Monday, January 05, 2009

Invasion of the New Year's Resolutioners

It's January, and my gym has been invaded by New Year's resolutioners. I was almost unable to find a parking spot at the gym due to the massive surge in attendance. Finding a spot was made even more difficult by the fact that some of these motorists clogged up the lanes by waiting and waiting and waiting for someone to pull out of their spot.... you know, as opposed to driving a little bit further to park elsewhere.

My cardio bootcamp class was overflowing with newbies. We were practically packed in there like sardines. Not a pleasant situation.

Please don't get me wrong. I have nothing against newbies; in fact, when they seem friendly, I like to meet them and introduce them to some of the regulars. I also routinely cheer them on when they need encouragement. It is very annoying, however, that they choose to come in droves right after the holidays. The gym simply isn't equipped to deal with these inflated numbers.

It's especially aggravating because you know that the vast majority of these folks aren't taking exercise seriously. How do we know this? Because if they were, they wouldn't be waiting around for January 1st to start getting into shape. This isn't just idle speculation, mind you. Rather, it's pretty obvious --- especially when you see how much attendance drops when February rolls around.

I'll say more about that later.