Geriatric sportscasters

Now, I love me some college football and basketball. For the entire fall and winter, and part of spring, I can always expect there will be something exciting to watch on a Saturday. I even prefer the collegiate level to the pros for each – since the teams are not all composed entirely of the country’s/world’s strongest/fastest/tallest athletes, you actually get to see the games as they were meant to be played because the players have to use their skills and talent to run plays rather than just push or jam a ball into an end zone or basket.
 
Unfortunately, with each sport comes its requisite old man sportscaster – Lou Holtz for football and Dick Vitale for basketball. And since they’ve both been around since dinosaurs walked the earth, they get to call the best games, making them unavoidable! While the two men are very different, they are both terribly annoying in their own special way.
 
First, because he is the more aggravating of the two for me, is Lou Holtz. Now, this man is 75 years old but you’d swear he was 175 years old because he has the biggest ears I’ve ever seen (noses and ears are the parts of the body that keep growing throughout your entire life). But his ears are not the problem, since he is a sportscaster and not a beauty pageant contestant after all. No, this man speaks not only with a lisp, but a crazy, juicy, spit-infused lisp! Honestly, the man spends more time on air sucking back spit than he does producing words. If your job is talking, you should actually be able to do it. I’m pretty sure they should have reassigned Mr. Holtz to the back room with the analysts and statisticians a long time ago. He might have a lot of knowledge about the game, but that doesn’t meant he should be on my TV telling me his knowledge with his own mouth if his speech is unintelligible.
 
Then there’s Dick Vitale, also known as Dickie V. I must give credit to ole’ Dick, at least he has good diction. Unfortunately, along with this, we get an obnoxiously loud and grating voice combined with commentary so riddled with made-up catch phrases and nicknames you’d think they were going out of style. If you’ve never heard Dick Vitale speak before, try plugging your nose and screaming sports terms at the top of your lungs. Now you know what this crazy old man sounds like. Better yet, try shouting “It’s serendipity baby!” (to him this means everything is coming together on the court just right) or “Now that’s what I call a diaper dandy!” (Dick’s way of describing an outstanding freshman player). Apparently the guy was diagnosed with lesions on his vocal cords in 2007 (gosh, I wonder why). Luckily for us, the surgery was successful and he was back at work just three short months later. As per usual, he will be all over the tournament. And with UCLA nowhere in sight, I might just have to avoid watching until the Final Four or so… less games seen equals less Dickie V, baby!

It’s weird, in the large majority of professions you are encouraged/forced to retire when you can no longer perform the skill you were once able to perform, but for some reason this doesn’t apply to talking on television. Even Dick Clark is still allowed to host the New Years’ Eve ball drop, and he had a stroke that left him incomprehensible. Now we’ve got Ryan Seacrest sitting next to him and repeating everything he says for viewers’ sake, while (I like to think) secretly counting the seconds until he can take over this Dick’s hosting duties until the end of time.

Babymoons

According to Wikipedia, the word “babymoon” has several meanings:
 

-       The original meaning is a period of time that parents spend bonding with a recently-born baby.

-       More recently, the term has come to be used to describe a vacation taken by a couple that is expecting a baby so that they can “enjoy one last trip together” before the baby is born.

-       Babymoon can also be used for a trip taken by a couple even before they get pregnant (whaaaaat?!?!). As long as the trip is intended to be a final romantic fling before venturing into parenthood, the term babymoon applies. (This sounds like a shallow excuse for a regular old vacation to me, but what do I know.)

Now, I think the original usage of the word is incredibly sweet. In the same way that a honeymoon (the word from which babymoon is derived) is the period just after the wedding when the newlywed couple “enjoys each other’s company” (*wink wink), a babymoon is the period just after the birth when the parents begin bonding with their new child. Of course, just as honeymoons have become synonymous with “let’s go somewhere romantic and far away (read: expensive),” babymoons have as well. Except this doesn’t make sense, because only the parents (okay, and their unborn child) are going!

 
Aren’t soon-to-be parents supposed to be happy that their baby is coming? Then why are they taking “one last vacation together” before the baby is born? This seems incongruous, as in “we are so happy our baby is coming, let’s celebrate our last moments of childlessness!”
 
Do I want couples to enjoy each other while they are without children? Of course. (And with children too but I know it’s not the same.) But don’t use having kids as an excuse to go on vacation. Because I will tell your kids "your parents went on vacation before you were born specifically to celebrate the fact that you weren't born yet" and then they will have a complex.

People who work out (and even some of the trainers) at “big box” gyms

Since I’m no longer working as a personal trainer, where I was able to work out alone in a private studio with all the workout equipment I could ever want at my disposal, I’m back to getting my sets in at the local 24 Hour Fitness. Now, I have no problem with 24 Hour Fitness itself (well, except that it usually smells like old sweat and I can’t help but think that no one cleans the machines and/or handles ever) – they have a lot of equipment, both traditional and non-traditional (think TRX, etc.), and they are open all day and all night. What I do have a problem with are the other people who work out there. There are several archetypes I’ve found at the location I frequent, and they make my work out far less enjoyable. They are:

-       People who stand right in front of the free weights while doing reps so others cannot reach the weights they want to use – At my particular 24 Hour Fitness, there is plenty of space between the free weights and the first row of benches. So if a dude wants to show off his curls for the girls or press really big dumbbells overhead, he can do so without blocking access to either the weight rack or the benches. However, he usually does not do this. Instead, he usually stands right in front of the weights (maybe because he is really vain and needs to be as close to the mirror behind the weight rack as physically possible?), making sure no one else can get to the weights they want to use. The funny thing about this is, there are racks and racks of weights he can stand in front of. But does he stand in front of the racks with the weights that weigh 50 pounds or more that hardly anyone uses/can use/stands in front of? Of course not, because that would make his 25 lb. dumbbells look dinky. He chooses to stand right in front of the most popular free weight rack in the gym, the one with the 5-35 lb. weights. Look, dude in my way, just scoot back a couple feet and everybody wins. I can get the weights I need, and you can still see yourself in the mirror while at the same time appearing to be lifting heavy because you’re standing in front of the lady weights.

