Wimps' Revenge

[JSngry]

God knows I'm out of shape to the point of embarassment, but if & when I decide to get it back together, I'm not so sure that this is the place I'll be going...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/18/nyregion...l?th&emc=th

No Grunting, They Said, and He Was at the Gym

By ANAHAD O’CONNOR

Published: November 18, 2006

WAPPINGERS FALLS, N.Y., Nov. 13 — Albert Argibay, a bodybuilder and a state correction officer, was at a Planet Fitness gym with 500 pounds of weight on his shoulders one afternoon this month when the club manager walked over and told him it was time to leave. Mr. Argibay, the manager explained, had violated one of the club’s most sacred and strictly enforced rules: He was grunting.

At Planet Fitness, some members say, they are humiliated for taking their workouts too seriously.

“I said to her, ‘I’m not grunting, I’m breathing heavy,’ ” recalled Mr. Argibay, 40, an energetic man with the hulking appearance of a pro linebacker. “I guess she didn’t like the fact that I challenged her, because she said to me, ‘Meet me up front; I’m canceling your membership.’ ”

He continued lifting, but soon was surrounded by town police officers, who told him to drop the weight slowly and pack his bag, then escorted him from the gym. Now Mr. Argibay is considering suing the club, claiming the notoriety the incident earned him in this cozy 5,000-person town 75 miles north of Manhattan is tantamount to defamation. Mr. Argibay said he has endured ridicule from colleagues who call him and make grunting noises, and he fears that inmates will lose respect for him.

Grunting, rude as it may be, has been commonplace in gyms for as long as weights have been lifted. At most health clubs, grunts elicit little more than annoyed looks or sighs of irritation. But at Planet Fitness, a national chain with 120 locations, it is a matter not only of etiquette, but also of club policy: one too many offending noises can get a membership revoked in the time it takes to do a sit-up. Nationwide, the chain expels roughly two members a month for various reasons, most commonly grunting and dropping weights.

The no-grunt policy is one of several eyebrow-raising rules — no bandannas, no jeans, no banging weights — that managers say are intended to make their target clientele of novice exercisers feel comfortable.

The manager who confronted Mr. Argibay, Carol Palazzolo, said without hesitation that people who feel the need to grunt should take their sweat elsewhere, though she said Mr. Argibay was expelled largely because he became hostile when she confronted him, a claim he disputes.

“He immediately created an intimidating atmosphere not only for me but for the guests around me,” Ms. Palazzolo said. “He got very offensive and very loud, so I walked away and I called the police department.”

Planet Fitness bills itself as “The Judgment Free Zone.” But in the weeks since Mr. Argibay was booted, a number of members have accused the gym of judging with extreme prejudice, saying the club humiliates members whose physiques are too chiseled and who take their workouts too seriously. And the incident has raised other imponderable questions.

How does one distinguish between a grunt and a very deep breath? Must a grunt be “characteristic of a hog,” as one dictionary defines it? And what if there are no patrons around to take offense? What would happen if Monica Seles and Maria Sharapova, known for their noisy exertion on the tennis court, showed up wanting to work out?

At Planet Fitness gyms, grunters and other rule-breakers are treated to an ear-rattling siren with flashing blue lights and a public scolding. The “lunk alarm,” as the club calls it, is so jarring it can bring the entire floor to a standstill. (A lunk is defined, on a poster, as “one who grunts, drops weights, or judges.”)

Tim Gunther, a 6-foot, 200-pound firefighter in Poughkeepsie, said he and his colleagues were frequently harassed for “making noises that can’t be avoided” and compared the alarm to a nuclear war siren. “The first time I heard that thing it scared the heck out of me,” he said. “I thought there was a fire, and I’m a fireman. Without exaggeration, I’ve seen them set that thing off on people just for breathing too loud.”

At most gyms, etiquette battles are over loud cellphone conversations, the failure to wipe down machines after use, or standing too close to the treadmill while waiting for a runner to finish. “Telling someone they can’t grunt seems a little rigid,” said Sonny Kim, the general manager of the New York Health and Racquet Club’s branch on West 23rd Street in Manhattan. “I’m assuming most people who have worked out have grunted. I have as well; it’s about physical exertion.”

Several press agents for national organizations that represent health clubs said they could not think of any other gym that had anything resembling a no-grunting policy.

