in a tight spot

Jade has decided that she wants to learn to walk on her hands, and she was telling me that she asked a little girl to spot her.  The girl asked, "What does that mean?"  Jade laughed and said, "Oh, never mind."  She laughed as she recounted this story because she knows darn well that when you ask someone to help you not hurt yourself, you want someone who knows how to do that.

Sometimes at the gym there will be guys--pretty much always guys-- who ask me to spot them as they attempt to bench fifteen times their body weight.  Usually, by which I mean "always," these are big guys lifting a lot of weight, and so I think in that cartoon bubble above my head, "Oh, great. Now I'm going to be liable when the bar comes down on his throat and neither of us can lift it off."  Immediately thereafter I think, "Do I smell?" because when you spot someone, you have to get in pretty close by necessity.

Ultimately, I agree to do it because we members of the gym rat cabal have an implicit understanding to help our brothers and sisters out.  Plus, I have a sneaking suspicion that these guys must think that I must know what I'm doing because they see me spotting others, and so I find myself trapped in a vicious chicken-and-egg cycle.  It all began so innocently.  Long ago when the gym was practically empty one day, some big Marine asked me to spot him.  I was caught off guard.  And, because I don't want to be accused of not supporting the troops, I stood at the ready to catch his bar should it fall on his neck and smash his Adam's apple.  Which it did not.  (I only appeared to be at the ready, when in fact that look of concentration was a look of prayer that the dude would not need my help, a prayer--thankfully--that was answered.)

At that same moment, I surmise, someone else must have appeared on the scene and witnessed what appeared to be me looking like I knew what I was doing, and the suburban legend was born.  Guys started asking me to spot them despite my best efforts to slink away unnoticed whenever I see a rack full of weights and a guy looking around the gym.  One guy recently told me I'm "the best spotter in the gym."  Me!  The one who doesn't exactly know what she's doing and dreads doing it.

Whenever I get rooked into spotting someone, I mostly stand there silently hoping the guy is stronger than he thinks.  I do not touch or lift the bar in any way unless 1) I see him turn purple and 2) the bar does not move in a positive direction. One time, there was this big, beefy a-hole who used to work out at my gym, and he had this girlfriend who worked out with him, doing whatever he told her to do but never really initiating her own workout.  He was strong, to be sure, but if you saw him on the street you would just think him a short, beer-bellied a-hole trying to compensate for all he lacked.  One day, the a-hole told his girlfriend to spot him as he tried to bench a bar stacked with about six 45 pounders on each side. She got behind the bar, he attempted to do a rep or two, and she helped him out because he clearly could not do it on his own.  Apparently, however, she did it all wrong because as soon as the bar was racked he jumped up quickly and yelled, "Did you just lift that for me? DID YOU?"

She cowered and stuttered and said, "No. No, I was just spotting you."

"You lifted it for me. Goddammit!" and he stormed off to the pec deck. 

"No, I swear, I didn't! I'm sorry!" They made such a scene.  The poor girlfriend just stood there not knowing what to do next without her fat boyfriend ordering her around.  She went up to the front desk and waited for him to finish his sick grunts.

If nothing else, this taught me to stand behind the bar with my hands at my sides and only put two fingers under if the guy is near the brink of death.  And then--this is embarrassing but it seems to be the right thing to do when I'm in the moment--I yell things like, "COME ON! Push it, man! and "It's yours!" or "You got it!" or "All yours!" or some other hideous variation on the "You can do it/It's all about you" theme.  I'm sure I look like a complete doofus.  And all the while I'm producing nervous sweat and wishing this wasn't happening to me. I think it's fair to say that I hate when people ask me to spot them.

One of these days, I swear, I'm going to find the courage to run away when I see a rack full of weights and a guy looking around for something.  I'm just gonna run.  Run, Spot.  Run.

Comments

[viola]

Talk about being put on the spot. If I were in your position (the deer-caught-in-headlight position,) I'd be highly tempted to fake semi-blindness, carry a white cane with me and bang it around on the equipment, finding my way between intense workouts on each machine. I would be considered a brave soul just for attempting to work out in a public place. I mean, who would ask a blind person to assist in spotting?

Sounds like the fat guy with the gullible girlfriend had a case of roid rage or...somethin'.

[Gina]

Now that is funny. There must be some quality about you that they trust, and you must indeed be very convincing in your exhortations.