As I waited my turn at a treadmill, I found myself growing impatient.  Not that I had a burning desire to run in place, but rather, I was anxious to get it over with. Though it was hot enough outside to warrant indoor training, I still found myself wondering if heat stroke was such a bad thing.  It’s not that I’m opposed to working out at the gym, it’s just that I have a strong aversion to waiting to work out at the gym.  Exerlaxers are the greatest cause of fitness club congestion.  These are the people whose preference is to exercise…while relaxing.  They have a penchant for putting on appearances while accomplishing arbitrary tasks, better suited elsewhere.  

During my wait, I had the pleasure of watching a pudgy guy train as if he were Ivan Drago in Rocky IV.  I’m talking full speed, full incline, inappropriately tight spandex training. I felt just as uncomfortable watching him, as he appeared to be, while trying his best not to fly off the back of the treadmill.  To say he was overdoing it would be an understatement.  Somehow in between his five-second burst of spastic athleticism, this man decided he wanted to watch some music videos.  Not the ones playing on 4 of the 16 hanging televisions around him, but the ones he had downloaded onto his touch screen laptop.  Yes, this guy had a laptop strapped to the dash of the treadmill along with some DJ approved headphones.  Apparently, listening to the sounds of Madonna and Justin Timberlake just wouldn’t suffice.  He had to see their groove…up close.  

Pudgy Drago is an extreme kind of exerlaxer.  The more common type can be found flipping the pages of some sort of printed material.  I don’t care what anyone says, reading and exercising do not go together.  It’s kind of like sleeping and driving.  It’s simply impossible to do either of the activities well, at the same time.  Yet, the exerlaxer continues to push the envelope.  Why run at a challenging pace for 30 solid minutes when you can half trot, half walk and kind of read for 2 hours?  Most exerlaxers are aimlessly skimming through the pages of some grocery store tabloid or romance novel, which don’t require much attention or literacy anyway.  However, the pseudo intellectual exerlaxer might claim efficiency as the excuse for their lame and congestion causing work out.  I’ve seen more medical and law school books at the gym, than I have at the public library. Everyone knows that the best way to study for a graduate school exam is while bouncing up and down on an elliptical machine with some pop music and TV in the background. 

I wish I were lying when I say I saw a guy doing crunches while talking on his cell phone.  What bothered me most about this exerlaxer was not the fact that he was holding a cell phone to his ear while in the middle of his upward move, it was that he actually had someone on the other end of the line willing to listen to him.  How does a conversation like that go?  “What’s ehh up ehh?  What ehh are ehh you ehh doing ehh?”  Is the person on the other line at the gym too?  Because that’s the only way I can see anyone being able to tolerate that. 

People who try to read at the gym just end up looking dumb.  We all know you just want people to think you’re smart.  If the other 23 and half hours in a day aren’t enough for your cell phone conversations, you talk too much and you’re probably insecure.  If you bring a computer to the gym, your life is ridiculous.  Perhaps my patience has grown too thin for the gym and I just don’t have enough to accomplish while I’m there.  Maybe I should just learn to relax.  Apparently, I’ll get a lot more done.

Action sports, also known as the sports some may have tried before the other half of their brain developed, are in full effect in modern sports culture.   X Games 15 is proof that kids were not wasting their time on skateboards, BMX or dirt bikes.   In fact, many of those kids, who are now grown men in their late 20’s and 30’s, are amongst the most popular participants in action sports today.  This is very cool in the respect that these guys are essentially playing for a living.  Kudos to them for also milking every sponsorship dollar out of companies that are hell bent on trying to sell intensity and cool through energy drinks and flat-footed canvas sneakers along the way.    

I like watching the X Games…to an extent.  Like most causal viewers, I’m completely lost.  Every event has the same thing in common…high degree of difficulty.  I can watch baseball, basketball or football and think, “I could’ve hit that.” “He should’ve made that.”  “My niece would’ve caught that.”  I’m probably a little misguided in that thinking.  When I watch the X Games however, I wonder, “How did you even think to try that?”  Watching a guy hurl himself down a 30-foot ramp, launch 50 feet in the air… and not die, is impressive.   Attempting to spin around, flip, do a release move, or anything extra besides focusing on landing safely, is incredible.  

Even more incredible is that the vast majority of these guys don’t realize how isolated their culture still is.  After 15 years of broadcasting the event on ESPN, I’m still trying to figure out what the commentators are saying.  Between the endless expressions of  “stoked” and “sick,” viewers are supposed to recognize a mctwist, switch fifty-fifties, backside nifty-niffties, and whatever else they’re talking about.  Maybe I have an attention deficit, but it seems like they’re making up names for tricks as they go along.  Granted all the tricks look virtually identical to me…ridiculous, even when they finally land one.   Trying to understand their lingo furthers divides X gamers from traditional sports fans, the opposite effect of the intended goal.   If the goal is to make the casual viewer feel out of the loop, dumb for watching, slightly annoyed and ultimately lose interest, just broadcast it on Fox News Channel.  

The X Games and action sports have an increasingly deserved place in general sports culture.  Besides the gut-busting laugh the athletes provide each time they lacerate a spleen or chip a coccyx on a failed trick, action sports are a necessary outlet for all of those kids who may not have had the interest or dexterity to participate in traditional ones.  If courage is a skill, those guys have plenty of it.   If energy drinks give them that courage, great.  Just make it easier for the rest of us to swallow.