Gym etiquette annoyance
Maybe I have this wrong end on?
Okay, in the area of the gym I do most of my work out in, there is a relatively narrow space, which also constitutes the most direct route to the corridor, lockers, changing rooms and exit, between various cardio machines and the free weight racks, and depending on what a person may be doing with the free weights (or using the rail to do), there may not be a great deal of room for someone else to pass.
However, I depose that if you are aiming for the corridor and someone in that space is doing dumbell swing squats, you should either:
Wait at a discreet distance until they've finished that set of reps
or
You know, you could detour slightly round the other side of the cardio machines to get to your destination.
What does not strike me as good practice or good manners is to crowd up to the person doing swing squats in such a way that they are more or less obliged to pause in case they bash you with the dumbell.
Which may only be a 10kg dumbell, but with the momentum going could do a certain amount of damage.
I cannot help but feel that what was actually going on there was that women of a certain age (who have been using this gym for over 2 decades and work out regularly) do not have the same right to the space as the bloke who wants to get past.
Or am I just missing some subtle nuance here?
(Have been made grumpy about men and entitlement to space in other contexts of recent days, in particular a sanguine lack of consideration-and-thought-for-others when positioning themselves in crowded Tube carriages, so I may be over-interpreting. Or not.)
This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/1560696.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
comments.