I’m no stranger to the gym – the background work and politics that go with running it, the drama that goes with working at one, and the cliques and the locker room deals that go along when being a member at one. I’ve been training at System for 14 years now, been out of the country for 11 years but every time I visit I train there. Back in the day I used to be so in tune with who’s doing what and buying what from who. These days I honestly feel too old to really care. It’s not that it’s none of my business but ya, it’s none of my business and I have bigger things to worry about than that “stuff”. I don’t do any of it. I used to buy ephedrine, an illegal medication that is like speed. They used to give it to race horses but here I was being introduced to it because I wanted to drop body fat and get an “edge” on my training. I wanted to sweat my brains out and by taking it I did exactly that plus more. My heart felt like it was beating so fast and so hard. Some days I was convinced those training beside me could hear my heart racing. It was great until it wasn’t because I then became dependant on it to beyond using it for my workouts. I used it to help get me through my university classes and carry me through my double digit hours of bartending. I remember loading up my Thursdays and Fridays with uni classes and then working a 8hr bartending shift on Thursday and then a 12hr shift on Fridays. Saturdays I’d crash and I crashed hard. I was addicted. A minor heart attack while training in the boxing ring in Korea was what it took to get me to smarten up and instantly I went cold turkey.
The only drug I’ve ever touched in my entire life is that of ephedrine and that was originally because of my training. I still to this date have never touched so much as a joint and somehow in my conversation at the end of my workout tonight this came up, the whole “behind-the-scene” gym hookups. I was chatting with a new friend of mine, a Korean guy (go figure, right), and as we walked out of the club together, I asked him if he could hook me up. “What do you want?” he asked. “Some of your mom’s mul [water] kimchi”, I said. He had a good giggle at that and responded by telling me that if he invited me over for some of his mom’s mul kimchi that’d mean we’d be considered almost married. We both stood there laughing and I interrupted by telling him I didn’t want that label but perhaps he could smuggle me a bowl of it from his fridge.
Gym hook ups. Some do it for juice, apparently I do it for Korean side dishes. Nice.
The only drug I’ve ever touched in my entire life is that of ephedrine and that was originally because of my training. I still to this date have never touched so much as a joint and somehow in my conversation at the end of my workout tonight this came up, the whole “behind-the-scene” gym hookups. I was chatting with a new friend of mine, a Korean guy (go figure, right), and as we walked out of the club together, I asked him if he could hook me up. “What do you want?” he asked. “Some of your mom’s mul [water] kimchi”, I said. He had a good giggle at that and responded by telling me that if he invited me over for some of his mom’s mul kimchi that’d mean we’d be considered almost married. We both stood there laughing and I interrupted by telling him I didn’t want that label but perhaps he could smuggle me a bowl of it from his fridge.
Gym hook ups. Some do it for juice, apparently I do it for Korean side dishes. Nice.
No comments:
Post a Comment