Spinning Out of Control

I am what some people would call a gym rat. That is a term used to refer to people who go to the gym with alarming regularity. I’m not sure if the use of “rat” is mean to be derogatory, as if frequent exercising at a fitness facility were somehow a bad thing. I go all the time for a number of reasons. For one, I don’t like to be fat. Working out regularly doesn’t give me a perfect body, but it does keep me out of the Lane Bryant. For another, regular exercise makes me less crazy. That’s right, without exercise, I would be even nuttier. I figure, for every day I spend at the gym, that’s one more day my family is still alive. I’m not saying I would kill them if I stopped working out, but do we really want to take that risk?

I also work out because it makes me feel better physically. You know all those aches and pains you get from just plain getting older? Well, I hardly notice them anymore because my muscles and bones are so often flexed and stretched and bent and contracted and taxed. Those aging aches and pains are replaced with sore muscles and strained ligaments. They are not the pains of an old couch potato. They are the mark of an athlete. Which sounds cooler to you, a sports-related injury or osteoarthritis?

The main reason I go to the gym almost every day, however, is because I like it. It’s like its own separate little community. The regulars all know each other on a first name only basis. We know who likes to do what, and sometimes even on what day. I know if I go to combat on Friday that I will see the shockingly thin old woman with her assortment of bandages, bruises, and skin tears, caused by a night, or a lifetime, of chemical dependence. Spin class on Wednesday means the topless woman, a Jane Fonda throwback who has yet to notice that she is the only one wearing her white sports bra with cups as a top, while the rest of us women are actually wearing, um, tops. Pilates is the usual group of women, with one or two regular men to balance out all that estrogen, and their mere presence makes us all feel more flexible in comparison. We become part of each other’s routine, and with routine comes comfort.

This is especially true for group fitness classes. I love group fitness, from yoga and Pilates on the soothing end of the fitness continuum, to combat and spin class, on the heavy sweating end. I especially like knowing my teachers, so I can skip the classes I don’t like and make an extra effort to attend the ones I do. But when someone subs for a regular teacher, well, I get more than a little discouraged at the change in my routine.

Take last week, for example. My regular spin instructor, CC, was out of town, or so I thought. It turns out she actually had one of those nasty little stomach bugs, which I realize is a perfectly acceptable reason to not teach a spin class. Spin, if you do it right, will usually make you feel like puking, and that’s when you aren’t sick. So CC wasn’t there that morning, and in her place was the groan-inducing instructor I will refer to as Trixie.

Trixie teaches a number of other fitness classes, but I don’t take them, so I can’t speak for her expertise in those areas. But spin is clearly not Trixie’s forte. Now, a quick caveat: I do not teach spin class, or any other classes, for that matter. I also know how intimidating a crowd of regulars can be, and no doubt, we treated Trixie like a third grade substitute teacher. And I also understand that every has his or her own style of teaching and way of doing things…blah blah blah. It’s just that Trixie’s way of doing things suck. Here are some reasons why:

• She doesn’t know how to work the stereo system. Not like she doesn’t know how to balance the bass. I mean she doesn’t know the basics, like how to adjust volume. Her microphone was so loud it screeched with feedback every time she told us to increase the spin bike’s tension. She took her mike off at one point since she couldn’t figure it out, and instead yelled at us, which meant that by the middle of class, everyone was doing their own thing because we couldn’t hear her over the loud music that she was unable to regulate.

• She doesn’t know how to use her own iPod. She didn’t have a cord long enough to hook her iPod up to the stereo receiver from the instructor’s bike in front of the room. She had to leave her iPod on a bike in the corner near the stereo, so if she wanted to change a song from her playlist, she had to get off her spin bike and scuttle over to the iPod, then hop back on her bike and resume teaching. Also, back to the issue of her inability to control volume, she didn’t understand that songs are recorded at different volume levels. Older songs tend to be recorded at lower levels than new songs, so each time a different song began, the volume would need to be changed, which, as I said before, was beyond her capacity. Which meant that again, she would have to hop off her bike and fiddle with the volume. On, off, on, off. Do you have any idea how distracting that is, especially when the person who is doing it is yelling at you the whole time?

• She doesn’t know how to use her bike. A spin bike is not so complicated that you need an astrophysics degree to operate one, but it does have some distinct features. The seat can be set at different heights, as can the handlebars. The seat can also be adjusted to slide closer to the handlebars or farther back, depending on your preference. The pedals can be used on one side with clip-in bike shoes or with regular sneakers in the shoe cages on the other side. And then there is the tension knob, which can make your ride sticky like you are going uphill or loose like a flat road. It also works as an emergency brake if you press down on it. That’s about all there is to the bike. But Trixie doesn’t know all these little elements. So every time she had to get off the bike to adjust the music, she would stick one leg out and slow the pedals down with the other foot, instead of just stopping the pedals by using the tension knob. Let’s see, three minute songs, an hour class, that means, oh, about 20 times or so, she had to stop and get off by sticking her leg out like a dog at a fire hydrant. How exactly would she have explained how to use the bike to person who has never tried spin when she doesn’t understand how to use it herself?

I didn’t even get into the monotony of her routine or her horrible choice in music. I didn’t go all squirrel monkey on her when I walked in the spin room and heard country music blaring. I didn’t pitch a fit when I heard the third song from the “Dazed and Confused” soundtrack. I didn't rebel when we had to stand and sprint yet again. No, my complaints are objective in nature. She shouldn’t teach until someone teaches her. And believe me, I would be happy to school her. Or impale her head on a stick outside the spin room as a warning to other subs. I’m fine either way.