Two a.m. at the Gym. It sounds like the title of a horror movie, but for Joey Myers and Randall Wood, it’s everyday life.
“I used to be a cop,” Myers says. “I got used to the hours.”
Myers is the overnight supervisor for the new-ish World Gym downtown. He works with Wood most weeknights, cleaning the machines, stacking weights, restocking the snacks and drinks for sale, and doing load after load of laundry, folding the no-longer-sweaty towels just so.
Their shift starts at 9 p.m., when the gym is still bustling. But by midnight, it’s gone quiet.
“After 1, there’s not many people at all,” Myers says.
On average, around 20 to 30 people come to work out between midnight and 4 a.m., when the morning rush starts to pick up.
“It’s never what you would think,” Myers says of the late-night crowd. There’s a nurse who works out regularly, a guy who works for AT&T. Sometimes it’s people who work the night shift but have a night off, trying to keep on schedule, or a handful of bartenders and bouncers from Broadway after the bars shut down.
But a lot of the time, it’s just insomniacs.
Wood is one of those insomniacs. He works full time during the day at a BMW dealership and full time overnight at the gym. When does he sleep?
“I don’t,” Wood laughs. “Seriously, I get about four hours a day.”
Even in the empty gym, hip-hop blasts full volume, energizing the few souls who stop by. Tony Jordan, a 40-something Nordstrom employee, swears that between 2 and 3 a.m. is “the perfect time to work out.”
“For years I was up all night — I worked in forex trading, futures and commodities trading at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange,” says Jordan. “We were up all night. So I’d work out 1 o’clock, 2 o’clock in the morning, because they had gyms in downtown Chicago that were open 24 hours. So I’m used to it. It’s the best workout.”
Jordan says that as a former college football player, he doesn’t need the motivation of classes or others working out beside him. He just likes the empty gym, where he can do his workout in peace, and then go home and sleep.
And it’s true — working out at 2 a.m. means no lines for equipment, no one forgetting to wipe their sweat off your bike seat, a completely clean and empty locker room. There’s no gym “scene.” It’s just you and maybe one or two other people doing their routine, politely nodding to each other, then going about your business. In some ways, maybe, it’s the ideal gym, the almost-empty gym. If only you can stay awake for it.
