From Anne Clelland:

As I mentioned in my post on Handshake 2.0's business model, when I'm a fan, I'm a fan.

I'm a fan of The Weight Club.  I do strength training two to three times per week at the University City Boulevard location in Blacksburg, Virginia.

The Weight Club has its quirks.

Taking inspiration from Barry Welch's Ten Truths in Ten Years at Internet Databases, and Davd Letterman's Top Ten Lists, I offer you a top ten list of observations and insights from attending The Weight Club for about 2 1/2 years.

10. When you're running on the elevated track on the side with the medicine balls, the flooring pops just like someone is about to sprint past you, so you pour on the speed and end up competing with your lonesome.  You're gasping by the time you get to the dumbbell side of the track.  You jog, recover, then forget by the time you're on the other side, and fly solo by the medicine balls.

9. The second stall in the women's locker room also contains strength and agility training equipment, requiring an athletic series of vigorous maneuvers to flush.

8. I don't know what your cycling spin class is like, but at The Weight Club we do it in the dark to throbbing music in a black room painted with tiny white stars and apples missing a bite.  Strings of white Christmas tree lights twinkle higher in the "sky."

7. After exerting oneself to song lyrics via satellite radio at least 100 times, Who are you? becomes existentially uplifting, and Damn thing gone wild, bam-ba-lam, a line of poetry.

6. Personal trainer Don Belote, at age 52, did a single, partial dead lift of 1045 lbs.

5. It's highly recommended not to leave your weights on the machines.  Don is watching.

4.  The regulars have spent years in each other's company and witnessed the vulnerability of partially clothed bodies, blood, sweat, tears - or sweat that looks like tears - and have never uttered a word to each other.  The communication medium that speaks volumes about respect is The Nod.

3.  I've seen people on crutches come off of them, people destined forever to crutches work their upper bodies like Olympians, frames made skeletal by chemotherapy become bold with vitality, youth with challenges learn to play catch, and pound-after-pound, 50 or more, leave a body, releasing the inhabitant to live a life unburdened. 

2.  The Weight Club is a non-profit organization.

1.  Miracles happen there.