It was a nice Monday afternoon at the Wooden Center. As I was doing my usual ab workout, I looked up to unexpectedly find a horde of guys standing around the flat-screen TVs watching the NBA playoffs. I think I lost more calories being startled by the grunts, groans and cheers of this pack than from my workout.
The Wooden Center is a playground of personas more than it is an atmosphere of intended physical activity. Everyone has a different purpose for going to the gym, perfectly reflecting different personalities found at a playground.
Sure, you have the gym regulars who actually work out. These people strive to be fit and have long-term goals of physical fitness and a healthy lifestyle. However, just like the plethora of machines at Wooden, not everyone operates this way.
Walk into the cardio room and you’ll find that every single elliptical machine and treadmill is being used for hours at a time by girls wearing bright-colored V-necks, some of which can be identified as sorority girls. Despite all the unused bicycles, arc trainers and other machines, you will find about seven to 10 bright-colored, V-necked girls waiting in line to use either the elliptical or treadmill.
Just as some of these girls insist on using these machines and only these machines, they have insisted on their spectrum of association: The elite clique of popular girls that can also be found lurking at the playground. Their persistent use of these machines reflects the limitations of their spectrum ““ association with their clique of friends at UCLA will last a lifetime, possibly surpassing any other group of people (or machines in this case) that may potentially benefit them.
To top it off, some of these girls probably weigh around 100 pounds ““ why they choose to practically live at the gym baffles me. In this playground, these are the girls that always stick together like Barbie and friends.
The division of this playground by gender is obvious to say the least. Males dominate the weight room, and females dominate the cardio room and Group-X fitness classes. This division can cause intimidation or fear of trying new routines at these different areas of the gym. It looks like we have reverted back to elementary school where boys have cooties, so the girls learn to stay away.
First-year psychobiology student Alexa Chavez is a regular at the gym and said her personal goal is to stay in shape, strengthen her body and just have fun. However, she said she notices this gender division as well and feels she is outnumbered by the number of males when she works out in the weight room.
“I feel like I have a lot of eyes on me whenever I am using the pull-up bar,” Chavez said. “I am the only girl in the weight room most of the time.”
Just like the V-necked girls in the cardio room, the male population in the weight room can be found wearing their cut-up shirts (some with Greek letters), staring at themselves in the mirror while pumping iron, commonly followed by an occasional grunt or two.
During my trip through the playground to the circuit room, I passed by a guy staring blankly at himself in the mirror. I came back 20 minutes later to find the same guy still staring at himself. It seems as though vanity is not scarce in this part of the playground.
Vanity does not travel alone. The males in the weight room are rarely working out by themselves. They usually have two or three other guys standing around either spotting them, giving them encouraging words, or staring at the mirror while flexing their biceps.
Many guys go to the weight room for specific purposes, such as first-year biology student Adam Uchimoto, who said he likes to go to the gym to release stress and stay in shape. From a male perspective, he said he definitely sees the playground pecking order.
“I notice that some guys and girls who may be inexperienced or physically smaller tend to act shy in the gym setting because they feel intimidated to use machines or weights,” Uchimoto said.
A field where genders don’t divide is a common sort of game play: flirtation. A girl wearing spandex short shorts with full makeup and perfect hair stretches on the wall, looks over her shoulder with that coy look in her eyes and bends over with precision so her gluteus maximus is in perfect sight of that guy she is “playing the game” with. The guy staring at her gluteus maximus has lost this game.
The key is to be slick, and staring does not help you win this particular game in this field. In Wooden, the game of flirtation is perhaps played more often than more traditional games like racquetball.
This playground of personas has more Barbie-like getups and hairdos than dripping sweat and more purposely cut-off shirts than shirts that ripped from expanding pectoral muscles. Whether these elementary-school antics actually help people burn calories will remain a great unsolved mystery, but apparently going to the gym to actually work out is now a rarity.
If you would like a workout buddy, then e-mail Ghoogassian at cghoogassian@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to