I’ve been to the gym long enough to realize there are several distinct categories of gym-goers. Some are okay and cool but some can really be quite annoying. Without further ado, here goes.
The One Hit Wonder
The one hit wonder can sometimes be seen on the 1st of January every year but they also show up at regular intervals throughout the year. These guys usually sign up for a monthly gym membership, come once to workout and then came to the dreaded conclusion that they aren’t cut out for gym life and you won’t see them ever again. It’s either because they find working out is too hard or too much hassle or they just don’t have the willpower to continue or a million other excuses that they could come up with . Gym owners love these type of people cause they can make a quick and easy profit off them. They hit the gym once and they you wonder where the hell did they go?
The Noobs
Let’s face it, everyone is a gym newbie at one point or another in their life and there’s nothing wrong with that. I just would like to point out their characteristics here. You could tell someone is a newbie by the way they dress — pants or boots or flip flops or even worse jeans. They will usually struggle using most of the workout machines, either putting too much weights or doing it the wrong way, often with comical results. The brave ones would sometimes ask for tips from somebody or the slightly clever one would watch a seasoned gym rat and follow what they’re doing. Sometimes the newbies will also become the one hit wonder once come to realize this shit is hard and they could be at home sleeping or eating or something.
The Social Media Monkey
You know this type. Show up, workout for 5 minutes and then become glued to their phone for the next hour or so. Another type would work out for 10 minutes, took a selfie in front of the mirror, occasionally lifting their shirt to show their (none-existing) six packs (more like flabs) to upload to their favorite social media site. You will see them grinning by themselves tickled by something funny on Facebook or Twitter. The worst kind would hog the bench press area or any other workout area just looking at their phones. Don’t know why they even bother coming to the gym in the first place (probably to show off). Ok taking pictures of yourself or your buddies is okay sometimes but definitely not every time. My advice is, unless you’ve got pecs or six packs to show off to everybody, don’t take a picture in the gym.
The Romeo
The gym that I regularly went to is usually filled with guys but occasionally you see a few chicks (very rare but it does happen) trying to work out. These girls are usually newbies and don’t usually last long or turn into just another one hit wonder. I don’t know whether they have other commitments or they’re just not up to it. When these hot chicks do show up, you can be sure that a guy or two will approach and try to offer (unsolicited) workout advice and tips although nobody asked them for one. Sometimes these romeos do manage to hook up with some of these chicks and you will soon see them working out together. However more often than not, these gym couples will mysteriously disappear altogether for reasons only they know. Maybe they are working out someone else nicer IYKWIM.
The Parent Of The Year
And then there’s this one type who don’t usually go to the gym but when they do they bring their kid(s) along. I understand maybe their partner is working or whatever and they don’t have anybody else to sit for their kids while they workout but the gym is the last place you wanna bring your precious kids to. There’s a lot of heavy weights around and most of the exercise equipments could really pose a danger to those kids. Kids being kids will always play with whatever they can grab their hands on and I saw for myself a few times these children falling off treadmills or having iron weights dropping dangerously close to their body. I don’t know about others by most gyms are not kids-friendly and you should know better than to bring them along.
The Screamer
I know, I know, weight-lifting is a hard work and there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of of huffing and puffing and grunting while you’re at it. What I can’t stand are those who scream and yell at almost every rep and sounding louder than a gorilla during a mating call.
The Relationship Goals
Couples who workout together stay together right? Nothing could be sweeter than bringing your girlfriend to workout together at the gym. You could give each other motivation and for the guys, give out tips and help with every workout. To be honest, I have no problem with these couples. They do look sweet together and most of the time they keep to themselves. And these kind is not limited to guy and girl couple only. Sometimes you see one guy with his regular gym buddy working out together like this awesome power couple (no homo tho). The weird thing about these couples is that if one of them didn’t show up, both of them don’t show up at all.
The Pig
We all know this type. Works out hard on a bench and then leave the the sweat-drenched bench just like that, expecting somebody else to clean up after him. Who do you think we are, your mother? These jerks will usually move around the weights all over the place and never-ever put them back on the racks. Don’t be a pig at the gym guys, wipe and clean up after yourselves. It’s the right thing to do.
