Making Friends At The Gym Is No Sweat

(From The Hartford Courant/The Los Angeles Times -- By Jeannine Stein)

My friend Rita and I have been pals for about seven years. We see each other several times a week and share the most intimate details of our lives, from work to our marriage to families.

The thing is, we've almost never seen each other outside of the walls of the gym we belong to. Yes, a couple of times we've run into each other at the Farmers Market, but because that immediately follows our Sunday morning workout, it feels like an extension of the gym.

Rita is my gym friend. This is different from a workout buddy. Workout buddies meet regularly for the primary purpose of exercising together, coaxing one another through that last set of bicep curls. Gym friends don't really care if you do that last set of bicep curls; they want to know what you thought of last night's episode of THE APPRENTICE or whether that dinner with the in-laws went smoothly.

It's a relationship with few strings attached that usually doesn't extend beyond the gym, and that's fine.

Making Friends At The Gym Is No Sweat