-       People who spend their entire workout using the same machine and do not pause long enough to let others work in – I am speaking in particular about the cable machine, because it’s one of the only machines I use. I was at the gym one Saturday morning, planning to incorporate the cable machine into my lifting circuit, but there was a woman already using it. I thought to myself, “no matter, I’ll just start my circuit and try to work in, or wait until she is done.” This woman did exercise after exercise on the cable machine without stopping for over 30 minutes! (All core and triceps exercises, mind you, but we will get to that in the next example.) Excuse me, Asian lady wearing a leotard and headband like it’s 1985 and you’re auditioning for Jane Fonda’s Workout, you are not the only person at the gym who wants to use the cable machine. And, if you can do more than 30 minutes of core and triceps exercises without stopping, you are not working these areas enough, which brings me to…

-       People who do way too many exercises for a single body part (especially when it’s clear for most that what they need to do is just lose weight) – I see more people than I care to count who spend their entire time at the gym doing exercises that focus exclusively on smaller muscles such as shoulders, triceps, abs, and calves. Now, if these were people with the body fat of an athlete (14-20% for women, 6-13% for men), this would be fine, as the results of their efforts would in fact show outwardly. However, this is usually not the case. I watched this one overweight woman do shoulder shrugs (why would you want to make your neck look bigger?), followed by weighted oblique crunches (did you know these make your waist look bigger, not smaller?), triceps extensions and calf presses before I lost track of her. Here’s a tip for you, overweight lady – go do a circuit that includes pushups, squats, and jump roping. Not only are you using all those little muscles you want to target, you are also hitting all the major muscle groups which means you are losing weight at the same time. Bigger muscles burn more calories than smaller muscles! And there is no such thing as target weight loss – if you have too much body fat, you could do a million crunches and never see the results because, as they say, your six pack is in the cooler.

-       People with poor form or who attend classes but hardly do the moves – Not only does proper form prevent injury, it also makes muscles work to their full capacity. This burns the maximum amount of calories while also making sure muscles are not too strong in one spot but weak in others. Since I assume that people are either in the gym to lose body fat or to gain muscle, it drives me crazy that people perform exercises without proper form. In what other sport or physical activity do people just walk into and automatically assume they know what they’re doing? Nothing comes to mind for me, pretty much everything I can think of has some sort of coach or instructor to teach the basics. But at the gym, everyone just wanders in and thinks they know how to do a pushup/lunge/ whatever the exercise may be, and then wonders why they’re not getting results. Same with the people who attend classes. At the gym I go to, there is a huge room with a glass window where scores of (mostly) women stand in lines to kick box/do yoga/Zumba/etc. And even though there is an instructor at the front of the room demonstrating how to do the moves properly, everyone must be in there with their eyes closed or standing directly behind someone taller than them because no one is doing the moves the way the instructor is. They’re all just half-heartedly flailing around like someone is forcing them to be there. A bit of friendly advice, people at the gym who don’t know what you’re doing – open your eyes, buy a book, hire a good trainer… there are lots of ways to make your visits to the gym effective and safe. Otherwise stay home, because you’re just wasting everyone’s time – yours because you’re not going to reach your goals and will hurt yourself in the process, and mine because you are in my way and distracting me from my own workout.

-       Trainers who have no idea what they’re doing –I know for a fact that at my 24 Hour Fitness, trainers’ clients are spending a minimum of $57 per 50 minute session to work out with “experts” who are supposed to help them reach their health and fitness goals while at the same time preventing injury. Now, I can’t speak to whether these trainers are helping their clients lose weight/get cut/whatever their goal may be, but I can say that they certainly do not teach proper form. Whether it’s “don’t arch your back/keep your core tight,” “don’t let your knees go past your toes,” or “keep your wrists straight,” there are a handful of short, easy-to-remember cues that prompt people to do exercises properly. However, it appears that most trainers I see are not aware of these, because I watch their clients make all of these mistakes and worse. I watched one trainer let her client who was doing weighted lunges across the floor bounce his knees hard off the ground with every step. Not only did that give his muscles a tiny break between each rep, but I’m pretty sure he ended up with terrible bruises later that day. I’m not telling you how to do your job, trainer who doesn’t correct form, I’m telling you to do your job. It’s bad enough there are people with poor form in the gym (see previous), but it’s infinitely worse that it’s your job to correct for this and you aren’t.

-       Ferrari Man – I guess I can’t technically be bothered by him (there’s a small chance the owner could be “her” and not “him,” but I doubt it so we’ll go with “him”) since I don’t know exactly who he is. But I do think it’s hilarious that someone who drives a Ferrari works out at 24 Hour Fitness. And always parks right in front of the gym, so that everyone who walks in and out of the gym has to look at his car. One day I will discover who Ferrari Man is, I can’t wait to see if he matches the picture in my head.