I’m no gym rat myself, but I’ve encountered plenty of complaints, at home and online, about the noisy men who work out at gyms. Here’s a case where truly there is nothing new under the sun.
Around the year 65, Seneca, the philosopher and former tutor to Nero, wrote this to his friend Lucilius:
“I swear it — silence is not as necessary to a scholarly retreat as you might think. Here is cacophony sounding all about me — for I am living right upstairs from the bathhouse. Call to mind every sort of awful noise that grates on the ears. When the stronger men do their exercises, swinging their hand weights about and straining with the effort (or pretending to), I hear the grunts each time they exhale, their rasping and gasping for breath. When I get some idle fellow who’s happy with an ordinary man’s massage, I hear the hands slapping his shoulders and the change of sound when they strike with the cupped hand or with the palm. Then if a ballplayer shows up and starts counting how many he catches, I’m done for! Now add the quarrelsome type — and the one caught stealing — and the one who likes to hear himself sing in the bath chamber — and also the ones who jump into the swimming pool with a great splash. Besides all these, who are at least using their normal voices, imagine the tweezer man screeching over and over in his shrill falsetto, just to attract attention: he is never silent unless he is plucking someone’s armpits and making him cry out instead. Now add the cries of the drink man, the sausage man, the bakery man, and all the different sellers of cooked foods, singing out their wares in their distinctive tones.”
From Seneca, Letters on Ethics, Letter 56. You can read the full letter, in an older translation, at Wikisource.
I truly sympathize with Seneca, and with all of you who spend time in public gyms.