Gyms: A Brief Personal History

Yesterday morning I went to 24 Hour Fitness in the Pearl on my way to work, and halfway through my workout, it hit me – I only belong to one gym. It’s been a long time since I could say that. Although as I type that I realize there’s still the gym where I see my trainer, but I don’t really consider myself a member there so much as it’s the place I see my trainer. Either way, this calls for a brief history of all the gyms I’ve belonged to, in mostly chronological order:

1. The Hoop: I played basketball here when I was in 5th-7th grade, at the Katy Steding Basketball Academy (KSBA). A few times a year they would throw a middle school dance where kids from other schools would dry hump each other

2. Club Sport: KSBA moved to a fancy gym in Tigard, so I went here for the next couple of years. They had an awesome rock climbing wall.

3. Multnomah Athletic Club: This is the fancy gym in town, and the one that I just lost my membership to. In middle school it was the gym to belong to, because their dances had mostly kids from only our school, and the dancing was much more restrained and awkward than at the Hoop. I was really good at school and sports my freshman year of high school, which was lucky because it earned me a free membership to the MAC with their scholar athlete award. My athletic and academic abilities headed somewhat south after that, but my membership was locked down by then, so whatever. Unfortunately when you turn 28 you have to either pay a bundle of money or stop being a member, so I just let that one go. It’s probably for the best, the MAC is kind of fancy for me. Although I did very much appreciate my free membership for the past 13 years.

4. Whitman College Gym: This gym was a pile of poo until my junior year when they built a new one that was awesome and had a television in every single cardio machine. I didn’t have a TV, so I would go walk on the treadmill for an hour anytime I wanted to watch something.

5. 24 Hour Fitness: I joined 24 after college when I discovered that all my friends that belonged to the MAC had moved away and all my leftover friends belonged to 24. I’ve been a member there off and on ever since, and where I currently work out.

6. Skogg Gym: This is a cool kettle bell gym in the Pearl district. I belonged for about four months, got kind of good at kettle bell, then did a diet challenge thing that threw off my eating for a while and quit. Mostly because I got bored of kettle bell, and it was too expensive to belong unless I was going like five times a week.

7. Indigo Apartment Gym: This was just a gym in an apartment building I worked in, but way nicer than most apartment gyms.

8. Willamette University Gym: Like Whitman, Willamette opened up a brand new gym soon before I graduated. I enjoyed a great six months of going to a gym with all brand new equipment, but Salem is way too far to go to use it now.

9. Foster Fitness: The gym that I said I’m not a member of but I do work out there with my coach, Noel Fuller. I also go to posing practices on Saturday. Yelp says it’s a “no-frills” gym like five times, so I wrote it a good review because it has a lot of frills in the form of Star Trek spaceship models, plus there’s usually an adorable tiny dog running around. How many more frills would you want than that?

Every once in a while I take a gym selfie when I think nobody’s looking, just in case I need it for my blog later. Plus, what else am I supposed to do while I’m resting between sets? This is one at the downtown 24 Hour, a few months ago.

Now that I’m a member of such a limited number of gyms (aside from the fact that 24 Hour is actually like 10 billion gyms), I guess I can start looking for new supplemental gyms. If you have any awesome gyms I should belong to, let me know. I feel uncomfortable having all this money burning a hole in my pocket when it belongs in eight different gyms.