There is this group of people in the gym of who will attend the classes and then take pictures of himself/herself/themselves with the instructor. Really “religiously” as in they do it all the time. Before COVID-19 struck, getting to classes was less of a hassle, most of us can get the spots we wanted like perhaps 90% of the time, and these people were seen quite frequently in most of the popular classes I went.

They seemed very possessive of the instructor, always trying to get to stand in front of the instructor, and would nastily and rudely elbowed their way to a place in front even if the front space was fully occupied pre-COVID-19. I seriously find such behavior disgusting and often wish that they will get injured and disappeared from the class or never get their spots.

Then along came COVID-19 and gyms around the world are now either shut or operating with “safe-distancing” rules. With these rules, the class capacities are drastically reduced and getting a spot in the classes we want becomes a real challenge, so in the end, I don’t see this group of people that often except for one lady.

This lady is extremely competitive, she can get most of the spots she wanted and, of course, people are wondering how she did it, and she went around bragging about it by posting pictures of herself with the instructors on her social media, apparently. “Apparently” for me because I don’t use social media that often. I was told, not infrequently, by people to “like” their posts, photos, articles on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin etc but I never did any of that. Why? Because for one, my Facebook account has been dormant and I like it that way (I am not a very social creature any way). Another reason is I don’t have an Instagram accounts or any account on other social media. I have really very limited social media. And of course, the chances of anybody reading this blog of mine are extremely remote but that is okay with me.

Although I have hardly seen pictures of this lady, let’s call her SS for short shorts (she wears shorts that are clearly not her size, showing her butt cheeks and unathletic body) for now, I have received messages from other gym friends about how she seemed to always get into class and took all the pictures, and how SS received complaints from the gym. Her initial photos showed her and the instructor without masks in the gym itself which put the gym in a “precarious” situation with the local authorities as the rules clearly stated that you “have to wear a mask except when exercising…” and the penalties are a fine or forced temporary closure for the gym, and fines for the individuals.

I wish the gym would have use this excuse to kick SS out since she compromised our safety so often but they did not. Apparently, money is still the gym management’s priority. Then she disappeared for a while (I did wonder at one point if SS was suspended from the gym but that’s just my guess) and she came back with a new method of picture taking. And she went back to her fervent ways of taking photos and posting them on her social media.

For a start, at full capacity, 80% to 90% of the gym folks can get their classes for very popular classes. When that capacity was reduced to just 15% at the end of the circuit breaker when the authorities allowed gyms to reopen, only a handful could get their classes. Capacity is now back at 40-50% pre-COVID levels but that still means that an average 50% success rate in getting a spot in the popular classes (which are not many). So fighting to get a spot takes up time, not to mention the time we need to spend to travel down to the gym (most people do not live next to one), and the time spent in the class itself.

Moreover, SS (I have attended the classes where unfortunately, she was there) is so competitive and always wanted to grab the “best” spots for herself as we are now required to maintain a 1-meter distance from one another and to help us with that, the gym managers had drawn spots on the floor to guide us, she would show up really early and even queue to get her “spot” (and quarreled with members to insist they let her have her spot).

Most of us have full-time jobs and don’t have the luxury to go to the gym that often, let alone finding the time to fight for the spots. We joined the gym for fitness and social reasons but it does not and should not become our lives. It is essentially, just a service we pay for, nothing more. All of us pay the membership fees, no one should dominate all the classes like she did. What prompted me to write this blog was SS nearly getting into a fight with another member last Sat. Well, lucky they did not, otherwise, it would really spoil the experience for the lost who could finally into the class.

That’s when I beginning to question the point of this woman doing all these? She does not value-add to our gym experience (her timing is off, her moves are strange and not according to choreography, she is absorbed in her own world and no instructor was able to successfully correct her in her moves) and has made it a worse place to be than it already is.

Also what is the point of taking all these photos of your own gym sessions and posting them online? Is it to brag that she could get into classes? Is it to taunt the authorities to catch her (before she copied the idea of taking depth photos)? Or is it to document how she has aged over these 10 years or so? Or is it to tell people how idle and perhaps uneventful her life is?