The Secret Gym

I'm currently living in Kenmore, WA. It's a nice little area. However, the whole of King and surrounding counties suffer from a common American ailment: urban sprawl. You need a car to get around because everything is spread far and thin, be prepared for traffic. If you don't own a car, be prepared to spend most of your life on buses.

I'm close to two Bally's gyms. "Close" in a galactic sense. One is in Bellevue, which at 2 AM is a 20 minute drive, the rest of the day it's 45 minutes to an hour. One is in Lynnwood, about 15 minutes away off peak, about 25 minutes away in heavy traffic. Lynnwood is the better choice, no? Not according to Bally's website. Bally's told me there was no swimming pool, and when I first started looking for a gym, I wanted a pool. So, I struggled with the traffic to Bellevue.

About two weeks ago, I decided to go to Lynnwood because I wanted to see the place and I was planning to just do just cardio and lifting. The gym is hidden behind a couple of older strip malls in an area that is best described as ... distressed. The burned out apartment building across the street sets the tone. However, when I arrived I found a welcome treat - a HUGE parking lot with few cars. Nice!

The gym itself is less polished than Bellevue. For those of you that don't know, Bellevue is a kinda ritzy suburb of Seattle. It sits between Seattle and Redmond, home of Microsoft. There is some money floating around there, so, the gym had better be nice. The Lynnwood location was apparently not burdened by this fact. The place could use some cosmetic work, but it was serviceable. The staff were friendly, if not not model quality as they were in Bellevue. The machines were older but well maintained. Over all, the place felt lived in and less scary.

And, there were some hidden surprises. One of my complaints about Bally's is the lockers. I'm sure the pressboard things looked good in the early 90s when they were installed, but the years of being in close proximity to all that moisture and years of abuse have made them less "lockers" and more "things you can close and hope no one can just pull open if they want your stuff." Lynnwood has old, blue, metal lockers. Sure, there is some rust and damage, but it's way better than melting pressboard.

As I looked around the locker room my first time, I saw a sign that said "Anyone entering the pool must take a shower first." Why would they have that sign? The web site said they didn't have a pool. I walked through the door to discover not just a pool, but a pool that appeared as large if not larger than the one in Bellevue - and nearly empty. The hot tub didn't have a timer on the Jacuzzi feature, it just runs and runs and it's about twice the size of Bellevue's and, it too, was nearly empty. Nice!

Now, granted, there aren't as many hot chicks at this place as there are in Bellevue, the video screens are smaller and not flat and in general the whole place is less posh, but for getting my workout on - it's doing the trick. I went Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday. I plan to go today. I'm proud of myself.

I'm trying to do about a half hour or more on the treadmill, then lift a bunch of heavy things. Sometimes, when I have time, I treat myself to a soak in the hot tub. You're noticing a lack of the word "pool" in that sentence, aren't you? Yeah, all the concern about pools and I am barely using them. That may change. The treadmill is fine, but I have days, like yesterday, where I am walking fine and then something starts to hurt, so I stop. The treadmill is going to do damage. The pool isn't deep enough for me to do any walking with resistance, but I could swim as cardio. I have other cardio options as well. Lynnwood has this device called a Windjammer (see picture) - it simulates the action of cranking sails on a racing sailboat. In other words, it uses the arms to do cardio. I'm up to seven minutes with no resistance, and, yeah, I can feel it. Eventually I'll add resistance, maybe after I hit 10 minutes. I'm going to get guns yet!

Speaking of which, I am so enjoying my weight training. I never liked it before, I mean, it was okay, but for whatever reason I'm really liking it now. Maybe I'm just doing it right or something. I don't have much structure, I just go from machine to machine, device to device. I'm getting a lot of variety and that feels good. I try to add a new machine every time. I'm trying to add more reps. Mostly, I try to not interfere with what others are doing. I've moved away from the free weights to the machines, same work out and you don't get stepped on by the roid-heads. I'm working mostly on my pecs, bi-cepts and back - I want some visible results so I'm going for the big three. I'm sure the other muscles are getting some work along the way.

If I could only get more structure to my diet. I feel like I'm wrestling a bear. I think I'm doing okay, but it feels odd. I'm intaking more carbs than when I normally diet, but less than when I am off my diet. I'm eating out a lot, but I'm making good choices. The scale says I'm down, but only a bit, and that's the scale at home, the scale at the gym adds ten pounds, I don't know what to believe. I think I'm just going to attempt to keep up going to the gym, try to keep making good food choices and ride the bear until it throws me off. This is all new territory for me and I need to get used to it before I try to saddle it with a routine.

My mantras are "Slow, Steady, Repeat." and "Less Flab, More Fab!" - we'll see if they work.