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I Don't Get It or: When did the gym change and where was I while it was changing? . Part 1 in a Multi-Part Series....... Clang! Clang! Clang! Seven, eight, nine, ten times the sound of metal on metal rings out loud enough to make Quasimodo feel he was at the office. But this is no church belltower. This is Crunch Fitness on West 83rd Street in Manhattan, and the ringer in question is far from hunchback. Rather, he's a gangly 20-something attempting (badly) to perform a set of dumbbell bench presses. With each clang, as he slaps his 40 lb. dumbbells together at the top of every rep, my concentration is momentarily broken. My own set of curls becomes a balancing act between focus and frustration. While I've grown accustomed to the continual bombardment to my auditory senses at the gym I have resigned myself to the fact that I will never be of such intense discipline that I could ever completely block this sound from my consciousness. If it were only this one neophyte I could cope, by sequestering myself in the adjoining room as he performed his pressing movements. But, alas, the ringing of the dumbbells is a ritual performed by the large majority of trainees at Crunch and, I suspect, nearly every fitness club in the country. As unnerving as this daily interruption of what has, for 25 years, been my mental and physical sanctuary, what bothers me even more is the nagging question: "When did the clanging start and who started it?" When I first joined Mr. America's Gym on Long Island in 1982 (after four years of honing my training skills in my basement) I found a place where lifting was an art form of the highest order. Nary a member didn't know how to pump and prime each muscle group with the utmost efficiency and intensity as they pushed and pulled on weights, levers and pulleys. Weights existed to be controlled and the Mr. A contingent was a stern taskmaster. This isn't to suggest that Steve Michalik's club was a quiet place. Quite the opposite. There was a consistent cacophony of exhortations to exert accompanied by the sporadic THUMP! of weights as they fell from the hands of their spent lifters onto the dovetailed rubber mats which covered much of the gym's linoleum floor. But the sounds of Mr. America's were music to my ears. They were the sounds of heart and soul, of joy and pain and of love, for the sport being practiced. They were also the sounds of hate, for the toll it took already battered bodies. It was genuine and spontaneous, like life itself. The beauty of nature lies not in its symmetry, but in its lack thereof. Clang! Clang! Clang! Suddenly I'm awakened from my mid-workout reverie and returned to the dismal reality of the fact that those days, for me the Manhattanite, are long gone. The joyous chaos of the serious bodybuilding gym has been rendered irrelevent by the franchising profits of "health clubs" and all the uniformity they engender. So, the question still begs: Why all the clanging? Well, if I had to hazard a guess I'd say it started something like this: One day Johnny John Jon Johnson (let's call him 'J.J.' for short) and his high school buddy decide they want to get their arms and pecs looking like that dude's whom they caught on MTV the other night. You know, the one with the cool-ass tats and the chick. Anyway, they watch a Soloflex infommercial for a half hour and figure they're all set to go throw around some serious weight at a gym. So they go sign up at the nearest club and charge it to their Visa Platinum. J.J., being the Alpha in his little cadre, decides to start the workout, thereby throwing down the gauntlet to his Beta buddy. Seated dumbbell presses sound cool. Don't know what they do but, hey that big dude over there is doing them. J.J. goes for the same weight the big guy is using- 70's- and, after realizing he can't even get them off the rack, moves, reluctantly to half that weight. Well, maybe the big fella is stronger, J.J. rationalizes, but he's not going to get the attention of blondie over there by slowly, deliberately and quietly pushing those weights like that. So, ever the attention getter, J.J. shakily jerks the two dumbbells overhead, locks out his elbows, and, BANG!, slams the bells together, thereby managing to impress his buddy, annoy the big guy and have zero impact on the young lady training behind him. he repeats the process nine more times and then throws the weights to the floor, nearly taking out his friend's foot. Now it's J.J.'s partners turn. He has to go lighter– 30's– but nevertheless follows his buddy's form to a 'T'', clanking and all. Just so happens that Billy from school is over at the other end of the gym doing legs and hears the authoritative sound of metal on metal. Looking across the room, he spies his cronies doing their presses amidst the bodybuilder and a cute blonde. "Well," thinks Billy, "they must know what they're doing." And so it goes. Somehow, while I wasn't paying attention, the fad of banging dumbbells together at the top of all pressing movements has swept across our nation like the allied troops across Iraq. Exactly where or when it started I probably will never know. But I do know this: Those collars on those dumbbells can only take so much abuse before they start to loosen up and give. I just hope J.J.'s partner spots him closely when they do. Unless, of course, they give on the dumbbell I'm using for cross bench pullovers... CLANG! OUCH!!
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