Confessions of a gym nazi

I’d like to start off by saying that I don’t happen to think I’m a “gym nazi” per se.

Let’s begin with a short definition of a gym nazi, brought to you by urbandictionary.com:

Gym Nazi – “Some one or some ones, in your gym who always try to get others to do stuff that they think is so important but it’s really fricken petty.”

Now, I certainly do not spend my time in the gym offering up ‘helpful’ tips to folks. No, not me…I only think about offering folks helpful tips, you know, I’m respectful that way.

Anyway, my girlfriend declared me a GN after I told her about the lady who spent like 10 minutes after her run on the treadmill reading and taking pictures of items in a magazine! She stood there doing this long enough that I, and the lady on the treadmill on the other side of her, began to give her curious glances.

Then she got off the treadmill, returned the magazine to the rack, proceeded to come back and get dressed on it while watching the news! I mean we’re in a gym, not at home where we can afford to get distracted by any number of things and no one would be the wiser, right? Of course I have all types of stories like these which, now that I think about it, might just make me a little bit of a gym nazi. Maybe. Hmmmmm…

I should state that running puts me in a zen state (zen state – “A total state of focus that incorporates a total togetherness of body and mind. Zen is a way of being”) more often than not. I have my headphones on and my mind wanders and creates all these great little mini movies that play out in my head. Or I talk to God. Of course there are times where I’m conscious of every footstep and counting down the miles until I can just…stop.

But for some reason when I’m in the gym I’m very aware of what’s going on around me and sometimes that awareness invades my zen state. It pushes thru and demands to be noticed and processed. Take for instance, the guy on the treadmill who runs at a leisurely pace for about 30 seconds and then stops by putting his feet on either side of the belt. He did this so many times that I began to pay attention to how long he was going to run before he stopped (would he make it to 45 seconds or a full minute?) which of course led to the question of why not just alternate between jogging and walking? Okay, I’m gonna just stop here because I’m sensing a trend.

What sort of workout quirks do you have? I’d love to know.