Saturday was my second induction at the gym. As I walk into the changing rooms to find some guys bare arse staring at me while he was bent over to remove his kegs I was reminded of why the idea of joining this type of establishment had never much appealed to me. However, after condensing this image into a tiny little ball and storing with the other disturbing and angry thoughts, I myself got changed and headed for the exercise bike to warm up.
After my recommended fifteen minutes on the bike at level 5 (way too low apparently) I beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about this fitness malarkey; I wasn’t even feeling look-warm never mind “the burn”. Then Craig Miller walked in to greet me.
Craig Miller is a school friend of David’s who I has a casual acquaintance with and who just happened to be my instructor for the weight training I was about to receive. Now for me going to the gym is embarrassing enough, actually embarrassing may be too strong a word but can’t think of another so let’s just say it doesn’t sit right with me. Anyway, I was saying that being that I’m not too comfortable with the gym experience as I am, having a person I know instruct me didn’t help put me at ease. That being said Miller was very professional and did not stray into personal territory whilst instructing me. Though I do think he may be trying to kill me.
Each machine I went on he would predict a weight which I could lift and then ask if I was comfortable with that weight. I said yes each time and each time the weight was increased. He explained that on each machine I was to do 10 to 12 repetitions and that I should feel by the time I get to the end of those reps that if I was to try a thirteenth it would be impossible to do so.
As I dragged myself to the changing room at the end of the instruction, in which I had done said 10 – 12 reps on each machine at two different weights, and as the blood pounded in my ears I felt what I can only assume was, having never felt it before in my life, The Burn.
I did weights before, when I was younger at home, and I had what could pass as muscle on my arms but I have never felt the tightness and the aches that even now, 33 hours after leaving that gym, I still feel. This is the deal. This is what it is to work to achieve something. It’s hard because it should be and I will not back away this time. I’ll be there tomorrow, Wednesday and Friday after work and I will do what I have been advised to do because at the end of the day, when all is said and done, I’m not giving those torturing bastards £33 a month and having nothing to show for it!
In closing I have to confess that while going to Glasgow yesterday I was thinking to myself that I couldn’t be bother with the gym, that I’d use to pool for the 3 months until I have the option to leave and then drop it. At the moment I’m reading a great book called The Tipping Point, which you can read the synopsis of here, and in it a wealthy man talks of how he got his beautiful and huge home for a price less that what it was worth. The man says that at the time he thought of approaching the owner to convince him to sell for the proposed price he wasn’t sure he would be able to do it, but as he always says “if you don’t try, you’ll never succeed.”
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