My apartment complex officially has a screamer. At first I thought he was just a loud grunter, but yesterday he crossed the line from “possibly acceptable but annoying grunter” to “completely inappropriate, possibly psychotic, screamer.”

If I polled 1,000 people, I bet 999 of them would say it’s perfectly acceptable for someone to make grunting noises when he or she is working out at the gym. I agree. Some grunting when you’re lifting a lot of weight and trying to push through the end of an exercise is fine (even though I still think it’s unnecessary).

But if I polled those same 1,000 people and asked if it was acceptable for someone at the gym to scream “NO PAIN, NO PAIN” during every exercise while also doing psycho runs in between sets, I hope at least 999 of them would say it’s outrageously inappropriate.

What’s a psycho run? It’s a phrase I invented yesterday to describe what I saw as I entered our apartment’s gym: a tank top-wearing bro running laps around the gym literally shadow boxing in each corner of the room. Wait, isn’t shadow boxing when someone punches the air as if they’re boxing? If that’s true, then this guy wasn’t doing that. He was real boxing: actually punching the walls, including a yoga mat he had leaned up against one wall to act as his punching bag. He then proceeded with the “NO PAIN, PUSH IT, NO PAIN, PUSH IT” screams throughout the rest of his workout (not just when he was lifting a ton of weight…he also did it when he was simply doing regular sit ups).

Just to be crystal clear in my explanation, I’m not talking about someone who’s saying motivational phrases under his breath. I’m talking about someone who was screaming so loud that I couldn’t hear what was coming out of my headphones even though the volume was maxed out and I was 20 feet away from the screamer.

Also keep in mind that this is a gym at an apartment complex. It’s a room that’s probably smaller than most peoples’ living rooms. And of course it was just the two of us at the gym. Maybe I’m overreacting a little if I’m in a big gym surrounded by lots of people. At least then it would be easier to ignore the awkwardness. But in the context of our gym, it was a shocking experience.

So, readers, what should I do to address this problem? I’ve encountered this guy in my gym three times already. How do I get it to stop?