The Casual Gym-goer
Actually you can see this type a lot at the gym. Their standard attire is t-shirt, track suit or shorts and most importantly flip-flops on their feet. These type will never-ever touch the treadmill (what do you expect with their flip-flops?) and skip leg day every day. Their favorite working routine are the squat rack, bench press and bicep curls, that’s about it. Warm up? Those are for noobs. The casual gym-goer will jump straight to their routine, occasionally taking cigarette breaks every half hour. This type usually come in groups and they’d stop and chit-chat with their buddies in between reps. Don’t get me wrong, they will see results with their workout routine, eventually. Cause you know if you’re consistent enough with your work out, you will see changes and improvement sooner or later. That said, some of the casual gym-goers type are also one hit wonders, social media monkeys or pigs.
The Rock
You see them at least 3 times a week if not every other day of the week. They do proper warm up, run 20 minutes on the treadmill and then do a variety of work out and exercise on almost every machine in the gym. Some of them will have their earphones and music on and just keep to themselves. They don’t give a shit about anybody else, they just come there to work out, huffing and puffing, the hardest worker in the room. It’s easy to recognize them by the size of their huge pecs, shoulders, legs and abs after years of working out. Skip leg day? That’s unheard of! Meet The Rock aka the gym rat or gym buff. They live and die for the gym. Okay not really but these guys are serious about body-building or being buff in general. Most of them are quite friendly and they’re more than happy to share a few pointers about working out. Just don’t bug them too much tho. Even better, watch and learn from these beasts.
So which type is me? Well, obviously I’d like to be The Rock. I make it my mission to go to the gym at least 2 to 3 times a week. Each time I will try to use at least 80% of the equipments for 2–3 hours at least. I used to take a few pictures at the gym before but only to share funny shit of people struggling at the gym or sometimes (just a few seconds) look at pictures of buff people for motivation. I don’t ever take any selfies tho, that’s so lame. I always clean up after my reps and do my best to re-rack the weights. I used to listen to my iPod while I work out but now I get the gym staff to play my music on the PA system, perks of being a long time member of the gym. There you have it folks, the 10 types of people you usually meet at the gym.
Motorola Moto 360 review
Owning a smartwatch has always been a dream of mine ever since they hit mainstream with the release of Pebble, Samsung Gear, Moto 360 and then Apple Watch. While Pebble didn’t appeal to me enough in term of design, I got myself a Samsung Gear smartwatch 2 years ago. Suffice to say I didn’t give it a shining review, it was just not good enough. And then Motorola’s Moto 360 came out followed shortly by Apple Watch and a few other Android Wear wearables. Sure Apple Watch is cool and being a self-professed Apple fan I can’t say I’m not dreaming of getting one, someday. But then as with any new Apple devices, they’re expensive and beyond my budget at the moment. Plus I didn’t like the square design of the Apple Watch much. I prefer the classic rounded design of the Moto 360 more compared to the Apple Watch and other Android Wear wearables who were mostly square/rectangle at the time of writing.
Hence why a year after it came out and I finally can afford a second hand smartwatch, my heart is set on the Moto 360 and nothing else. Priced at nearly a thousand ringgit for a brand new watch, I got a second hand one for 550 ringgit. Quite a bargain for a quality Android Wear smartwatch in an almost mint condition. I said almost because the Horween leather band is slightly wrinkled due to wear and tear. In the box I got the charging cradle and a wall charger. The watch show charging progress as well as time while charging at the cradle and I must say it looks damn good sitting on my desk at night.
