Raise the bar by not being a pigeon in the gym

Don’t get in the whey

fitness fitspo gym health Pigeon

It doesn’t seem to have been so much an issue until this year, but Exeter has gone fitness-crazy as of late. From 6am right through to 10 at night, you’ll see everyone you know pumping iron and hitting the treadmill – even those people who, last year, kept going on at you to shut up about your sick sesh with the 38s on shoulder day.

Now the gym is flooded with people making use of everything, even those machines that look like some sort of Victorian torture device, and you – who do lines of preworkout like you’ve got a fruit-punch-and-meth addiction – can’t get at the squat racks.

Most of them are doing it wrong anyway.

The phone addict

I’m just looking up gym routines, I swear.

You’ve been in the gym for half an hour now, and you’ve just finished your easy curls for the day, and you want to get on the bench so you can curl the bar and then sit down.

But there’s some cooing moron on there who seems to be here to get only one number up – his Candy Crush score. Who needs a break that long when he’s only benching what, 50kg? OK, 150kg, but you could do that if you were fresh and ate plenty this morning. He doesn’t even look that big. It’s all just pump.

The olympic lifters

Accompanied by the most terrifying grunts since Wimbledon.

This tribe of people cleans more than the staff in Holland Hall. They moved in about half a year ago and don’t seem to have finished their set yet, having established themselves on the power cages in the corner and never moved since.

Instead they scream at the top of their lungs to frighten off the new people and talk among themselves. Rumour is they’re all gym staff on their days off, but no one ever seems to see them on their days on.

The shadows

Could be a celebrity in disguise if he wasn’t so scrawny.

These guys are easy to spot. They show up in nothing but matching black clothes and look like they’ve spent the last year indoors on a permanent cut, eating only the souls of their victims and kale shakes.

They come in alone, half-rep everything and then tidy their weights away all in perfect silence, and if they weren’t taking up every single bench, you’d never even notice their presence.

Show me the money

He needs to be on the platform so he can see himself in the mirror

This lot make their appearance in nothing less than Dre Beats, professional weightlifting shoes, and designer tank tops. You’ve never seen them squat, and you’d accuse them of doing nothing but curls if you ever saw them actually lifting.

As it stands, they mostly seem to be between sets, between exercises, and between rests. If they are lifting, it’s probably on a machine, and not one of the good ones, but one of those alternative rowing machines.

They will put the weight up on the machine after doing their ‘workout’ so you think they’re lifting heavy, and they’re probably wearing an entirely purposeless snapback to stop all that sweat getting into their eyes.

Dubiously natural

His identity has been hidden for my protection.

Usually not from the uni itself, you’d complain about this lot taking up the bench and preacher curl rack if only you weren’t so terrified they’d launch into a roid rage and pull your arms out of their sockets.

Often wearing dazzlingly bright colours and coming in packs, they leave their weights everywhere after some strange superset and presumably require walking sticks on hills to support their lack of legs.