A great deal has been written about the tourist hot-spots of Johannesburg. We have a variety of museums, lion parks, zoos, hiking trails and nature reserves dotted around the city. Our populace is just as diverse and this will never be more evident than during a trip to a local health club.
If you travel to Joeys any time soon and decide to squeeze in some exercise, be sure to look out for these people in our gyms.
The Gym Boet: these guys are easy to spot. They have massive arms, disproportionately large shoulders and toothpick legs. In the eyes of The Gym Boet there should only be two sections in the gym; the weights section, and the heavy weights section. You’ll often hear them talking about clubs, pubs and how some “...oke chooned me grief so I sorted him out, boet, I klapped him so hard I thought his photos would start to cry”.
The Iron Hipster: straight out of their fedoras and into athletic gear, these guys were drinking wheatgrass before it was cool.
The Constant Social Networker: this group is very fortunate that health clubs exist because they would surely meet terrible misfortune otherwise. It’s difficult to describe their appearance as their faces are constantly glued to their phones. They walk on the treadmill while sending BBMs, Tweet while using the hip abductors and check out Pinterest while stretching. If they were to exercise outdoors they would step into an open manhole or fail to notice that they’d wandered in front of traffic.
The Better Than You: if you have attempted a 5km fun run, this person has done it backwards. If you’ve climbed Kilimanjaro, he or she has made it to the top of Mount Everest. No matter what fitness feat you have accomplished, The Better Than You has gone one better. Or so they would have you believe. Critical analysis will reveal that the stories they tell are about as real as a Hollywood celebrity’s nose and their tales are easy to disprove. If they have really cycled the Argus or run Comrades you’ll be able to visit websites where the names of each and every finisher are listed. When you casually mention that their names do no appear, they will usually say something like, “Oh, that was the year I ran for a charity and asked to remain anonymous, so my name wouldn’t be on the finishers list”.
No Sense Of Personal Space Naked Guy: the change rooms at health clubs are an interesting study of human behavior. Some people are shy and prefer to get dressed as quickly as possible; others are quite happy to let it all hang out and carry on conversations with people who are clearly uncomfortable. More often than not, No Sense Of Personal Space Naked Guy will make a long, awkward chat with Shy Guy part of his daily routine.
Captain Oblivious: spare a thought for Captain Oblivious. He has no idea that the fitness instructor he tries to chat up every day is happily married with three kids, and that her husband is a cage-fighting champion. He is also the last to realise how loudly (and poorly) he is singing along to the music on his iPod. And as you would guess, everyone else but Captain Oblivious has spotted the giant hole in his gym shorts.