Adventures at the salle de sport

I became a member of a little chain of gyms in May and since I finished up everything for my Masters, I've been taking advantage of my time to go to the gym 3-4 times a week.

My current pattern is to go from about 10 to 11 every morning, and I've started to see some of the same people. There's the big muscular black guy who uses lots of weights for his triceps, but has terrible form and doesn't use the machine correctly. There's the little asian lady who cleans the gym and always wears a dress or skirt with platform sandals and a necklace. There are lots of older women who come for the aquagym classes every morning and talk about all their various ailments in the women's locker room.

I've noticed there are a few 'types' of people:
• short men with really huge muscles that make them look top heavy; they always arrive wearing pointy leather shoes that make lots of noise and tuck their shirts in to better show off their muscles
• people not terribly in shape who sit on the stationary bike and peddle oh so slowly; do they realize it's not much of a work-out to peddle so slowly?
• macho guys who pile on the weights on the machines but forget some of the basics : wearing flip flops, no towel on the machine, talking on the phone in between sets, tiny motions. One guy was working his pectorals, but only two or three reps at a time, and then he absolutely had to send a text, then walk around in a circle, then he could do two more reps, and repeat.

Today while I was in the locker room changing to go home I heard the little cleaning lady chatting with a woman who was finishing her shower. The woman didn't have her glasses on and didn't know what a dark thing on the floor was in the next stall. Turns out it was poop. I never take a shower there because it's only a km from our place and there's no reason to lug travel size toilettries and a fresh towel with me when I can just walk home, but now I have another reason not to (and B, now you know why you should always wear flip flops in public showers).

But otherwise the gym is alright. I have a bit of a routine down now where I start off with the stair master, and then use some of the machines, and sometimes finish with the eliptical. I haven't been to the other three locations in Toulouse, but the gym closest to me doesn't have any treadmills, which I find odd. They do have a pool though, which the other locations don't, and a spinning room (stationary bike class), so maybe the treadmills are reserved for the other locations. Next on my list is to try a pilates class.