Gym Stats

Another fun by-product of gym note taking is I can now generate statistics! I know, I know, try to contain the excitement.

Since the 21st of August, 2006, I have numbered my workouts. I split the lift into 4 days you could call push, front legs, pull, back legs. So workouts are numbers as 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, 2a, etc.

On the 27th of September 2009 I completed lift 145D. I don't record cardio, but I hit it at least once a week. Thus I can figure out the number of lifts based on notes and add 1 lift per week to cover cardio. Since I know the dates, I can figure out what percentage of days I worked out over a given year.

21 August 2006 to 30 March 2007: 68%

2 April 2007 to 1 October 2007: 70%

5 October 2007 to 11 October 2008: 65%

16 October 2008 to 27 September 2009: 62%

Conclusion: I don't like this trend!

Activity not recorded includes lawn mowing and 3 mile dog walks. Since there's plenty of walkers with potbellies and lots of dudes that have to wear a shirt while mowing the lawn as a courtesy to their neighbors, I don't count those as significant activity moving me towards my fitness goals. However, recent activities such as fatherhood and grad school have tempted me to lower the bar on what I call a workout. It's only a matter of time before workout 240c is recorded as, "walked to the far stall for the morning constitutional."

Gym Notes Roundup

Sometimes the gym serves me as a random thought generator. Since I carry a notebook with me, I sometimes write down said random thoughts. I actually write one phrase a day, and looking back on almost 3 years of gym notebooks reminds me that when lifting, I usually write gibberish.

However here's some that I feel like archiving here. These aren't the daily phrases, but the random thoughts I write in the back of the book. The extra fun for me is figuring out where I was in life when I wrote them

• Don't focus on the time you don't have, focus on the time you do have.
• It must be nice to get a new hair cut. I'm at the point in life where my next new hair cut is "bald".
• Good dog's name: Hurley
• The moment you realize that now matter what you do someone will be unhappy is a liberating one.
• Given the condition of Ballys, the fact that I don't go there and still pay dues should be deductible as charity.
• You don't have it figured out, and don't think you do, because it only hurts more when you realize you don't.
• Run with actual pumpkins!
• Sonic Boom!
• Gyms should have a book of the month club. First month: New Rules of Lifting
• You know you've hit the big time when you have 2 stair wells leading between the same 2 floors
• We've been gifted so many candy dishes that even Willy Wonka would find it excessive.
• There's people that see it in me, and people that don't. I don't wait to be led/managed/mentored by people that don't.
• Because I choose to
• People shouldn't complain that married people get special treatment for the same reason I shouldn't complain handicapped people get special parking.
• Maybe the point of sports talk is that it's so benign. Politics and religion get people fired up, but maybe sports don't matter just enough.
• A dog? I'm not sure if I'm ready to have something in the house she loves more than me
• Writing a letter feels so 1930s...like after I should go to war or something.

Yeah, good thing I wrote down those gems, eh?

Oh the places you lift

With the closure of Cherry Hill's Philadelphia Sports Club I joined Super Fitness. Upon joining a new gym (again) I decided to take a trip down the memory lane of lifting.

Gym	Start	End	The Good	The Bad
500 Bell Road	1993	1994	Cheap free bench in my bedroom plus a Men's Health book and I was off and running.	Often sacrificed lifting in the name of one more round of Street Fighter 2.
7 Brambling Late	1994	1996	Convenient location of weight bench in my bedroom. Learning to lift in a 7x10 room prepared me for the possibility of having to exercise in jail.	How good of a workout do you get in a 7x10 room?
17 Covington Lane	1996	1998	Monsterous basement provided enough room for a treadmill, bench, and OCD arrangement of plates on the floor.	Jumping rope on concrete for several months led to knees of a 70 year old man when I was 17.
Werblin @ Rutgers	1998	2002	Spend enough time isolated with math, science, and introverted people and you gain appreciation for what would already be an amazing gym. State of the art facilities, and best-in-class pool provided 4 years of engineering stress relief. Also home to the largest Asian dudes I've ever seen.	First experience of old guys in the locker room that liked to brush their teeth naked. Learned valuable skill to walk in a locker room while looking at the ceiling and not bumping my knees on anything.
Winter break: YMCA	Winter 1999		Cheap.	Not too inspired by co-members. Show up with teeth and without diabetes and you're already in the top healthy 1%
Winter break: Rohrer	Winter 2000		And on the 7th day, God (with funding from the Sonk family) created the Rohrer	They stopped offering student discounts. My desire to work out is only exceeded by my desire to not spend more than $100 a month to do so.
Ocean City Library	Summer 2000		Cheap. Highlights include the jazz boxer, torn biceps, music station that took it to the Wiggity-wild wild west,and "The Bouncer"	What could be bad about a gym in the Library? Oh, right, it's in the library.
Ocean City Islander	Summer 2000		First experience with a gym that had chalk for lifting.	Threw out my back attempting a clean-n-press. "My back, the chalk does nothing!"
Ballys - Echelon	2002	2004	Three years of payments ends up with dirt-cheap renewals. Got to lift with Uncle Tony!	Pool contents: 90% water, 9% chlorine, 1% band-aids
Ballys - MT. Laurel	2004	Present	Closer to work. Less floating band-aids than other Ballys.	No pool.
Philly Sports Club	2006	2009	Clean. Fresh towels from the desk. Never crowded. New equipment. Courteous, friendly, responsive staff, passed it on the way home from work. First gym Jackie agreed to join because the other clientèle did not give her the heebie-jeebies.	Closed down to build a CVS. A F*&%ING CVS!
Super Fitness	2009	ASAP	Cheap, around the corner, hours from 5am-11pm are conducive to the wonky schedule of new-fatherhood.	Going from PSC to SF is liking giving up your Porsche for a Jetta. That's right, I'm still bitter about my Jetta.