Me with my gym purse. And my awesome hat. It was St. Patrick’s day in Turbokick! And no, I didn’t work out in the hat. (Thanks to Johnathan for the pic!)I carry a gym purse. This is separate from a gym bag – you know, the thing that normal people take to the gym. Don’t get me wrong, I do have a gym bag; I use it to carry diapers, wipes, padlock, extra socks, a neon blue sports bra for Gym Buddy Allison, that sort of thing. But I happen to be a girl with a lot of stuff. It seemed like once I was on the gym floor, I was constantly juggling my iPod, ID cards, sweat towel, water bottle, keys and weight gloves so I picked up this cute lil’ Seussian number from the dollar store to help manage my trail of fitness crap.
Unfortunately, like any purse, it has turned into a crap receptacle of sorts. I cleaned out my Gym Purse today and in addition to the above-mentioned essentials, this is what I found:
– sweat bands (to protect my wrists against kettlebell thumpage)
– a Zumba music CD lent to me by a friend so I can “work on my hips.”
– a magazine workout leftover from the Drop 10 Pounds Ridiculousness Experiment
– a back issue of People magazine (Turbo Jennie gives me hers after she’s done – ostensibly so I can use it as blog fodder but really so I can read those mushy human interest stories they stick in as filler in between all the celebs. Seriously, the one a few weeks ago about a runner girl helping homeless men made me teary!)
– a business card with about 10 random phone numbers and e-mail addresses jotted on it
– chapstick
– a partially unwrapped tampon
– 10 bobby pins
– a sweaty t-shirt that I had shed at some point during a past workout
– a book for Gym Buddy Krista (I brought it on Saturday, girl!!)
– a Las Vegas, NV keychain that Gym Buddy Allison brought me as a souvenir from the vacation she didn’t take me on. (She took her husband instead! Seriously!!)
AND, my personal favorite….
– about 300 tiny pieces of paper with random CrossFit, Monkey Bar Gym and other sundry workouts scribbled on them. It’s gotten to the point where every time I pull my sweat towel out of my purse, they rain out like confetti. Par-TAY!
But you know what I don’t have in my Gym Purse? A hair band.
I don’t know about you but I can do without a lot of things during a workout – I’m even okay if I forget my water bottle and am forced to make pit stops at the water fountain – but I cannot endure a workout with my hair in my face. I made this awful discovery during the warm-up track of TurboKick the other day. Panicked, I started asking all the Gym Buddies if they had a spare I could use. No luck. And then a girl whom I have spoken to a few times but don’t know terribly well, jumped in to save the day producing a hair band out of her gym bag (note: it was most definitely not a purse.) It was the nicest act of Stranger Gym Kindness ever directed towards me! I think I might have teared up a little.
After class was over, I fished it out of my sweat-soaked hair to give it back to her. Taking one look at the wet headband, she shook her head and said, “Why don’t you just keep it?”
Realizing how nasty I was, I quickly apologized, “Oh, do you want me to wash it and give it back to you tomorrow?”
Gym Buddy Allison burst out laughing. “Who washes a hair band?”
Gym Buddy Lisseth jumped in, “I would if it were a scrunchie.”
Gym Buddy Krista: “Who wears scrunchies anymore?!”
Me: “Well maybe I have lice!”
Allison: “You have lice*??”
By this point, Nice Girl was gone and I was the proud owner of a new red and black hair band. I tried to tuck it into my purse. It wouldn’t fit.
So – now that you’ve heard my confession, any one else have a gym purse (identified as a bag solely for the purpose of carting your junk around the gym floor, not schlepping it to and from the gym)? What are your essentials for a gym workout? How do you carry them around? Are you one of those people who carts their whole huge gym bag onto the fitness floor and then uses it to take up a whole weight bench? (Noooo! Not my readers!) Have you ever done a random act of gym kindness?
*My apologies to the gym buddies for condensing a much longer and funnier conversation into the above…
I personally bring a backpack with me to the gym with clothes to change into. I just bring a sweat towel and a water bottle with me when I am working out.
Gym purse.. now thats a good idea!!
I haven’t given up on juggling my ipod, keys, id card, water bottle, towel and weight gloves yet! I’m just starting to get the hang of it; can’t give up the balancing act just yet. haha
I’m the girl that’s always picking up ppls towels when they slide off the face of the treadmill and fling back towards the ellipticals at my gym. I also like to warn people when their cardio machine wasn’t wiped off by the last person that sweat buckets all over the place. I think those count as random acts of gym kindess! Although sometimes I get weird looks for handing over the fallen/flung towels..
ahhhh GYMPURSE I miss ye.
I only have my crumbfilledcrapladen diaperbackpack now.
All I bring on the workout floor is a towel and sometimes my ipod. Sometimes a water bottle during cardio. Everything else goes in the locker!
I have a little bag too, though being an unreformed tomboy I could never call it a purse. It’s mainly for my big-ass water bottle, iPod, and gym towel. Somehow 3 things exceeds the limit of loose items I am willing to carry around.
