Heads

If you’re not a sweaty bodybuilder with no neck the gym can be a little intimidating, let’s face it, you’re highly unlikely to be looking or feeling your best at the gym. Enter the gym buddy. This person is your gym equivalent of a safety blanket, with the gym bud around you can do anything. 10 mile, uphill spin class? Easy. 100 stomach crunches? No problemo. The gym buddy is your source of inspiration, they take you further. They’re the friend who gives you that extra push with sweet, sweet words of non-judgmental encourage (‘Your ex is going to be crying herself to sleep when she sees your new six pack bro!’ ‘You should totally be a supermodel with your body sister!’) They don’t care that you’re dripping in sweat and red in the face because they are too (you obviously have the same routine) and they’re the force that keeps you from quitting (‘pick you up tomorrow, same time, same place’) More importantly, they’re your rival too, you don’t want them looking better than you do? So she can do 50 squats, you can do 60! Who cares that the rest of the women on your netball team are 6’0 and semi-professional, so long as you score the winner and not your gym buddy you are going to look amazing…which is why you go to the gym…right?

Tails

Is a room full of weights and fake rowing boats really so scary that you need your equally unfit buddy to hold your hand? Don’t kid yourself that they push you to your limits, we all know that the real reason you brought Linda along with you is because you’re already four dress sizes smaller than her thanks to her freakishly low metabolism. A gym buddy doesn’t make you look good, it makes you look weak. Can you not manage a twenty minute jog next to a total stranger? Diddums. The gym buddy is an excuse not to do any work, we’re not stupid we can see you and Tracy cycling along at 2mph in the corner nattering away about whose home feels the most ‘Hygge’, and Will, Marcus, you guys couldn’t make Reading’s rowing team never mind Oxford so could you stop breaking the machine and give someone else a turn? The gym buddy is an excuse to hang out with your mate and lament your most recent woes. Those two girls at Zumba? Tony dated and dumped them both, the new ‘hot bod’ they’re (not) going to get is their ‘revenge’. You two weeds drinking protein shakes because you can’t make muscle any other way?  You’re not going to ‘meet someone’ at the gym, at least not the someone you had in mind.

If the only sweat you break is sat in the sauna then you’re doing it wrong…