With the end of the year fast approaching and people beginning to think about New Year’s resolutions, I have to weigh in on one of my biggest pet peeves. It drives me nuts when people decide their New Year’s resolution will be to get in shape by joining a local gym.
    Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for getting in shape, and I belong to a gym myself. What irks me though is that hundreds of people who join a gym around the beginning of every year and flock to the fitness equipment for about two months before abandoning their workout regimen and going back to their couch potato ways by Valentine’s Day.
    I don’t care how anyone else chooses to live their life, what I do care about is going to the gym — which before New Year’s Day is an un-crowded oasis, and having to wait on these “fitness tourists” who are hogging all the available equipment. This is when I usually take my gym hiatus until the crowd thins out, as it always does without fail by the end of February.
    I remember walking into Planet Fitness in Portland last January stunned. The week prior to Jan. 1, I had no problem going to the gym after work and finding at least one of the hundreds of cardio machines vacant. What I saw shocked me. Every machine was taken and most machines had a person waiting in the wings with a watchful eye ready to pounce as soon as a machine was vacated.
    For a couple of days I joined the troupe of fitness tourists waiting for a piece of workout equipment, but before long I became fed up and went home. Exercising is supposed to be relaxing and make people feel good, but all I could feel was impatience as I watched the clock tick by. As I waited for the workout equipment I thought about my hungry dogs at home and how late I would have to start dinner because of the extra time I was forced to put in at the gym to accommodate the fitness tourists.
    I tried going in the morning with the thought that the crowd would be thinner. Wrong! I tried the middle of the day, but it was still packed with fitness tourists.
    “Don’t any of these people have jobs?” I wondered as I turned on my heel and headed back out the door. Published reports indicate people generally stop going to the gym (but they don’t stop paying for it since memberships are generally paid for with automatic withdraws from the members checking account for an entire year) because after two months of furiously working out they aren’t seeing any results. Personal trainers have said performing the exercises incorrectly can cause a fitness tourist to fail to see the desired results.
    Research has shown that nearly 97 percent of New Year’s resolutions won’t be kept, and this is why I don’t make them. Why would I make a promise on New Year’s Day that I wouldn’t make any other day of the year? I have felt his way most of my life and I remember being chastised by a teacher in high school when she asked us to write an essay on our New Year’s resolutions. In my essay I explained why I did not make such resolutions. If I want to achieve a goal I will achieve it, I don’t think I need to make a big show about announcing my intentions at the beginning of every year.
    My teacher did not appreciate my explanation and told me my opinion on aforementioned resolutions was pessimistic and lazy. Needless to say I received a low grade on the paper, but it did not spur me to begin resolving to change my ways at the beginning of each year.
    So to all you fitness tourists out there, good luck with your workout routine, I will be staying home until you drop out of the gym in late winter.