(Oh yeah, and every backpack, bag, and coat pocket I own must have a long-forgotten, partially unwrapped tampon in it. Should I ever be required to USE one of these in an emergency I’m not sure what the health consequences would be. Toxic shock? Or maybe just really bad cooties?).
Ha! I have a (seasonal) gym purse!
In winter, I wear a lighter-weight jacket with zippered pockets underneath my winter coat. I keep my hairbands and iPod in the inner-jacket’s pockets. Keys and gloves and such go in the outer jacket’s pockets.
In summer, I have a small zippered clutch-style purse with a wrist strap that holds all my junk.
I recently gave a hair band to a cashier at a grocery store who looked utterly frustrated with her hair being in her face. I empathized and dug through my purse to find a spare for her to have. Yay for kindness of strangers!
Ahh, no don’t have a Gym Purse 🙂
I don’t carry anything around in the gym except an attitude lol!
Have to say, nobody at my gym can approach your wonderful style!
I don’t have a gym purse, but sometimes I do have to make pit stops back at the locker room to switch out “accessories”… aka, the ipod for strength training inspiration, maybe a magazine if I’m on the elliptical, a book/school notes if I’m doing the stationary bike for a cool down/rest day… so sometimes I WISH I had one.
However, the bottom line is that I carry around so much CRAP in my normal life (every day on the walk to and from work… purse, gym bag, lunch, textbook… I look like a well-dressed/well-fed homeless person!) that I find it liberating to be in the gym WITHOUT all that stuff.
And, secondly, the hair tie is THE most important workout accessory. I have worked out in dress socks (knee-high trouser socks no less) because I forgot mine, a lacy camisole (from underneath a respectable button-down that I wore to work)… Clearly I need to spend some extra time packing my bag in the morning! I’ve worked out in silence when the radio was broken and the magazines all gone… but I cannot work out with my hair in my face. It’s a deal-breaker.
BK got me a Vera Bradely gym bag for Christmas. It serves to allow me to get my crap to the gym, but also as a point for me to pick stuff up/drop it back off (my gym has Sirius and I don’t care too much about the music, so it’s a water bottle, notebook for tracking workouts, and weight gloves).
I have a backpack that I use. I’ve got my phone and keys and wallet. Then there’s chapstick and lip gloss, a compact mirror, hand sanitizer, pins for my hair, hand lotion with sunscreen, my water, music and headphones.
And I have seen some gals at my gym working out with their hair not pulled back – not even pulled up in a pony tail. Ugh! How do you run with all your hair down like that? It would drive me nutso.
I carry my backpack into the workout room with me, but I’m the instructor, and can get away with it, lol!
When I use the bike or take a class at the gym, I put my stuff in my locker and carry a towel and water.
(And I do believe that bags, whatever kind they may be, eventually turn into receptacles of stuff. And I have both given and received hair bands.)
I hear you on keeping hair out of my face. I have short hair so a headband or clips are even more important than a rubber band. Needing water is a close second.
Until two years ago when my sister gave me one for my birthday, I hadn’t owned a purse since high school. I used a compact Franklin Day Planner until I had kids. Now I use my purse sometimes when I go on dates with my husband. Yeah, I keep everything in a small diaper bag. Now that my youngest is about to potty train, I guess I am going to have to stop using a diaper bag.
I hate carrying bags. I like to be free, so I wear clothes with pockets – one for my cell phone and keys and maybe a place for my wallet. Sometimes I just stick my ID and credit card in my pocket to go shopping. The few times I have worked out in a gym, I either left everything in a locker or brought a sweatshirt with pockets, but even that seemed like a bother. I travel light, too. I made it a week in Hawaii with one carry on bag that fit in the overhead compartment in the coach section of the plane.
This is exactly why I never look in a woman’s purse. You never know what kind of weight shit you’re going to find in there… 🙂
i have a ‘gym purse’. it is one of those thin sling string backpack things. you know. anyway, it has my water bottle, a tampon just in case, gum, towel, ipod, my keys, and a small wallet that i move back and forth to my real purse that holds a few business cards, drivers license, some cash and a credit card. i also lug in a diaper bag but leave it in childcare with the kiddo. if i am changing clothes at the gym i have another bag that has my clean clothes, etc in it that i lock up in the lockers.
A gym purse would solve all my gym problems! Thanks for the tip.
Well, that’s a stinkin’ good idea (literally stinkin’ based on what you found it in): aside from the clown-car phenomenon going on with that tiny bag. I have a solution for you if you enjoy unsolicited advice, which based on your blog I’m sure you do. I cut off all my hair on Friday and no more hair band issues. Technically, not all my hair, as I still have a lot of short hair on my head, and hopefully short hair in places such as my legs, underarms, and upper lip. But this is supposed to be about your gym purse. Again, bright idea and glad to see you got a bright purse to match.
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