The new gym is a fortress. After scanning your card about 4 times, submitting to both the retinal and fingerprint scan, you feel like you are entering some glorious, top-secret government workout facility. The gym aficionados are now aptly rewarded for their perseverance with high ceilings, spacious rooms, skylights, TVs, the glorious smell of industrial strength cleansers, and enough machines to make even the most reluctant gym-goer thrilled to work out.
“It’s a lot easier to motivate yourself to come to the new gym,” says Katie Poor ’08, “at the old gym the color really killed me…It was an oppressive atmosphere.”
With a new decor, the new gym has also ushered in a whole new crop of students in to work off all that beer, or tofu.
If you’re lucky you might catch a glimpse of the elusive President Doug Bennet who, according to Midge, has been working out there since he learned that he’s cancer-free. More regular sightings include the amazingly fit Public Safety Officer William Heckstall (the one with the high-top), bored Freeman monitors, and the ever-present athlete. Not all of them are the most athletic people you’ll meet, but they make up for it with pure style.
Often sporting improbable gym clothes such as khakis and Birkenstocks, or garbed in only the finest workout clothing Marc Jacobs has to offer, these rebels blatantly flaunt their disdain of the new gym’s two-shoe policy.
“I love the girls that go to the gym in full make-up. Actually they make me really, really sad,” said Felicia Appenteng ’07, a member of the crew team.
If you log some quality gym time for a few days after vacations you’re guaranteed to see some sheepish students resolved, at least for a few days, to devote themselves to fitness. They seem more than slightly intimidated by the wide variety of machines and are likely to be seen clustered by familiar territory: treadmills, free weights and mats. They resolutely try their strength on some of those other, less familiar machines before deciding that it’s not actually their strong suit, and maybe they’ll just stick with some cardio or just stretching.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is the old stalwart: the athlete. Often lifting frighteningly large amounts of weights and making noises similar to that of a mating elephant, they’ve always been a fixture at the gym. They serve as reminders for the rest of us of what it means to be physically fit. Whether it be after watching some soccer player do a hundred sit-ups with medicine balls or seeing a member of the women’s basketball team lift what is considered the average girl’s body weight, it’s not a stretch to say that many people find them intimidating.
Maybe it’s just because there are those of us who had to suffer through the old gym for years, but these new gym goers should have to endure some sort of tryout period. A week or so of working out in the dark and damp with that lingering, oppressive smell following them everywhere, or a fire drill going off in the middle of their workout causing them to fall off whatever device they happen to be on at that time, that would be sufficient for me.
“It smelled like a barn,” said Maria Kim ’08.
For long-time gym-goers, the renovation of the gym was welcome, but not essential to keep them working out.
“The old gym was dingy, but served its purpose,” said Carl Otfinoski, husband of a Wesleyan employee.
Yes, the burgeoning population of the new gym has forced students into yet another awkward form of social interaction. How uncomfortable is it to see all those people you know while you’re red-faced and sweating through your shirt? Even worse is responding to some kind-hearted member of your English class, or that guy you met at a party that time, who decides the best time to talk to you is obviously while you are gasping for breath on the treadmill. But hey, no worries: there’s always someone there, doing something more ridiculous than you.
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