Dealing with Gym Distractors
Posted December 1, 2007 at 03:00 PM by Mark Scott
Section: His Fitness, Strength Training
Every gym has one - the person who seems to prefer to make their workouts a total social experience rather than one dedicated towards better health. Dealing with these individuals can become challenging since you don’t want to offend and obviously want to keep your gym as healthy as possible in terms of it being a friendly environment, but when individuals like this start interfering with your workout it may be time to look for ways to deal with it.
Below are some tips.
1. Avoid eye contact. This one is pretty straightforward but will usually work quite well. As soon as someone has eye contact with you, the temptation to come over and talk is much greater.
2. Wear headphones. Another simple solution is to just wear headphones and listen to music. If they know you are busy listening, there is a much greater chance they will just leave you alone. If they do come over and interrupt, make sure you just remove one ear piece slightly, not the whole entire headset. This will discourage further talking from taking place.
3. Start working harder. Those who look like they are easy going about their workout, are much more inviting for conversation. If you look like you are rigorously involved, most people will know not to interrupt.
4. Be honest with them. Sometimes the best approach is to just tell them that you are really trying to get your workout in and are in a time crunch. Most gym members will respect this and then leave you alone. There is a chance they may try again on another day, hoping you are more free to talk and if that occurs, then you may need to pull them aside and suggest that you both plan a time for coffee or something when you are not working out (assuming you are open to talking with them that is).
So next time someone approaches you in the middle of your workout when you’d rather not talk, try one of these methods out.
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