I went back to my community for observations. I'm not gonna lie, it was pretty dull. Most of the people there were high school children visiting the campus, as for the actual weight room and fitness center there were ten people. I began my observations @ 1 and ended at three. The school children that were visitng seemed pretty timid. Anytime one would pass them they would never look that person in the eye. Back in the weight room, the few people that were there didn't say a word to each other. There were three men and one woman, two of the men were on the bench press and the other was doing pull ups. The woman was on the lat pull down machine. She was in her early twenties and was wearing a white top with green shorts.
In the other room there were seven people. Four women and three men. Two of the woman were using the ellipticals and the other two were using the mat in the corner. They seemed to be friends because they were doing the same stretches and were talking to each other. I didn't pay much attention as to what they were saying. The three men were using the ellipticals as well, they were probabliy in their forties. That was all that i observed, as i said it was pretty dull.

I observed the rec again. I diversified my observations a bit more today, begining with the weight and fitness room as usual, then the lounge and finally I went up to the track on the forth floor. This was by far the dullest day in terms of people at the rec center. I went there at 1:30 and left by 2:45 and i can honestly say that i saw maybe a quarter of the crowd that can be usually be found. Even the basketball courts were dead. Of the people that were there, most of them were students in their late teens and early twenties. In the lounge were three girls sitting apart from each other. two of the girls were on their laptops. On had a dell and the other had a ibook. The girl with the ibook was wearing a pink fleece. The other girl on the dell, had a mesh sweater on,. The girl at the tv had her back towards meso i really couldn't see what she looked like. She was using her arm as a head rest and was watching the news.

In the weight room/fitness room were 9 people. Most of which were in the weight room. Two of the bench presses were occupied, one on the squat rack, also both lat pull downs had people on them as well as the calf machine. On the calf machine was a girl, she was about 5ft9 with dark brown hair. She was thin and was very brief in her use of the machine. The two guys on the benches were both lifting the same amount of weight, they both had cross country shirts on so i assumed that they were runners. In the other room were twogirls and an older woman. all three were on the eliptical. I decided to leave the room because no one new was coming in so i headed for the fourth floor and observed the track.

At the track were two people running together, a male and a female. In the walking lane was a girl who seemed tired, she was probably doing another exercise of running just previously. on the side near the track was a group of six girls that were stretching. They did this for a couple of minutes and then began to jog. The fitness area by the track had two people in it. On was a guy and the other a girl. the girls was using the bike and the dude was on the chest press. I continued to observe this floor for a bit longer and then i left the rec.

I went back to observe my community today for the third time. I began my observations at 1:30 and continued to observe until 3:45. My primary focus in today’s observations were geared towards how the people look as well as what people come to workout on a Friday in terms of age demographics, gender, ect. When I first arrived most of the people there seemed to be graduate students or business professionals in some line of work. There was on woman probably in her mid to late twenties, she was about 5ft4 and she wore blue sweats. She was very fixated on her exercise. Next to the woman there were a few men probably in their early forties on the treadmills. On had a white beater with shorts, the other wore blue shorts with an orange shirt. In the weight room there were three dudes one was in his mid thirties, he was using the dumbbells and he had headphones on which seemed to bother him because he kept adjusting them. The other two looked like students, they were both rather tall. One was African American and the other was Asian.
Since there was a lack of people in the two rooms I went to the lounge just to see what kind of people were there. There were a few girls sitting at the tables, all three were in their early twenties. Two of the girls were doing some kind of homework or reading and the other was just sitting. She looked very bored. As I was there a group of high school students on a tour of the campus came in to the rec center. They seemed kind of clueless, one of the boys in the group was acting like a d-bag, probably to impress the girls in the group. He had a varsity jacket on and it seemed to get to his head.
After my incounter with the school children i went back to the weightroom it was a lot more crowded by now. Most of the people in both rooms were males, most f which seemed to be older than those that one see's on most weekdays. The women that were there were in their early to mid twenties. They all had somekind of listening devices on. Most of the men were in their late teens/early twenties. In general a lot of the people today were wearing sweats, rather than shorts. not many people were talking to each other so the side conversations stayed rather lame. I left at 3:45.

Rec IM 4:00 to 6:00pm

I went back to the rec today for observations, specifically the weightroom/fitness center, just as I had done last time. In the first twenty minutes that I was there not many people were exercising. In the weight room there were three guys, one was on the bench press, the other was doing curls and the third was using the free weights, all three had some variation of blue on. In the fitness center there were a few more people mostly girls. Five girls, one woman and two men. The girls were on the elliptical machines they were no more then twenty, the woman was in her mid fifties and was on the bike, she had graying brown hair and looked quite tired. The two men were in their late fifties early sixties, one was on the stair master and the other was on a elliptical, he was short and a bit over weight. This is how the first twenty minutes or so were like.

Afterwards it began to pick up, there was a sudden influx of people entering the fitness area. In the weight room all the bench presses had been filled up. There were two African Americans in their early twenties using one of the bench presses, one was spoting his friend who was having a difficult time getting the weight up. He had two forty fives on each side of the bar bringing his total to 225lbs. next to him there was an Asian man doing pull ups, he was probably forty years old but seemed to be in decent shape. As a said in my last observation, every once in a while a girl comes into the weight room, that was the case today and she was very pretty, she had a pink shirt on and seemed to get the attention of most of the us in the weight room. She seemed very athletic. she worked out for about ten minutes and then went back over to the fitness center. Withen the next few minutes I went back over into the fitness side of the room, there were a lot of people in there. All of the bikes and ellipticals had been filled, as well as some of the machines. Again that room was mostly occupied by girls with a few guys mostly older men.

A little more then an hour had gone by, at this point the traffic had evened out. I went back into the weight room and saw three men in there early twenties talking about the supplements that they use, one was saying that he takes 13 grams of creatine along with some other supplement. They talked about these supplements for 15 to 20 minutes, it was kind of amusing listening to what they were saying, the funny thing was that they actually seemed to talk more then they had worked out. I went back over into the fitness side and soon after, one of the creatine dudes came over, he sat at the chest press and started working out, thirty second later he got up and began to shout obscenities he was quite angry and began complaining about the proximity between his machine and the one next to him, he said that the people at the gym were idiots and then he got up and left. There was a lot of rage. From what I saw, I can only assume why he acted this way. I'm probably correct in my assumption, however I will refrain from saying it. It was nearing six at this point and I was finishing up my observations. The fitness area/weight room had both died down again, there were a few people left most of which were not students, they were in there 40s, 50s and 60s. I stayed for a few more minutes, no one came in so I left.

rec center

The first place that I began to observe was at the rec IM, I went to the weight room about the same time that I usually go to workout and as I was excersicing, I began to observe how people behave while lifting weights. Its kind of funny to see peoples reactions to certain things, for example if a pretty girl were to wonder in to the weights part of the workout center there would be a sudden serge of people who begin to lift weights, just to try and show off. We all do it but when one is acting that way you generally don't think about what you are doing.
Another thing that I have noticed is the lax atmoshpere, by this I mean it doesn't matter how much or how little one can lift everyone is respectfull to each other. There seems to be a certain sense of admiration for simply trying to improve upon ones self. At the same time however, its kind of easy to spot new people because they seem to be a little clueless as to where everything is, and they usually don't speak to anyone. Another thing thats always interesting is the side conversations, most of which I wont repeat however they are generally pretty funny to listen to. Next time I will go at a different time so that I can observe the changes in the people that go to workout.

Community observations

The three communities that I'm choosing to observe are the Eastern Rec, the Student center and World Wide sports in Ann Arbor