Episode 37: Free weights are the cake, machines are the icing

Ron Harris

It was a time of uncertainty, and our gym was in chaos.

Maybe I am being a bit dramatic, which wouldn’t be unusual. What was actually happening was that the owner of my gym had realized a couple years ago that paying an outrageous monthly lease made no sense if he could build his own gym that would be far bigger and with more amenities such as a swimming pool, indoor track, basketball and racquetball courts, a kids gym, and to top it off – a barbershop. Around the same time, the owner of the other big gym in town had the same idea and had launched into his own construction plans. This had me somewhat concerned that only one of these two mega-gyms would eventually survive.

The US economy was not doing too well, and it wasn’t like the town I lived in seemed to have a genuine need for two enormous training facilities. With a population of thirty thousand, it wasn’t exactly a bustling metropolis. But I supposed time would tell. Of course, if one of the two new gyms had to perish, I selfishly hoped it wouldn’t be mine.

It was the end of February school vacation week, and I was training Jared on the last day the old gym was open. As a matter of fact, three huge trucks were in the parking lot taking turns carting off various pieces of equipment. Some of these were being transported to the new location only two miles away, others were destined to be scrapped or sold. It was a little creepy training on a gym floor that was gradually becoming just that – an empty, open floor. It reminded me of an underrated but brilliant Jim Carrey movie named “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” where his character is having his memories erased to get over the pain of a break-up. Items disappear into nothingness before him as he navigates his subconscious mind, having decided after the fact to retain his memories. Instead, I was looking at empty spaces that had been the scene for thousands of grueling sets over the nearly nine years I had been training here. Truth be told, as wonderful as the new location was probably going to be, I would miss this old dump. It was a little grungy, but at least it had character. I like that in a gym. I had once trained in the ‘other’ big gym in town on a guest pass just to see what the fuss was about, and was quite turned off by the sterile atmosphere. The whole place was in white and turquoise, immaculately clean, and kept so chilly you had to wear at least a big T-shirt or get goose bumps. I associated the strong disinfectant smell in that place with hospitals, and kept expecting to hear “Dr. Smith to ICU, code blue,” over the loudspeakers. Mind you, character is one thing and total filth is another. I have been to gyms with clogged toilets and workout floors littered with trash and grit. That’s just being too cheap to hire a cleaning person to go around every once in a great while with a broom, a vacuum cleaner, and a mop And while we’re at it – a plunger. There is no excuse for bowel movements from last month to still be hanging around. I want to get a good workout in, but I don’t want to contract hepatitis or ringworm in the process.

“So what kind of machines do you think they’ll have at the new place?” Jared asked, breaking me out of my wistful ponderings. I shrugged my shoulders.

“No idea. I’m sure he’s bringing all those new ones,” I replied. The line of new machines I was referring to were these space-age looking contraptions that actually moved when you used them, almost like you were on some carnival ride. Any time I rocked back and forth on one, I felt like I should be holding cotton candy and fried dough in one arm and have my other around my best girl. The whole concept behind this patented ‘Roc-It’ technology was to prevent cheating by preemptively moving your body for you. A noble idea to be sure, but as an equipment snob I wasn’t terribly impressed with most of the line. This put me in the minority, of course. Most of the gym members gawked at these gadgets like they had mysteriously manifested in a crackle of electricity from the 25^th Century via an anomalous warp in the space/time continuum. Yes, I used to watch a lot of Star Trek. No, I’ve never attended a convention or stalked any of the actors. Give me a little credit.

“I still don’t know why you didn’t try to help pick out the new equipment they were getting,” grumbled Jared. He did know, because I had explained it at least twice to him. First of all, only a very small percentage of the gym members were sophisticated enough to know or care about the differences between one machine and another. Secondly, any fool knows you would get a better deal by buying an entire line from the same company rather than pick and choose the best pieces from various manufacturers. The average gym member actually liked to see row after row of machines with a very similar look – it seemed more organized. So why would any gym owner bother to spend more money catering to the few people who cared about which machines were the most effective and productive at working specific muscle groups? Jared’s mind had been warped by reading the bodybuilding magazines, all of which showed pro’s training at one of the handful of truly hardcore and exquisitely equipped gyms in the USA where most of the post-contest photo shoots were done. Those rare places actually did cater to the discriminating trainer and bodybuilders, with the equipment being handpicked, often at great expense.

Expecting my gym to follow suit would be like taking a village of starving Somalis out to a five-star restaurant. Sure, they would devour the food and be grateful, but they would be just as happy to chow down at Taco Bell. Food is food when you’re hungry, and to most gym members, equipment is equipment when you just want to work out.

“As long as all this stuff will be there,” I said, gesturing to the free weight area with dumbbells up to 150, rows of various benches, squat racks, and the power rack, “we have everything we really need. Machines are nice, but they’re really just the icing on the cake compared to barbells and dumbbells.” Jared made a face, as if this was the ludicrous opinion of an old-timer who refused to get with the times. “It’s a lot like food and supplements,” I continued. “John
Parrillo has been making very high-quality supplements since long before you were born, but he tells everyone not to spend a dime on his or anyone else’s products until they first get their nutrition program of whole food meals down pat. Without that base of good food, supplements are pointless. I use a fair amount of machines and cables in my training, but the base of all my workouts is always the most basic free weight movements like dumbbell and barbell presses and rows, squats, and so on. Those are and always will be the best movements for increasing muscle size and strength. That’s why no matter how advanced and high-tech machines become, they will never make free weights obsolete. No great physique has ever been built without using free weights, and I doubt one ever will be. So if the new place has some cool new machines, that’s awesome. If not, it doesn’t really matter.”

Jared digested all that and we finished the workout, being the very last people to use a few things before they were hauled outside to the trucks. I really would miss this place and all my memories from it, but I knew the new gym was going to be just fine. Heavy iron was all I or anyone else really needed – nothing more and nothing less.