When I signed up at my super-cheapies gym last month, I really didn’t pay much attention to the other inhabitants of Planet Fitness. When I am gym shopping, I care primarily about:

1) Price
2) Equipment condition and quantity
3) Distance from home or office
4) Price

Things like the availability of a smoothie bar, personal trainers, and the clientele are really tertiary concerns. (Secondary concerns are working showers, restrooms, and lockers.)

When it comes to my primary criteria for gym bliss, Planet Fitness gets thumbs up all around, but I have to admit that the client base is very different from the Dr. Phillips Gold’s Gym I used to frequent.

The most noticeable difference is that there are absolutely NO hardcore bodybuilder types at PF, male or female. Ridiculous as it may seem, I’m probably in the top five among female members in terms of visible musculature and lean body mass, and I am by no means She-Hulk at the moment.

The other major difference is the lack of spandex-clad cardio class bunnies. PF doesn’t offer group classes of any kind, so the herds of skinny cardio class junkies you normally see at gym franchises simply aren’t present. This leaves just the cardio bunnies who are content to stick with treadmills, bikes, and ellipticals ad infinitum. At any given time, there are only 2-3 of these in the gym, even during weekday evening peak hours.

As for the rest of the females…there are usually one or two like me who hit both the cardio deck and the weight area and look like they have some clue as to what they are doing with both diet and exercise. The non-bunny remainder (a good 90% of the females in the gym) are overweight to obese and seem to have no set plan. They putz around on the recumbent bikes or elliptical machines or tag along behind a red-shirted trainer for their free resistance training session. Their ages range from teens to late 50s, but what they all have in common is that none of them are getting any results, and no one at the gym seems to be interested in helping them without their hands stuck out for some hefty fees.

The men are divided up into the following ratios: 10% experienced lifters who clearly aren’t watching their diets and therefore sport big bellies and little muscle definition, 5% lean but not bulky cardio/weights types who do watch their nutrition, 35% high school jocks who never touch the cardio deck or squat rack (can we say chicken legs?), 10% skinny little guys who aren’t following any program, and 40% overweight and obese men who mostly sit at the Nautilus machines and do a few desultory reps or walk on the treadmills.

I wonder how many of the “no visible results” members would turn things around if they had an opportunity to attend a class on proper nutrition and exercise?

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3/10 Report
(*Diet and workout details omitted by agreement with trainer)
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Nutrition:

Meals - On plan
Water - 16 cups
Supplements - On plan

Regular (Non-Plan) Daily Supplements - multivitamin with iron, calcium 600 + D

30 days down, 54 more to go!

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Workout:
Weights - Rest; Cardio - Elliptical - Done

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The Awful Truth:
1. Nothing!

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Brownie Points:
1. Got to bed on time. It was a minor miracle.
2. Went grocery shopping and bought a ton of produce.

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Short-term Goals:
1. Work on paper doll sketches.
2. Set up archived version of The Training Journal forum at PDB from Hershey Girl’s backup.
3. Upgrade Wordpress to 2.0.
4. Transplant two tomato vines and plant Swiss Chard.
5. Finish taxes.