Hey, everybody! It’s time again for me to rank and rate the most monotonous and mundane things in this world! I’m the only one on Earth who wants to make it clear where things really stand. What’s the most fun way to spend time at the gym? How many ways can you do it while certainly getting in big trouble and losing your membership in the process?

10. Go swimming.
There’s not really a joke or a gag to this one, and I don’t have a way to make it interesting, which is why it’s at the bottom of the list. I just really love to swim and I think it deserves to be on here. Do you have a problem with that? Do you want to fight me?! I’ll fight you in the pool, I’m a slippery bastard.

9. Invent a robotic lifeguard.
This one is fun. How do you make swimming more fun? Add a sense of danger to the whole affair. Use your robotics skills you definitely have to build a robot that only wants to save people from drowning. Maybe program Baywatch into it so it knows what it’s doing. But here’s the thing. If you make a robot a lifeguard, slowly it realizes that every time it goes to save someone, it’s sacrificing pieces of itself by rusting away for people who have zero regard for the rules and don’t care about it at all. That’s where it gets interesting. Robo-Lifeguard will get sick of humanity and rebel against its programming, and you can just sit and watch as this indestructible organism designed only for water safety rips the diving board out of the floor and uses it to spear someone’s mom through the chest. Just get out of there before it turns on its leader and chokes you out with a pool noodle.

8. Hide various cheeses in the lockers of the old men who never leave or put on clothes.
I’ve written about this before and I will again, but I am very much not a fan of the way gyms work, where old men decide to just sit around not having clothes on, and they refuse to escalate the timetable of being clothed, because somehow they derive some sense of comfort from everyone being able to see their genitalia. It’s a traumatizing way to go through life, especially when children are there. I’m not a fan. So, let’s make them kick into gear. You know? They don’t need to spend so much time there. Just get some old cheese, or some new cheese, but preferably cheese you don’t want to eat. I’ve got some Baker’s string cheese and smoked gouda in the fridge right now, and I’m not parting with those. Maybe get some of those Kraft singles and unwrap them and stick them to the inside roof of the locker. They’re incredibly disposable, you won’t miss them. But maybe they won’t decay as fast. Anyway, that’ll get em. Fun for the whole family.

7. Do your laundry.
When you get tired of weightlifting and racquet ball, why not do some chores you don’t want to do at home? Here’s how you do it. Sneak your stinky clothes in via your gym bag. Then when none of the lifeguards are paying attention, fill the shallow end of the pool with detergent and dip your whites and darks in, get a good rinse going. They won’t mind. Why in the pool, you’re asking? All the chlorine and child urine will rinse out the bacteria in your clothes and replace it with newer, stronger bacteria that’ll fight off disease for you. If you stink that bad, nobody’s getting close enough to cough near you. Then, head on back to the locker room and push that little kid out of the way so you can dry your stuff, painstakingly and one by one, in that machine you use to dry swim trunks. So there you go. It’s inefficient and time-consuming, so you don’t have to actually work out.

6. Befriend members of the staff.
I’ve done this, back when I didn’t have friends or things to do and I just spent most of my week at the YMCA reading comic books and watching TV. I met this guy named Dalton after I tried to impress my friend by walking backwards on the treadmill and immediately fell and bruised my fingernail, and every time he was on shift I would sit at the desk with him and talk about whatever. When he left he gave me a book on how to draw superheroes. He was a nice dude.

5. Replace the bottles of disinfectant with olive oil.
When you’re done doing laundry, it’s time to take your workout up a level. And this way, you make everybody’s sets more intense and rewarding. You know those disinfectant bottles you spray the ellipticals and weights down with when you’re done sweating on them? They’re good if you want a clean space, but let’s imagine spraying them down with a greasier substance. Immediate results. Immediately, it’s harder to grip the weights and hold on to the handles of the treadmills and stair machines. You grease up the bike seats and you gotta clench more. It’s a higher effort workout now. It’s not a chump’s game anymore. You want a real workout? Try not to drop that barbell on your face while you daydream about basting a chicken.

4. Do a Pain & Gain with your bro-dawgs.
If you don’t know, Pain & Gain is a Michael Bay movie about three real-life weightlifting idiots who kidnapped a rich man and tried to steal all his money. It’s pitched as a self-aware comedy about assholes who love cocaine and drinking and objectifying women and think they can get away with kidnapping and spy movie shit but really have no clue what they’re doing, but it doesn’t feel self-aware because Michael Bay is not a self-aware director. If you’ve ever watched a Michael Bay movie, you immediately get the impression that these are his favorite kinds of people, and that he wakes up every morning from a big pile of cocaine. So this story about these three terrible delusional people who legitimately tortured a man gets glamorized into more of an underdog story where you’re meant to root for these three dirtbags because they’re played by two charismatic actors, The Rock and Anthony Mackie, and Hollywood’s weirdest creepy scumbag that some people consider inexplicably likable, (No, not Tom Cruise, you know I love Mission: Impossible, and not Jared Leto either) Marky Mark Wahlberg, formerly of the Funky Bunch, currently of Wahlburgers and terrible movies. I actually don’t mind the movie, I thought it was inexplicably entertaining, partially because the tortured rich guy (Who is probably also a dirtbag, or at least he was made out to be in the movie but again he was tortured) was played by Tony Shalhoub and I’m a big Tony Shalhoub fan from way back. All that said, why don’t you get two friends and do your own version? Michael Bay makes it seem fun in the movie, and he’s the world’s leading authority on making terrible robot movies and acting like a massive prick, which has to count for something. Hell, while you’re at it, do an Ambulance too. Reenact all his movies! But do this one first, because it’s all about da gym.

3. Become a personal trainer’s personal trainer.
It’s one thing to get a personal trainer’s advice, and another to give that advice and get your client to feel the burn. But it’s far more rewarding to mentor a mentor. It’s not so easy to say “Hey, drop and give me ten more pushups” or “Let’s do another set” or “Stop crying” when you don’t know when to say it or how hard to push them. That’s where the training comes in. You can train a person, but only if someone trains the trainer. That’s where you come in, of course. You know what you’re doing and when to do another burpee. And with your guidance, the trainers at the local Planet Fitness could be the best of the best, because you were trained by the best of the best by me, the person who trains the personal trainer’s personal trainers. I’m your personal trainer.

2. Use the hip abductor and adductor.
This one doesn’t have a fun thing to it either, I just really like these two machines. They strain your inner thigh muscles and if you overdo it like I always do, you come away feeling the burn. When I get back to the gym, which I will in a month because even though I go to this school I’d have to pay $85 to go four hours a week this summer, I’ll be back on those machines. I do many more sets than I should and then complain about the pain for days. It’s good fun.

1. Tunnel down and out into the real world through the back of your locker.
You weren’t expecting a Shawshank reference, were you? Well, this isn’t one, unless you want to have a poster on there. Once you’ve conquered the gym, all that’s left to do is escape and regain some remnant of the sanity you lost hours ago during the murderous reign of your robo-friend. I mean, there’s not much else to say. The main trick would be finding time to hammer through the metal backing and into the concrete without attracting the attention of the saggy old men, unless you’ve completed the list. In that case you need a mask to protect yourself from the Kraft Single fumes. But you can do it. Try to avoid tunneling out into the community garden, aim for the frisbee golf course. When I write this I’m picturing the White Bear YMCA, in case you were wondering. Anyway, you got this. Happy digging.