I have been a gym member for three years. Best deal of my life. I pay them every month, and in return, they never once call me to ask where I’ve been. It is the most respectful relationship I have ever had. I give them money, they give me a key tag, and we both pretend this is going somewhere.
People ask me for funny gym jokes. I don’t have to write any. I just go to the gym. On the rare occasions I walk through the door, the material writes itself, and then it spots me while I struggle with a weight I should not have picked up.
Funny Gym Jokes, Live From the Treadmill
The treadmill is the first lie the gym tells you, and it tells it with a smile. It says you ran three miles, and your body says you absolutely did not. You walked in place, staring at a television mounted too high, watching a cooking show about cake, while a fan blew directly into your face like it was trying to talk you out of it. The treadmill has a button called “cool down,” which is a very polite way of saying “you’re done, hero, let’s not pretend otherwise.”
And then there’s the incline button. Somebody at the treadmill company decided that walking on flat ground wasn’t humiliating enough, so they added a feature that tilts the whole floor up and dares you to keep going. I pressed it once by accident and spent the next four minutes climbing a hill to nowhere, like a salmon swimming upstream in gym shorts. The machine congratulated me at the end. It said “Great job!” The machine is a liar, and I respect it for that.
The Guy Who Grunts Is Not Lifting, He’s Announcing
Every gym has the grunter. You know him before you see him, because you hear him from the parking lot. He picks up a weight, and then he makes a sound like a man giving birth to a filing cabinet. Every single rep. Every single time. He is not in pain. He is in marketing. He wants the whole room to know that he is lifting something heavy, and honestly, mission accomplished. I heard him. The people in the smoothie bar heard him. I think a dog two blocks away heard him and decided to take up yoga instead.
The worst part is that it works. Everybody looks. That’s the whole business model. Meanwhile I’m over in the corner, lifting a weight I can actually handle, in total silence, like a coward with good form. Nobody looks at me. Nobody should. I’m doing it right, and doing it right is invisible. The grunter is doing it loud, and loud gets an audience. If grunting burned calories, that man would be a skeleton by now.
The Class Schedule Is a Series of Threats
Then there’s the class schedule, which reads like a list of things a person would only do if dared. There’s a class called “Boot Camp,” which is a weird name for something you voluntarily pay for. Boot camp was invented to be survived, not subscribed to. There’s “Spin,” where forty strangers ride bicycles that go nowhere, in a dark room, while an instructor yells encouragement at them through a headset like she’s landing a plane. I tried it once. I left with legs like jelly and a new understanding of why the bikes don’t move: if they moved, we’d all be gone.
And “Hot Yoga.” Hot yoga is regular yoga, except someone locked the doors and turned the room into a sauna. You pay money to stretch in a room so hot your water bottle starts sweating. The instructor says things like “breathe into the discomfort,” and I want to say, lady, I am breathing into the discomfort, the discomfort is just winning. I walked out of there looking like I’d been caught in a rainstorm, and I hadn’t done a single thing except lie on a mat and reconsider my choices.
The Locker Room Has Its Own Government
The locker room is where gym etiquette goes to die. There is always one guy who treats the bench like his personal living room. Towel here, bag there, phone out, shoes off, just fully moved in. He’s not changing. He’s residing. He’s got a whole setup, and you’re standing there holding your gym bag like a tourist in his apartment, waiting for him to notice that other humans exist.
And the mirrors. The gym is ninety percent mirrors, which is a bold design choice for a room full of people who are one bad angle away from a crisis. You walk in feeling fine, you catch yourself in the mirror mid-rep, and suddenly you’re staring at a person you don’t recognize making a face you didn’t authorize. That’s the real workout. Not the weights. Recovering from what you just saw.
My Membership Is a Donation and I’m at Peace With It
Here’s the truth, and I say this with love: my gym membership is not a fitness plan. It’s a donation to a building I admire from a distance. I pay, they stay open, and somewhere a treadmill stays plugged in, waiting, hopeful, like a dog by the door. The one time a month I do show up, I feel fantastic for exactly six hours, and then I remember that feeling fades, and the couch is right there, and the couch has never once asked me to do burpees.
But I’ll keep paying. Because the day I cancel is the day I’d have to admit it’s over, and I’m not ready for that conversation. The gym and I have an understanding. They don’t call, I don’t show up, and every month, right on schedule, I renew my vow to a better version of myself who definitely starts soon. He’s a great guy. I’ve never met him. But I hear he’s in fantastic shape, and he owes the gym a thank-you note.