The older I get the more time I seem to have to spend at the gym fixing dumb sports injuries. With that age also comes a crankiness about rude smartphone habits. Lately I’ve found my exercise routine lengthened by having to wait for people just sitting on equipment and texting. I know that this is a “first world problem” and I’ll acknowledge that I’ve probably been guilty of searching for just the right podcast episode between sets. But the gym should be for exercise not sending out texts.
Smartphone use on the gym floor has become an epidemic at my local YMCA. Once the New Years resolution crowd thins out in a month or so it won’t be so bad, but right now you have to wait a long time for some benches and machines due to texting millennials. The solution is simple. If you’ve just got to send that text, please step off the equipment momentarily! And maybe, just maybe, all that texting is distracting you from what you’re supposed to be doing at the gym?
I like my new smartphone and find it useful. But perhaps we all need to agree that in certain spaces and settings we all need to go into airplane mode. My short list of those settings includes sacred spaces, gyms, classrooms, lectures and at meals. And let’s not even get into driving–that should be obvious.
So how do we come to a consensus on phone etiquette? Since blocking or jamming cellphones is pretty much off the table, the only solution may be to “gamify” good behavior. Imagine an app that rewards you for not checking your phone while you’re at the gym. At the end of the month you get a small discount or prize. But that might not be enough. Here’s how the Russian military “gamifies” smartphone etiquette:
Image via BoingBoing.
Check your phone while on duty and you have to lug around a giant wooden phone.
I agree, this is a “fist world problem.” 😀
Thanks for catching that embarrassing typo! There’s a joke here but I’m not going to make it.
Just wanted to support a favorite blog.
By the way, my wife and I have been lurking on your blog for quite some time, and we’re smitten with all that your family does.
Thanks again for catching that typo and for supporting Root Simple! Hope you are both having a great 2016.
I’m a texter at the gym. What else would I do with my minute-and-a-half rest between sets? But then again, I’d be happy to step away and let someone work-in if they asked.
Phones don’t belong in the gym.
What to do between sets? Focus on the breath. Do a corrective exercise. Walk around.
I don’t even take mine down into my garage gym when I am alone. Real workouts require focus.
I try the direct approach: “Can you move, I’d like to use this”?
I may make that wooden phone for my children…
I am still clinging to my StupidPhone. I don’t call or text in the car or anywhere in public. That’s just unsafe, and it’s just rude. People are more important than things–unfortunately the young folks seem not to have gotten that message. Perhaps if we sent it in text?
This is one of the few areas where we disagree. I use my phone while at the gym, but not to text. Pandora has my music that I work out to, and it has my workout logs on it. The workout software that I use keeps tracks of weights, sets, and reps, and is my timer in between work sets, so I pull it out and enter what I’ve completed after every set and the timer automatically starts for me. It is no different than if I was just staring at the wall waiting for the one minute and 30 seconds rest time to pass before I pick up the weights again.
Hey Christine,
I don’t disagree with you. I listen to podcasts and also use a app to keep track of sets and reps. What I have a problem with are the people who park themselves on the equipment like it was their personal office.
Don’t get me started on cell phone etiquette. I’ve stopped talking to people who have to tippy-tap on their phones during a conversation. And yes, I get cranky about this.
That said, as much as gym texters are supremely annoying, at least they’re not endangering anyone, unlike the people who step out in front of my car because they’re so engrossed in their text that they have no idea they’re in the road. Good thing I don’t have a cell phone so I can pay attention for both of us.