Gym? This Is a Gym?

About 4 months ago I posted about my gym, and how I loved it so.

And as with many love affairs, things have started to grow...annoying.

I'm happy. Mostly. There are getting to be far too many people there. They have only 4 ellipticals and apparently every mom out there loves the things. Which means I spend a lot of time waiting.

But I can deal with waiting.

Today, one of the "trainers" came up to me, while I was on the treadmill, and asked me if I would like to try the new Garmin takes-your-pulse-rate-tells-you-how-long-you've-been-running-lets-you-know-if-you're ovulating-makes-your-appointments-for-you watch. I told her, "No, thanks, I've got an iPhone. It's what I was listening to when you interrupted me. And, um, last I looked this was a gym, not a sports store."

When I went to the weight room, the president of the PTO from my kids' school was there. She used to be a world famous violinist, speaks fluent Italian, was an English teacher, got her PhD and was a lawyer. She can do everything. Except (deleted because my husband editor thought it was too harsh - but it was good, SO good)...change her own ink cartridges.

Anyway, I sat down at the lat pulldown machine and she came over and said, "As a former bodybuilding teacher, I just wanted to let you know that you're doing this wrong. You need to just almost touch your chest. And use more weight. You want to be able to do a pull up, right?"

Yeah, whatever.

Just after she interrupted me a "trainer" came to me and motioned for me to take off my headphones. As I was in the middle of the reps, I was reluctant, but did so because I'm a slave to authority. She said, "Can I help you?"

I stared at her and said, "No." I mean, did I ask for your help? Did I in anyway indicate that I wanted your help?

She then said, "I just wanted to let you know that you're doing this wrong. This exercise is designed for men who want to build their muscle in their back. You, as a woman, should be pulling the bar behind your head. You don't want to build muscle because you're a woman."

WTF? Um, isn't this a gym? Don't people come here to build muscle? If I didn't want to build muscle would I be in the weight room? And on top of that your advice, AS A TRAINER, is that people should strain their necks?

I've always been a bigger muscled girl. I work hard at it. I've probably been "building muscle" since my "trainer" was in diapers. But never, ever even on my absolute best day would anyone have mistaken me for a man because of my "big" muscles.

Yeah, the love affair may be coming to an end.