I may have so far failed to mention that I joined a gym recently. It's called The Third Space, it's right in the heart of Soho and a ten-minute walk from where I work, it's equipped to within an inch of its life, is up to its chin in classes and good fitness trainers, and has a very pleasant clientele - I'm guessing a lot of old/new media, design and some hedge-fund types, as well as a few ordinary office workers. No Sloaney girls or boys, no steroid monsters, no poseurs and no cruising. It's not cheap and it's a year's membership.
It took me a while to decide to join. I'd visited the place about four weeks before and decided, no, I didn't want to. And that remained my judgement right up to the moment I went back and signed up for the year. On 22nd November 2010, in fact. Which makes this the end of Week Seven. I didn't do much in the very first week except a swim on the Tuesday morning because I woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep again.
I've done the gym before, mostly weights and some half-hearted running. After ten or so years, it stopped being fun and I got bored, so I stopped. That was almost four years ago. So when I went for that swim, it was the first attempt at exercise I had had for about forty-four or so months. This time round I'm doing classes: Spin, Boxing and Pilates. Plus a swim and some running.
The big thing about my first Spin class was that I didn't fall off the bike with dizziness, though I did get cramp. I made it through to the end, looking very uncool and sweating a lot. Now, you are going to say that I should "work up to it", not dive right in at the deep end with a 45-minute Spin class. And I will retort that if you do that, you will never work as hard as you need to. You stop if you are actually hurting or feel nauseous, of course you do. But you don't stop just because you raise a serious sweat and have to breathe a deal more heavily than you've been used to. Spin is hard work, but it's rewarding and it doesn't take long before you stop looking like a prat.
Which is not true about boxing. After my first class, I felt humiliated. Not by the trainer or the other people there, who were supportive or quite properly not bothered with me at all. I couldn't stand properly. I did a right jab when it should have been a left. I couldn't move my feet at all. I had problems with the simplest combinations. As for being able to do ten press-ups or twenty squat-thrusts? No. Maybe, well, not many at all. The difference between me and the trainer wasn't just a matter of stamina and twenty-five years, as it was for Spin, it was the difference between a child and a grown-up. I realised that in a serious sense, I actually have no idea where my various limbs are and what they are doing at any given time.
On the commute home that Thursday, I realised that I could hide behind being never-you-mind-how-old and a tad overweight and get my ass kicked symbolically speaking, or I could proceed with serious intent, no self-pity and an understanding that I need to take a little more care than a thirty year-old not to show off and hurt something. I'm not the oldest guy there: there aren't many older, but there are some.
I tried climbing on their artificial rock face. I didn't disgrace myself, but climbing is for people with a slimmer, lighter physique than me. The two girls in the class must have weighed no more than eight stone (fifty kilos) and the guys probably didn't exceed ten stone. And that "where's my left leg" thing hit me again. As did the fact that if I tried putting my right leg there and my left leg there, I got a nasty stop-doing-that twinge in my butt. I may come back to it, but it's not for me now.
And though I know Pilates is good for you, I get nasty reflux half-way through - not acid, as I take Lanzoprosole. I have to sit up and burp quietly. It's uncomfortable and distracting, and the key to Pilates is the ability to concentrate on your breathing and control of your abdominal region. Plus I have lordosis, which means I cannot do those slow sit-ups or lie-backs, let alone the cuddle-your-knees and roll back and forward. I just stop dead on the large flat spot created by the lordosis. I'm going to use a towel or two under my head to help with the reflux, and we'll see.
Week Seven is the week that any new exercise regime stops being Fun and Exciting And New. It's the week you have to Show Up and Grind It Out. As is Week Eight. And Nine. There's this hump you have to get over. A lot of people don't, which is why all the public swimming pools and gyms with three months' notice start emptying out towards the end of February. We serious gym folk call those people "New Years Resolutions" and know they are amateurs who lack the required mix of obsession, vanity, genuine appreciation of feeling good and sense of pushing oneself to improve that drives the dedicated gym member. (As opposed to gym rats and bunnies, who have other problems.)
There's a wide range of abilities and experience there, but the members who are good are very good, and the fitness trainers are freakin' awesome. Which means that new starters like me can't hide from ourselves just how far we have to go. It is, however, working. I'm not as ache-y the next day, I've started to lose a little body-fat and I can now manage two sets of ten push-ups. (Before you snort, I weight 93 kilos, or 14.6 stone, so you try it.) I've gone public with my objectives, and so I can't back down.
But just because I know it's Show Up and Grind It Out time, and It Does Get Better, doesn't mean it doesn't hurt and isn't emotional when I can't even get the leg moves for an uppercut at all.
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