“I’ve never seen any gym that micromanages their customers like that,” said Bernhard Schroeder, a spokesman for IDEA Health and Fitness Association, a trade group. “If they see someone talking, are they going to tell that person they’re disturbing other patrons? It’s wild.”

Grunting can be a nuisance to anyone within earshot, sure, but does it serve any physiological purpose?

Dennis G. O’Connell, a professor of physical therapy at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Tex., has conducted studies on the effects of grunting. He found that weight lifters produce between 2 and 5 percent more force when they grunt, in part because the deep breathing grunting entails can help stabilize the spine.

“I’m not so sure it’s wise to tell people not to grunt,” Professor O’Connell said.

Rosemary Lavery, a spokeswoman for the Boston-based International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association, said she could only assume Planet Fitness was trying to discourage bodybuilders and others who are diligent about working out. Ms. Lavery cited statistics showing that baby boomers who exercise once or twice a week represent the fastest-growing segment of health club members. Many clubs are seeking ways to appeal to those groups, she said, but a ban on guttural noises is not the path most have taken.

“I don’t think that at a health club the expectation of quietness is realistic,” Ms. Lavery said.

In an age where the Internet can make even the smallest feud public, perhaps it was inevitable that Mr. Argibay’s plight would become a cause célèbre for grunters everywhere. His lawyer, Jason Stern, a former competitive bodybuilder, created boycottplanetfitness.com, a Web site that includes a list titled “Top Ten Reasons to Join Planet Witless.” Among the entries: “Library just too noisy of a place for reading books.”

[He also placed a video of a local television news segment about the controversy on YouTube.com.]

Hundreds of e-mail messages have poured into Mr. Stern’s Web site. Most are supportive, he said, but not all. “Occasionally, I do get an e-mail from someone who says this is a good thing,” Mr. Stern said. “They write in and say, ‘You know, this gym is for people like me who are used to getting sand kicked in our face, and we’re tired of it.’ ”

Hey, I used to work out a little, and I understand that those "serious" types can be intimidating, either directly or indirectly. But geez, you gotta grunt sometimes. Besides, it's been my experience that people who fear being around people who have proven themselves highly adept at accomplishing a certain task don't really want to accomplish the same thing for themselves nearly as much as they want to just revel in the thrill of thinking about doing it.

[Dan Gould]

To me, its real simple:

There are posted rules that are well-advertised, and he violated them. The mere fact that after an employee tells him to stop lifting and follow her to the front and he ignored her and kept lifting says a lot about his attitude.

What's interesting is the corporate decision to appeal to the 98 LB weaklings and make things peachy keen for them, at the expense of hard core lifters. I always figured that its the hard core lifters that keep a gym in business, the 98 LB weaklings whose memberships last a month or two represents a much smaller portion of the ongoing revenue stream.

[BeBop]

I've been kicked out of a few gyms for sweating during aerobic/anaerobic exercise. (Not profusely; just sweating.) And once I was kicked out of a national Olympic training center for doing so.

[JSngry]

There are posted rules that are well-advertised, and he violated them. The mere fact that after an employee tells him to stop lifting and follow her to the front and he ignored her and kept lifting says a lot about his attitude.

Having played all-acoustic gigs in restaurants where they tell you to "play softly" and you do, only to be told to "play softer", and you do, only to be told that "it's still too loud", so you play so soft that you can't even hear each other, only to be told that "it's still too loud", I sympathize with the guy's probable realization that they didn't really want him there in the first place, so they were going to have to make him leave, and fuck'em on the way out while we're at it.

Seriously - how can there be exertion w/o the occasional noise? Impossible. This gym is marketing the illusion of working out, not the thing itself, and they need to be honest about it ("Come to Planet Fitness, where nothing really happens!"). Some poor souls still mired in tired, outdated 20th Century notions like doing what you set out to do probably think that the object of working out is to work out. Planet Fitness owes it to the Wondeful World Of Tomorrow to not accept these people as members in the first place. Doing otherwise leaves the impartial observer with the impression taht they're only in it for the money, and I know that that's not it. They're on a mission to get people to exercise. Of course they are!

They called the police on this cat! For the "crime" of making noise while excercising. In a gym!

It's a world gone wrong, I tell you, a world gone wrong...

[Dave James]

Now if they could figure out a way to export this no grunting rule to women's tennis, they might be on to something.

