The matronly housewife in tracks wearing a gash of lipstick who walked in to the gym was clearly a newbie. Oh well, time for a treat: bending elegantly at the waist, fingers pointed towards the toes (though, truly, grazing only past the knees) I breathed gently in and out as I proceeded with my cardio build-up. Wiping away my perspiration as I did crunches, I wheezed a bit; putting a stoic face on the aching muscles, I smiled bravely. This was how the gym regulars did it — but instead of being impressed, the nasty old geezer cackled wickedly. “Don’t worry,” she sympathised, “it’ll get better after the first day” – and before I could point out that I’d been coming in regularly for some days now – was off and running on the treadmill.
Clearly, treadmills were a favourite and the gym had a half-dozen. Humiliatingly, my trainer would choose one right in the centre for my 20 minutes, setting a speed that would have been embarrassing if it wasn’t realistic — he didn’t want me toppling off gasping like a fish out of water. Young women and middle-aged men on either side ran on those awful machines while I clung to mine hoping the conveyor wouldn’t sweep me off as I huffed and puffed.
News that I’d signed up at a gym travelled faster than lightning on the family grapevine. The kids signed up too — not so much because they wanted to as much as to keep an eye out on their old man. “You,” chortled my mother – that evil woman – in a gym, oh I can just imagine it!” “Ha ha,” laughed my sister, “ha ha, ha ha, ha ha…”. “You don’t want to wind up in hospital,” cautioned my little brother. “You could have just done yoga with me,” snapped my wife — and then suspiciously, “are you having an affair?”
But an affair was too high a price to pay for exercising on machines designed to impose the most horrible tortures on one even as the trainers – looking smug because they had flat stomachs, curse them, and just wait till they are my age anyway – led me from one that stretched the shoulders to another that trained the thighs, equipment that squeezed the waist, stretched the tendons, cramped the legs — till at least I no longer knew whether I was one huge aching mass, or zillions of pinpricks of pain in different parts of the body I didn’t even know existed.
All that gear was horrible to a fault, pulsing out my racing heartbeat in large red numbers so everyone around could read it, showing up how s-l-o-w-l-y the calories burned, indicated that in 10 minutes of furious pedalling all I’d managed was 3 kms — “and that’s at the lowest level” a trainer pointed out in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear.
They made me lift weights with my arms while all around me chokra boys lifted several times as much with their legs. When I stumbled off the cross-trainer – five minutes, with generous pauses in between – I could no longer feel my legs, and zig-zagged to collapse on what I thought was a bench, but which came with a training genie attached who immediately put a beam over my chest, added weights and urged me to lift.
It might kill me yet, but before that, I’ll at least outrun the auntie on the treadmill. I even have my riposte ready: “Don’t worry,” I’ll tut-tut as I get into my stride and she breaks into a sweat, “it’ll get better after the first day.”