Pumping Phone

Old man gripe alert

It may surprise some viewers of The Fully Charged Show but I do regularly visit the gym.

I know, it’s all a bit tragic, I’m not trying to get buff, at my age it’s all about maintenance.

So I go to the gym and do cardio and weights, running machine, rowing machine, spin cycle, core training, upper body. Bish bosh boom, 45 minutes to an hour, intense, sweat like an old goat, try not to grunt too much, get the hell out of Dodge.

I’m generally not the oldest person in the gym, but I am certainly up there with the oldies. Of course most of the people in the gyms I regularly use are under 35 at a guess, and some of them are hyper buff.

A less than flattering selfie after an early morning sesh. Taken in Snap Fitness, Spring Hill, Brisbane

Ripped, pipped and impressive. Good luck to them, I’m generally in awe of their strength and fitness. It’s one of the few advantages of age, I no longer have the desire or need to compete. I am what I am. I’ve very lucky I can still get up in the morning and go to the damn gym, believe me I’m aware of that.

But recently I cannot help notice an increasingly common site, it’s of no consequence to me unless . . . . .

A young person comes into the gym, maybe does a few reps on the pull down machine and then sits there on their phone, scrolling something or other, for a long, long time.

Sometimes I want to use the pull down machine and I can’t because muggins over there is checking out an endless feed of brain spaff on Insta.

In the most extreme case I have ever seen, which I observed in the gym I was a regular at for a couple of months in Brisbane Australia, a young fellow came in, fully kitted up in heavily branded gym wear and proceeded to look at his phone as he sat on various machines for close to an hour, and then he left.

I am not making this up, the heaviest thing this young chap lifted was his phone. He did literally zero exercise.

Now okay, this is extreme, I have no idea of his back story, he may have gone there because he’d promised his wife, partner, mum, doctor to go to the gym but he never actually promised to do any exercise. He may have been hiding from a hit man, the government, an ex partner out to do him in.

Who knows, but it did seem an odd thing to do.

But what is far more common is the habit some, not all, but some young folks have of sitting or leaning on a machine in a gym and looking at their phone. I never look at my phone in a gym, I don’t have it with me. It’s a period of time I am 100% focussed on keeping this wilting old body just about functioning.

Just this morning I realised I had done 3 sets of bench presses, 3 sets of back pulls on the cable lift, 3 sets on the pec deck and a young man who was sitting on a bench near the free weights had done . . . some scrolling.

I was in and out of that gym in 50 minutes, he was still scrolling when I left.

I’m an old fart, I should have retired 2 years ago but I am so busy I don’t have time to naff about in a gym looking at insta or tiktok or anything.

So as I was ruminating about this as I came back from the gym.

I realised I had slipped just a little further down the slope toward grumpy old man status. Who gives a flying toss what people do in the gym? Seriously, get over it granddad.

Why did I bother noticing. Let them look at their phones, one of them might have been watching an episode of the Fully Charged Show (1 million subscribers) or sending a love message.

And this, dear reader, is a constant in life. Always check yourself when you have an opinion about the behaviour of others. This has to be done in context, cultural differences, age differences, gender differences of course.

Obviously there are cases where a critical view of someone’s behaviour is perfectly justified, if you see someone being violent or abusive, fair enough, judge them.

But if some young person goes to a gym and looks at their phone, they are not exactly reducing the grand total of human achievement.

I’m saying this to myself.

But then again, whenever I get that message that says my screen time is a little bit lower this week than last, I feel good.

Okay, I’m off to see what’s new on Insta.