gym

Had a friend give me an interesting take on blogging, basically how he finds the entire exercise impersonal and to quote “There are obvious limitations to how much one wants to share and that makes it meaningless and counter intuitive to its object in the first place…all the time trying to make it exciting enough for the reader but not giving away anything…” unquote. (Now this chappie should write his own blog!)True, that’s how I felt when I started, and still do. But it’s still fun. So here I am again.

Went to the gym after many days’ gap. Felt as if I was starting from scratch – again huffing on the treadmill, looking at the exer-cycle with complete distaste and wanting to strangle the guy who was doing ab crunches with such merriment and ease. Twit.
And to top it all, the trainer comes up to me when I’m on the stepper (one of the more silly machines) and advises me to “enjoy” the exercise and then only results would show. Bah! I’m proud of the way I only smiled back and didn’t respond the way I actually wanted to that comment. Well, maybe the fact that if I opened my mouth I’d lose the last few remaining breaths contributed to that remarkable feat of self control.

But seriously, that day was one of the rare off-mood days at the gym. Usually I quite enjoy my time (when my stamina is up to par). The place is quite entertaining. Try to visualize a place where all odd shapes are scurrying around and the occasional good ones (who should be banned from the premises) – screws (guys who only exercise the upper body, pity considering I’m an ass/legs woman myself!!), potatoes, pears – I do get hungry at the gym! I have more fun watching the guys though. They have their own dynamics at the gym. Women just come, do their workouts seriously and leave, only some of the younger teeny bopper types do sometimes sashay in and do a semblance of a workout. Contrary to the general stereotyping of the sexes, where women are regarded as the more self conscious, I wonder how many of the men will turn up if there weren’t so many mirrors in the gym. Most observe the following rules:
1) One pump of the biceps (or of anything else) is almost always followed by an equal preen of the overall physique in the mirror. (muscles develop instantaneously, you see)
2) A general walk around the premises to see and be seen has to precede the actual workout.
3) And of course the usual my weight is bigger than yours. Dumbells. Pun intended.

Besides all the above described scene, working out is good fun, especially when results show! Though I’m pretty sure they set their weighing scales higher than what the actual weight should be, and in my case keep setting it higher every week. Given my current state of employment – the economists had a term for it – underemployment - the virtuous feeling about having worked hard at something during the day helps!