Up over and out.

[kh1958]

At least he didn't get tasered!

[Dan Gould]

They called the police on this cat! For the "crime" of making noise while excercising. In a gym!

this is not accurate, Jim, and I think you know it.

He violated the rules (as inane as they may be).

He was told his membership was being cancelled, to stop lifting and follow her to the front desk.

He ignored her, continued to lift weights, and behaved in an intimidating manner to the female manager.

That's why the police were called.

[Jazzmoose]

Now if they could figure out a way to export this no grunting rule to women's tennis, they might be on to something.

Up over and out.

Seriously? It's the grunting that makes women's tennis appealing to me...

[Big Al]

Well, now we know how to cancel those gym memberships that some people say are impossible to cancel!

[JSngry]

They called the police on this cat! For the "crime" of making noise while excercising. In a gym!

this is not accurate, Jim, and I think you know it.

He violated the rules (as inane as they may be).

He was told his membership was being cancelled, to stop lifting and follow her to the front desk.

He ignored her, continued to lift weights, and behaved in an intimidating manner to the female manager.

That's why the police were called.

Well, yeah, but if his story is to be believed, the "intimidation" consisted solely of saying "I’m not grunting, I’m breathing heavy", ignoring her request, and continued exercising (and I've done enough working out to know that it's not at all a good thing to stop cold in the middle of a set unless something crashes or is about to crash. Just as you don't try to take away a dog's food while it's being eaten, you don't interrupt a serious set of reps. Totally uncool.).

Even if his story is not to be believed, there's no allegations of physical or verbal threats (oh sure, he got "loud" & "offensive". WTF does that mean, that he grunted again? ) or anything like that. Nothing concrete other than that he refuted her assertation in some form or fashion & went back to work. So if all it takes for a fitness center manager to get intimidated and call the cops in is somebody not respecting their authori-TIE, then I stand by my original assertion that this is a clear cut case of Wimps' Revenge. Read the club's "techniques" & comments by other members. WTF is that all about anyway?

People who get turned off by sweat, grunts, any of that, clearly have a hard time dealing with the simple realities of physicality (I shudder to think what making love to them would be like), and shouldn't be running something as purely physical as a fitness center unless their sole goal is to make the money, in which case, they should get the phuk out of the way, hire a manager who knows what time it is, and let the money come in all clean and sanitized through the bank. You don't create a supposedly serious environment for working out and then bitch when people actually do it. WIMPY!

Truly a world gone wrong.

[jazzypaul]

Following the logic of the owners of Planet Fitness, I am going to open the following businesses:

a dance club where people who dance anything more complicated than the twist or the cabbage patch will be banned.

A bookstore with a strict no-reading of anything heavy policy. (I guess sales of Bill O'Reilly books will spike)

After all, we don't ever want anyone anywhere at any time to ever feel inadequate, right?

C'mon everybody! Group hug!

[JSngry]

Following the logic of the owners of Planet Fitness, I am going to open the following businesses:

a dance club where people who dance anything more complicated than the twist or the cabbage patch will be banned.

A bookstore with a strict no-reading of anything heavy policy. (I guess sales of Bill O'Reilly books will spike)

After all, we don't ever want anyone anywhere at any time to ever feel inadequate, right?

C'mon everybody! Group hug!

[JSngry]

Just for the record, when I did work out, it was never at a fitness club (except when I first moved to Albuquerque, LTB & I joined a Nautilus club that was really cool). It was either at a city rec center, a school weight room, or at a local Y. I know the atmosphere at some of those hardcore gyms can be pretty, uh, "intense", and sometimes there's a level of brain-dead machismo that's pretty hard to take. Plus, there's the matter of ethics. We tried to join a Bally's here in Plano, signed a contract even, only to be called back in to sign a contract which, amazingly, showed totally different terms than the one we had signed two days earlier! Immediate threats of legal action got that deal (and the one that we had already signed) rescinded in a bigass hurry!

So I can appreciate the tactic of wanting a less "intimidating" atmosphere to encourage greater participation in a truly worthwhile (and profitable) endeavor. But dammit, it's working out. It's exercise. There's weight lifting involved. You can only go so far into it before it's time to shit or get off the pot. And should you choose to shit, hell, anytime you shit, there's going to be a possibility that there's to be some occasional grunting involved.

DUH!