I am not only circumferentially challenged...
but coordinationally challenged also. (Pipe down at the back - of course it's a word..)
Thus, gyms are not happy places for me. Nevertheless, I go, I sweat, I pay my dues...and then I go home and eat chocolate, thus rendering my endeavours fairly pointless. Recently however, I've pretty much stopped going due to the tale of woe I'm about to tell.

Whilst I was at uni I used to drive to the gym, do a bit on the bike, a bit of swimming, maybe a bit of crosstrainer and then potter off home. This would happen perhaps three times a week.
Then I graduated and moved back home. Consequently, I stopped going to the gym as there wasn't one near my parents. I got a bit...wobbly. Wobblier, anyway.

A few months later, cue new job, new gym membership, new ‘mature and determined outlook’, the works. In order to use the gym here, you have to have had an induction. This means booking in with one of the freakishly musclebound fanatics that ‘man’ the front desk – if indeed ‘man’ is the right word, as they stand apeishly, overly muscled knuckles dragging on the floor, barely capable of speech unless prompted by certain sports-based vocabulary. For instance, ask one about his ‘team’ (any team) or how much he can bench press, and he will quote you chapter and verse. Ask one how he feels about politics or the weather, and he will fix you with a bewildered, almost bovine expression of bemusement.

I arrive for my induction, greet ‘thug of the day’ and proceed to the equipment. A neuron fizzles fitfully in to life as he asks me what I do (‘Biomedical science’, I reply, and it fitfully fizzles off again leaving him with looking puzzled…). He dutifully shows me each piece of equipment, how it works and what it does, then passes me over to the stick-thin, hatchet-faced shrew who will ‘write me an exercise programme’.
I protest that I don’t want one, but she takes my arm in her vice-like yet bony grip and marches me to the treadmill with a glint in her eye that says ‘I’m going to make you suffer, you chubby fuck.’ I protest yet further; I can’t use treadmills. They make me wobble vociferously – as one foot comes down it causes a tide of outward ripples – these generally make a return as the other foot comes down, causing a further tide of ripples which bash together in the middle, giving birth to little progeny ripples which get together with their mates and have punchups with their elders. Given that most treadmills seem to be positioned in front of mirrors, on the rare occasions I jog I stop after 10 minutes feeling seasick.

She forces me on the thing regardless, cranking the speed up so high that I feel like a hamster on a wheel. Once more I protest whilst I still have the breath to do so, but she insists. After 6 minutes of sprinting I reach for the red stop button, sure that I’m about to pass out, but she slaps my hand away. Irritated, I try again, so she turns down the speed and lets me continue at a sensible pace. Until the 9th minute when, without warning she turns it back up as high as it will go. Unsurprisingly, I shoot off the back of the thing in a cartoon-esque style – you can almost see the dust cloud, and not even Daffy Duck could have done it better.
‘Oh – don’t you normally go for a sprint finish?’, she sniggers as I pick my carpet-burned carcass off the floor.

We move on to the cross trainer. Not the normal, ‘I-can-do-this-forever, or-at-least-til-neighbours-has-finished’ crosstrainer, which I actually quite like. No, this beast supposedly works every muscle in your body and wipes your arse too.
Still, I’m game, so I give it a go even though I feel off balance and constantly like I’m about to fall off; even despite the fact this silly shrieking cow is going ‘come on, faster! Is that all you’ve got? Come on!’ etc etc. She’s really pissing me off so I go for the burn, only to lose my rhythm and yes, you’ve guessed it – fly off the back. As I slump to the floor for the second time in 10 minutes, the freewheeling footpad catches me in the face and breaks my nose which gushes bloodily, causing the shrieking cow to shriek more and me to tell her to fuck rightly off and storm out of the gym.

I’ve started cycling in to work instead now.


Length? Well…all those glistening muscles must be compensating for something, surely?
(berk, Thu 9 Jul 2009, 15:32, Reply)