I Kicked Your Chest In The Pool

Let's talk about gym etiquette, but in a way it's rarely discussed. The internet is filled with common advice like:

• Don't hog equipment
• Wipe down your equipment
• Put your weights back
• Don't shave naked

And it's needed. You know this if you've been to the gym. Maybe not the last bullet point, but if you spend enough time in my gym's locker room you'll eventually know why I included it anyway.

But there's another important piece of information certain gym goers need to know about. You see, my gym has a lap pool.


If your gym also has one, it probably has a sign similar to ours:

"Lap pool is for lap classes and swimming only."

I've seen variations on this in other locations, where the pools are designated for laps only during certain times.

Either way, let's talk about what lap swimming is not. If you are engaged in the following activities, you are not swimming laps:

• Canonballs
• Splash contests
• Water Wrestling
• Kissing
• Going further than kissing
• Just hanging out in the middle of the freaking lane

I've encountered several people that apparently think these behaviors, and several others, constitute swimming laps. To be fair, one of the couples engaged in kissing and more were getting a pretty good workout.

If I see you working out on, let's say the bench press, I don't go tap dance on the bench in between your sets. It's rude, it's distracting, and it's not what the equipment is there for. Also, I don't know how to tap dance.

But these people don't feel the same about my workouts in the pool, that I pay for monthly to use. Not only do I have to wait, or politely ask people to get out if they're not doing laps, but I sometimes find them horsing around in my lane after I've started my laps.

My philosophy is that I should not have to alter my workout because somebody else is misusing the equipment. So when I see them in my lane, I do not alter my strokes one bit. This means I almost always end up hitting or kicking them with part of my stroke.

And I swim hard. So it hurts.

After that, I'll usually ask them not to interrupt my workout.

This situation improved, up until recently, when I kicked someone again. Hard. Not any harder than I was already kicking the water before he jumped into the pool right in front of me, but hard.

Which brings me to this.

If you're an 18-ish year old male, with short cropped brown hair, and you received a kick to the chest while practicing your canonballs, it was probably me. If, immediately following this incident, you received a brief explanation about what the lap pool is supposed to be used for, I know it was me. And, I suppose, an apology is in order.

You can leave that apology in the comments. I'm waiting.

Keep transforming. Keep regenerating.