I’ve just come back from the gym. It’s Sunday, so I didn’t do any weight training today. Instead, I swam 48 laps in the pool. Yesterday I did a strength class and earlier in the week I did weights. I’m three weeks into my membership and I honestly didn’t know that going to the gym could be something that I enjoyed doing.
Technically I should be calling it a health club. Apparently a gym is a space where a singular sport or activity are practiced. So you get a boxing gym, pilates gym or a cross-fit gym. Gyms have been around for more than 3000 years and date back to Persia, where they were called zourkhānehs.
Where I was earlier this morning offered a more holistic fitness experience, with different fitness equipment, group classes, a pool etc. This makes me a member for a health club, despite everyone at the health club referring to it as a gym. Unlike gyms, health clubs were first established in the 1930’s and 40’s in Santa Monica, California by Victor Tanny.
I never liked health clubs
This is not the first time I’ve been a member of a health club. I joined a one when I was at high school in order to join the local swim club. While we pounded up laps in the over chlorinated water, large men looked over us from a mezzanine level one story up, lifting some serious iron. On the same floor were men and women of varying ages going from one machine to the next doing what was then called ‘circuit training’.
I never went up there. I believed the people lifting weights were vain and the people doing ‘circuit’ were also vain, but with less commitment. What I did was different. I swam because I wanted to improve my times so that I could win races and qualify for the Olympics. Unfortunately, I never did make it to the Olympics. I got injured at a critical time in my ‘career’. The truth is also that I wasn’t good enough to be a real contender at the Olympics.
And once my swimming career came to an end, I gave up on health clubs.
Why I believed health clubs were for the vain
The way I saw it one could get strong by doing exercise in your everyday life. You could run, swim, carry a bird bath from one side of your garden to the other. Fill a suitcase with bricks and carry them around the block. The only reason I could see why people would join a health club is to be seen, and hopefully admired.
However, in retrospect, there was more to my derogatory views of people who went to gyms. Truth is, when I stepped into a gym I was filled with apprehension. I didn’t know how to use the equipment. If I wanted to lift weights I didn’t know if I should start with the 8kg dumbbells’ or the 50kg barbell. And then there’s the barbell that someone thought to put dents into that looks like a snake with scoliosis. I had no idea what that was for.
I didn’t know where to start, and I didn’t ask anyone for help. Instead, to hide my apprehension and ignorance, I judged and dismissed. And I wish I hadn’t, because I have missed out on so much. Going to the gym has become important to me. It lifts my spirits, becomes a highlight in my day and a milestone in my week. It makes me feel good, and I’ve found that being with others who do exercise gives me energy.
What I’ve realised about gyms
When I walk into my gym, the person at the reception desk always smiles as if they’re glad that I’ve come to challenge myself. There’s a coffee shop, and in the middle of a week day you can find a group of older ladies sitting on couches in the coffee bar having a good old chat. I don’t know if they’re post or pre workout, but they look happy. In the locker room I see people of every shape and size. Some walk around with their tackle hanging out, others are more circumspect with their gear. Tattoos, fat, skinny, tall, dark, muscular, strong, short, hairless, hirsute, it is all there, on display. You realise how different we all are but also how meaningless those differences are.
Usually, when I’m there there is a water aerobics class happening. A short woman with red hair and a microphone strapped around her head bounces next to the pool and about 10 older ladies bob in the blue water throwing their hands in the air, or twisting their hips to the sound of a song that skips across the surface of the water to greet my fellow gym goers at the reception desk.
Upstairs there are banks for treadmills, bikes to the left. And weight machines and free-weights to the right. This week a tall man with a chest as wide as an elephant’s forehead was pulling up a block of black weights with a cable and pulleys. His face distorted with effort, the veins in his forearms looked like climbing rope twisted just under his skin. On the treadmill two women, no older than 20 were having a good long gab as they put in the miles. Around the corner where the free-weights were a woman with guns as large as my thighs was curling more weight with dumbbells than I could deadlift. Hundreds of hours had gone into building her strength.
And that’s when it dawned on me. I had been wrong all this time.
The truth is gyms are awesome
Gyms are filled with people who all want to improve themselves. They either want to be stronger, fitter, slimmer, healthier, more attractive, or bigger. And the thing I noticed is that everyone walking out of a health club might appear tired or sweaty, but they all feel good about themselves. A gym is where people go to do something for themselves. The membership fees, the time, the effort, it all adds up to a group of people who want to better who they are.
And that’s what I like about going to the gym. I might not talk to anyone, except a trainer when I want to understand how to use the scoliosis bar (which apparently is call an EZ curl bar or just a curl bar), but there’s an undeniable energy to the place. And I find the energy addictive, because it’s positive. Everyone is happy to be there and they’re all after the same thing, to be better than when they walked in. And there’s something special about that.
And then I thought about the few photos I’ve see of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the gym over the years. He only had one of two facial expressions in the photos, happiness or effort. If you don’t believe me, search for Arnie at Gold’s gym. I challenge you to find a pic where he looks angry or upset.
I have been thinking this whole week, what is it about the gym that makes it so unique? And I think the answer is; there is no other place where a group of strangers gather to do nothing else but improve themselves.
Why you should join a gym
You should join a gym because it gives you the opportunity to use and move your body. With our sedentary lifestyles, we have forgotten that our bodies are tools that we were given with which to explore and experience the world. And from the bit of research I’ve done it has become clear to me that weight training and resistance exercise are the best ways to keep our bodies strong and vital.
The fact is, if we don’t use and exercise our bodies, they become less useful to us and we age faster. Your life can only improve by doing exercise. And that’s why I joined a gym. I haven’t done everything with my body that I would like to, and I want to find out what this bag of meat and bones is capable of.