading them off of a wall. People identify with fitness. They know they need it. And so they do what they think they should. They go to a gym.
But gyms are much more than places for exercise. They incubate vanity. They contain an untold number of dreams. Within this immense stone rectangle, the ghosts of Spring Break bodies never obtained will linger for the rest of time.
People come here to mold themselves, but it’s far beyond the physical. It’s a representation of a deep-seeded need to be better, manifested in metal bars and glorified hamster wheels.
It’s a place as old as stories, where the means is unimportant and the end is the only thing thought of. But I learned more from the means, this time around. I witnessed shame, confusion and success. I saw secrecy through shared glances, and intimacy in openness. I saw the whole universe on an elliptical, and realized that we all circle back around, in one way or another.
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