I’ve been a member of my gym for nearly thirty years and, value it as I do, it really has come into its own these last few weeks. Thanks, in the main to a variety of on-line classes for home torture.
Here’s my take on gyms first written several years ago.
18 – A VIEW FROM THE BACK OF THE CLASS
“Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy, you don’t need it: if you are sick you should not take it.”
Henry Ford
Growing up as a boy is about playing sport and chasing girls is it not? I tried my level best at both, stopping short of joining a netball team, but a gym held no appeal to me whatsoever as a means of keeping fit or anything else. They seemed to be dark, cold dungeons with clunking metal, populated by tattooed meat-heads.
In my dad’s garage was a rusty old Bullworker, a contraption of expanding springs that defied you to try to pull them apart, simultaneously risking losing my few chest hairs and having your nipples surgically removed as it snapped back.
However, with the end of my twenties looming it became clear to me that I could be seeing more of the phsyio’s table than the playing fields; so it was that I nervously entered the hitherto unknown world of the gym.
Sign Here
Plucking up the courage to go and sign up, all I can remember was a gorgeous leggy blonde on reception guaranteed to get you to sign your life away; she could have sold me anything. One look into the gym and it seemed to be a sea of lycra-clad women; this was Nirvana and all for twenty quid a month.
The gym was also a squash club at the time with a bar and a night club upstairs, known locally as The Last Chance Hotel. Allegedly, even after a gallon of Tetley’s at the local and smelling of curry and chips, if you did not score at the gym bar on a Friday night there was definitely something wrong with you.
My early years confidence did not need such an acid test, so I rarely ventured there. I was never let down by the safer option of fish and chips.
Choices, Choices
Back then there was nothing like the range of classes or mind-boggling machinery we now have. The treadmills were a real challenge positioned in front of the giant screen and the advent of pop videos bordering on soft porn. It seemed only a matter of time before I fell off the thing.
Gyms are as much a social as a physical arena. The lure of the class session has always had more appeal than grunting in front of a mirror trying to look like the next Arnold Schwarzenegger.
One of the first classes I tried was an early version of Body Pump, which should definitely come with a warning specifically aimed at the over-confident male of the species along the lines You Will Not Be Able to Move Tomorrow.
The big mistake, in a class largely populated by women, is being duped by the modest weights and assuming that you must choose at least twice that because you are not a girl. This is guaranteed to ensure that you will promptly collapse in a heap inside ten minutes.
Ain’t No Black In You
For days after my first class, my entire upper body and arms were on fire and I cried myself to sleep. It was not the weights but the combination of the numbers of reps plus the mental pressure of having to keep in time to music, a feat alien to me.
Bouncing up when fifty other people are squatting down does tend to set you apart from the crowd especially with via wall to wall mirrors. As I got more experienced, I took sinister pleasure witnessing the latest muscle-bound newbie stride confidently into the class, take a condescending and dismissive look at the various piles of weights and start to build a pile.
In a matter of minutes, the look of shock would spread slowly across his face, a realisation that being water boarded would have been more fun.
Mally Armstrong
Years before Pump, I’d discovered Circuits which ran Mondays and Thursdays with probably the best trainer we ever had in a guy called Mal. He ran the class for around twelve years with a devoted following of near disciples; it was a cult of sorts.
Circuits is a set of exercises moving from station to station, working in pairs. I chose my little, balding mate Winky in an effort to make me look good.
The presence of attractive girls often softened the pain as my body screamed in protest, the inner competitor always trying to beat the previous week’s achievements.
Any hopes of playing it cool and maybe landing a date were always nullified after an hour where you ended up a snot dripping pile of sweat. Winky also tried his best to make us look the only gays in the class.
Mally’s class ran so smoothly that change was neither needed nor well accepted. It was the only class where the male ratio approached fifty percent and we simply do not do change that well. Granted he would vary the exercise stations from time to time but the warm up was sacrosanct.
After a few years practice even me and Winky could jig about in time to get through the warm up without too much embarrassment. What messed us all up though was when Mal went on holiday.
Barbie
Barbie waltzed in resplendent in spray-on body suit, complete with head set, beaming bleached teeth and boobs so pumped up it was a wonder she was not attached to a basket and tethered to the ground.
A quick blast of More Music to Get Your Sledgehammer Out Volume 45 and off she went.
“Come on guys… wooooooo! Is this great… woooooooo!! And one – two – three – four woooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!”
Soon it was a question of who wanted to stuff the microphone down Silicon Valley for a bit of peace and quiet. Bodies often went everywhere but the right direction; we must have looked like maggots in a fishermen’s tin. As far as the back row was concerned, it would have been fair to note there ain’t no black there.
When Mal came back he was treated like a returning hero and once again we slipped back into our routines like a drunk finds a favourite bar stool.
Competition Overkill
Gyms have exploded nationally and at a detriment to the independents, many squeezed out by the nationals with deep pockets. We now have a bewildering array of machines and more classes than the local adult college.
Despite the popularity of gyms though and the deluded notion that we are a sporting nation, we are now officially the fattest in Europe.
For many gyms are simply a vanity pursuit. Some spend as much time in the spray tan booth as on the running machine although you are unlikely to trip up in there and break your jaw.
Equally as puzzling are those who seem to come to the gym simply for somewhere to chat. You can spot them sat at a machine they have no idea what function it serves. They retain the gym direct debit like a badge of honour as they make their way up the waiting list for a gastric band.
Others view the gym as a place to preen and pose and the gym changing room is a zoo. As eccentric as I may get in later life, I will never revert to standing naked in front of a mirror with a hair-dryer caressing my bollocks.
It’s just not the same at the gym any more but I cannot wait for it to open again.
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