Forget Skinny, Get BIG At MDC

Of the many amenities offered at Miami Dade College my favorites are the gyms or “wellness centers” at the North, Kendall and Wolfson campuses.

Nothing warms my heart like seeing other college students partaking in the savage lifting of heavy iron objects in a series of repetitive patterns. I don’t think there is anything more important in your college years then testing your physical limits and developing disciplines to carry on to that long stretch of adulthood.

However, I have a few complaints about these facilities. Namely, the people, the layout, the equipment and their overall environment.

Wolfson Campus’ atmosphere is unbeatable. Dim lighting and no ceiling give it that garage\industrial look and what lifter doesn’t like that? Unfortunately, the employees are super adamant about not slamming the weights — a rule I never follow at any gym.

Yeah, I’m one of the douchebags that slams his weights and throws his water bottle all over the place. When constructing building 8, apparently no one considered the possibility of a douchebag, like myself, with a high level of testosterone slamming hundreds of pounds of iron directly above students concentrating on math or history or whatever.

But Wolfson’s fitness center is missing a key piece of equipment, the low-row machine, that impedes me from acquiring that gorilla sized back I want for Christmas. Maybe if they got rid of a few bikes and treadmills and abdomen machines we could squeeze a back attack machine and maybe squeeze another cable fly machine so I won’t have to take a number and wait in line to pump my pecs.

North Campus’ gym does have the low-row machine, but at the expense of having no music playing. I wear headphones when I work out, but regardless, a gym without music is not very different from a senior citizen rehabilitation center.

What’s the obsession with cardio anyway? North has seven ellipticals, ten treadmills, 11 bikes and — dear god — six stair-masters. All the weight training machines are placed close together and the gym space is dominated by an under-utilized and ridiculous plethora of cardio machines.

This whole feminist stigma of weights apparently turning women into men is a played out joke.

I hear girls say “I don’t wanna get bulky. It’s not sexy.” In response, I rub my eyes while waiting in line for the cable fly machine and wonder “Woman, it’s not like size comes out of nowhere; it’s not like one day you’ll wake up ten times bigger than last night and scream ‘Oh my God it happened!’”

Guys too, though. I see them lifting these heavy objects in a series of repetitive patterns — but as soon as that weight scale shows that they’re one pound heavier, they freak out and scream like the girl who thinks she’ll apparently wake up too buff to be sexy.

Kendall Campus’ gym has got it right. Nine ellipticals, two stair-masters, one bike and just six treadmills sitting alongside a huge free-weight area. I’ll tell you right now, folks; I walked into Kendall gym thinking I’d see that typical cardio-obsessed workspace, but I was pleasantly incorrect.

I walked in to hear Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” playing and a gym that was three-quarters weight machines and posters of Arnold and other Olympians posing in their underwear. This place was great, and I regret that I haven’t had the chance to really pleasure myself in this fantastically greasy gym. It’s like one of those small hole-in-the-wall gyms, not ostentatious like Wolfson with its grandiose view of Downtown Miami. This one’s for the lifters.

I nominate Kendall’s gym as the winner of my unofficial contest. Independent of the arena, folks, get your butts on a treadmill or a bench and put in the work necessary to change that shameful  body that you hide under new clothes.

If you think that “it doesn’t matter what you look like”— stay wimpy and weak. More room for me at the gym.