October 11

Final Gym Space

           The entrance is surrounded by glass windows that starts from the ground all the way up to ceiling on the second floor along with glass doors as well, and the gym flooring is tiled beige. Welcomed every time by an employee at the small, granite kiosk, most Lifetime employees encourage the members as the enter and leave the gym. As said by the interviewee, Antony Vu enjoys coming to Lifetime because of the bonds he has created there; the employees try to create lasting relationships with the members. The next greeting is from the aroma of protein shakes and breakfast meals because a couple steps to the right from the kiosk is the Lifetime Cafe,which offers various types of drinks and foods as well as gym accessories and equipment. Passing the cafe and staying to the right leads to stairs that take you to the second floor of the gym where the weights are, and the left leads to the locker rooms where you may store your belongings or wash up.

              The second floor in Life Time Fitness consists of carob brown carpet and grey rubber depending on which section the occupants are in. Rubber for the dumbbells, and carpet for the machines.The dumbbell weights start from five pounds reaching to ninety pounds in increments of five. The ends of the dumbbells are black, in the shape of a decagon, and have the weight written in white on them; the metal handle between the actual weight is silver and rigid. All of the dumbbells fill up black racks from small to big in order to support the various sizes of weights. In front of the racks, there are three chairs and three benches that can recline or decline.The framework of the seats are metal and white; they also have ruby red colored cushions about two inches thick. The rest of the setting is filled with machines to work out all the main body parts labeled: abs, shoulders, arms, back, and legs. The machines are all made from Life Fitness with the same framework and cushion as the chairs. The weight adjustment for the machines are controlled by a pin and pulley system which have plates in increments of seven-and-a-half pounds. The ceiling is a white scaffold setup with a popcorn ceiling and rectangle lights.

          A variety of people come to Lifetime Fitness, but there’s a certain standard to lifetime and the members pay a significant amount for it. People with a middle-class financial status or higher occupy most of the memberships here at Lifetime. But physically speaking, the people range in all different sizes depending on how long they’ve been coming here, from fat to skinny, and muscular to scrawny. A man wearing black compressions shorts and a black sleeveless shirt stood out in the crowd. He grunted as the lifted the weights and he towered those around him, because of his greying hair and wrinkling skin; it suggested that the man was middle-aged. Excluding his massive size and build, the amount of workout equipment that he was wearing led to the assumption that he has been a member for a long time. A girl that was tall but very skinny, wore black yoga pants and a pink sports bra to the gym. She was texting on her phone for about thirty minutes and didn’t even touch the machine. The amount of muscle the girl had obviously correlated with the amount of work she put it. This showed that the occupants all view the gym differently; some come to focus and work hard while others come here to relax. The interviewee, Antony Vu, was similar to the man described. Both gentlemen are muscular and have a large build because they workout out daily.

              The occupants come to lifetime for various reasons, but they used the objects for a common goal: to get stronger. The dumbbells and the seats are used to put people in the correct posture for the movement of the exercises as they push against a certain amount of resistance; this area is called the free-weights zone. The machines allow the people to use more resistance than they could with the dumbbells because of the pulley-system that the machines use. The occupants use these objects in order to put stress on their body so that they can gain more strength. These objects control how the occupants interact in the space because there is a certain motion for every exercise and there are different locations to do each of them. Antony Vu comes to lifetime to workout and exercise so that he can become stronger.

dumbbells


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Posted October 11, 2016 by phwang4 in category Final Spatial Ethnography Report

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