So how does Android Wear works? You basically swipe your way top, right, left and bottom to go settings, features and apps. The UI features cards that fills the entire screen and it changes with every swipe. I must say the swiping is pretty smooth, no visible lag and I can’t remember experiencing any apps freezing. The screen will turn off after a few seconds when you’re not using or looking at it and of course you can set it longer or make it always on. Bear in mind battery life will suffer if you turn that feature on. There’s only one button on the right side which you press to turn on the screen or to turn on the watch or force off by pressing slightly longer (~6 seconds). You can also turn on the screen by turning the watch naturally to your face or touching the screen with your finger. Somehow I feel that the screen delays a bit before turning on when you rotate your arm, there’s like 500 milliseconds of lag although small but fairly noticeable. I expect to see the time immediately when I look at my watch but the Moto 360 falls short in this department.
A year after its debut, there a now Android Wear apps for both Android and Apple smartphones. However the iOS app is clearly lacking in features compared to its Android counterpart. The iOS version is only capable of showing notifications, Google Now cards and incoming calls, that’s about it. Basically every notifications from your iPhone will show up on your Moto 360 including emails, messages, Whatsapp, music playing, everything. It’s basically an extension of your iPhone’s notification alerts. You can control music from the Moto 360, search for websites using Google Now and that’s about it. You can change the settings from the iOS app, change watch faces (they are quite limited) and there’s no Google Play store to browse from. Compare that to the Android version - you can reply texts and emails fromt the watch, browse, download and use many third party apps, play music offline from the watch and much-much more. To be honest, I didn’t get to test my Moto 360 with the Android version for long because I switched to the iOS version shortly after getting the watch. All those features that I just said, I read them from review blogs he he (what kind of review is this?).
That said although there’s only so few things you can do with Moto 360 and iOS, I mainly use it for wait for it.. to look at the time! And read notifications from my iPhone of course. With the Moto 360 on my arm, I no longer need to fish my phone out of my pocket to take a look new Whatsapp messages, incoming emails and pretty much every other new notifications there is. My Moto 360 will beep and vibrate a little and with a little twist, I’m up to date. Sounds rather lazy/silly you might say but with dozens of emails and messages every day, some of them important, the rest are not so, it’s so convenient to filter them out just by glancing at my wrist. I have the option to dismiss the notifications on my watch or I could just let it pass and replaced by new ones. And although I said the watch faces are limited to the default few installed by Motorola (now Lenovo), they are pretty good and most of the time I only use the pretty minimal red, black and white watch face anyway. I’m simple like that.
So what else can I do with the Moto 360? It features an optical heart rate monitor which worked well enough although I think it’s more of a novelty than a necessity. I mean how many times a day would you want to check your heart rate anyway? If you’ve been running it should be high and if you’ve been sitting on your ass all day it should be pretty low. I like how Google Now steadily give me new updates like traffic condition, latest football score and weather forecast.
Design wise, I simply love the circular watch face. It’s the main reason I chose it over Apple Watch. I must say the watch is a tad too thick for my liking and it sometimes feel bulky on my wrist. It will look alright on my manly arm but definitely too big for the ladies. The screen is bright and crispy although I could do without the ‘flat tire’ visible at the bottom of the screen. Motorola said they had to make it that way to put the proximity, ambiance and other sensors for the watch and to avoid making the bezel thicker. Whatever, I say their engineers is not good enough because as of now, newer Android Wear watches came out with the unsightly flat tire design. Another gripe that I have about the Moto 360 is the sorry battery life. I know other Android Wear wearables don’t excel so much in this department as well but using the Moto 360 heavily during the day, it would barely last the entire day at work and completely drained by night. So I practically had to charge it every day at night or whenever the battery gets low (duh). Wearing a smartwatch with the anxiety of it running out of battery is not exactly ideal for me hence why I only managed to stick with it for 2 months before selling it online. Aside from short battery life and thick and bulky frame, the Moto 360 is the perfect smartwatch for me. I looked at the 2nd gen Moto 360 watch that came out earlier this year but they still retain pretty much the same design and size and I doubt the battery life will be any better. Make it smaller, get rid of the flat tire and improve the battery life and I will definitely switch back to Moto 360 in no time.
Would I recommend the Moto 360? Only if you don’t mind all the tiny shortcomings that I mentioned above. Otherwise go for the other slimmer Android Wear wearables, Pebble or even the Apple Watch.