sounds like homework excuses, doesn't it.LOL

kate
Brain workout:   Devising exercise excuses
By Kathy Manweiler
September 26, 2006

Did you work out today? No?
Don't bother racking your brain for an excuse.

                   ( P H O T O )
   Fitness directors say many people will use any
   weak excuse they can think of to avoid getting
   off the couch and exercising, as shown in the
   photo illustration.

If you don't feel like exercising, just admit it - or get over it.
The staff at your gym truly does not want to hear that you can't
work out because your cat stubbed its toe.
That's only one of many silly excuses that would-be exercisers have
given to fitness experts.
"Some people actually come straight out and say, 'I'm just lazy' or
'I hate exercise,: " says P.J. Barrett, director of wellness and
personal training at the East Branch YMCA in Wichita, Kan.
But others aren't nearly that direct.
"People will find any excuse that they can if they're looking for
one," says Colette Gorges, fitness director at Fitness 2000.
"They just do. They'll use anything."
Jessica Tarbell, metro fitness and health director at the Greater
Wichita YMCA, hears a lot about the parking lot. People tell her
they don't feel like exercising because they have to park too far
away at the gym.
"It's like, 'I want to park as close as I can to the front door, but
when I get in here, I'm going to get on the treadmill and walk five
miles,'" Tarbell says.
Sometimes reality television gets in the way of a gym member's
reality. "People will say, 'I have to stay home and watch 'Survivor'
or 'American Idol,'" Gorges says.
Weather of all types can keep many people away from a workout.
Others claim they can't possibly exercise during holiday seasons,
vacations or when the kids are out of school.
Some use a simple case of the sniffles as a reason to stay on the
couch.
"You don't want to work out when you're truly under the weather, but
if it's just a little cold, you kind of have to ask yourself, 'OK,
am I really that sick?'" Tarbell says.
"One time a lady told me her garage door wouldn't come up,' says
Wendy Williamson, a senior level trainer at Genesis Health Clubs
in Wichita.
Williamson recalls one gym member who found a creative way to get
around her husband pressuring her to work out. "She really wasn't
interested, but she knew if she told him she didn't go, he'd be
upset with her," Williamson says. So instead of going to the gym,
she just took her workout clothes out of her drawer and put them in
the laundry hamper so her husband would assume that she had worked
out.
"I've heard the excuse that people are too old to exercise, and
that's completely ridiculous,' says Tracy Lerch of Lerch Personal
Fitness. "The older people get, they really need to be doing
something so that functionally they can take care of themselves on a
daily basis."
Some say they can't exercise because they smoke.
"That's ridiculous," Tarbell says. "Those smokers are saying, 'I'm
going to use one bad behavior to prevent me from doing any type of
good behaviors.'"
But the scapegoats our fitness experts seem to hear about the most
are pets.
"I can't come in," a client told Williamson one day. "My cat threw
up. I've got to clean that up."
"You can't clean it up and get here in the next 10 minutes?"
Williamson says she asked the client.
Other clients tell Gorges they can't make it to the gym because
their dogs get lonely.

... Firemen are proud of their hoses.
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