Meaningless motion
Sometimes when I'm at the Y, walking on the treadmill or riding the exercise bike, I look at the other people in the room and wonder why we're all there.Of course, we're all trying to stay healthy. But it's amazing that we choose to waste so much body strength and energy on worthless motion.
Obviously, our lives don't demand much hard physical labor nowadays if we join special clubs just so we can burn calories and use our muscles.
We labor and the machines go, but nothing is produced. You'd think they could rig those machines to pump water or produce electricity or something. Then the "Watts" reading on the machine's workout statistics display would actually mean something.
One day this week, a man -- a chubby fellow -- had a Coke and a bag of chips with him on one of the elliptical machines. He was stepping along in a leisurely manner, sipping and nibbling.
When his Coke and chips were gone, he got off the machine and left. Wow, talk about unproductive motion!
I'm a little surprised they let him take food in there, but maybe there isn't an official policy about it. Maybe no one had ever imagined that someone would want to eat chips while working out.
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2 comments:
Chips and a soda? Definitely haven't seen that before!
Many of the cardiovascular machines at our gym are powered (at least the display) by the action of the person. I always thought that was a good idea.
That is true, Sarabeth. Many of the displays don't even light up until you start moving.
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