The Gym

If I knew the lady that makes the yelping sound at the gym, I would probably strangle her before apologizing. Clearly am exaggerating, but when you are pumping iron, sweating from every pore, your muscles aching and your eyes bulging for want of oxygen, the last thing you want to hear is irrefutable evidence that someone is enjoying the whole thing. Even as I type this I am ashamed to say I find her “woos and yays” annoying. Well, ordinarily I wouldn’t be so worked up at the sound of someone enjoying what they are doing, but you see that sound normally pierces the air at the time when I will be trying to hit 2 Kilometres on the treadmill and while my chest would be burning like a bonfire is being fanned with each laborious step I make. So to have someone audibly indicate that they enjoy pumping iron, just pisses me off.

I know you are probably saying, “Come on man, where is your sense of humour, give the woman a break”. To which I would say you are probably right, this has nothing to do with the woman but everything to do with me. I let years of physical inactivity rule so much that the only muscles I would exercise on a regular basis were my jaw muscles during meals of course.

 Still it doesn’t make the sound less annoying.

So it has come to this. I have in the past few weeks been made to realise that there is a difference between how one is feeling and how they are actually looking. It all happened with my decision to make my affair with the gym a little bit more than the occasional one off brush. And that decision came up one Saturday afternoon at Lusaka Club when I was invited to play social football with a “Madalas”team. That was the day I saw the proverbial light.

I don’t care whether you believe it or not, but I was quite some player in my youth and was known for cutting in off the left wing and unleashing shots to make even the great Cristiano Ronaldo proud. And as they say in the business, form is temporary but class is permanent. So I stepped onto the turf wearing my shiny Kika soccer boots, having opted against warming up for fear of what they call (getting full on the appetizer).

Ten minutes later, I was signalling to the bench, my mouth too dry to talk while I clutched my chest to try and quench the fire that was burning in there. Whilst in that state, someone passed me the ball, I looked at the ball as it dribbled lazily a few yards in front of me. “Run!” someone shouted, but I simply muttered some obscenities under my breath in response. That is the day I decided that my affair with the gym had to be resurrected. It’s an affair I had terminated three years ago after it became evident that this was one of those ugly stop-start affairs that do not serve anyone any good but simply become fodder for gossip.

Much of my decision to stop going to the gym had to do with my not knowing exactly why I was going there. I am as skinny as they come and considered myself to be as healthy as a green house plant, or so I would like to believe. My first day at the gym was like my first day at school, a myriad of bodies in different stages of obesity greeted me. There were also the Mr Matero look alikes, with biceps as huge as tree trunks and chests the size of drums supported by muscular ripped legs. 

My first thought was to guiltily scamper away to some obscure treadmill and fifteen minutes later be out of that place with as minimum a fuss as possible. I couldn’t help but feel like someone who had accidentally stumbled into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and was trying hard not to be detected. So my gym visits became few and far between and eventually trickled to a stop.

Gym Buddies

But then came this kick-up the proverbial backside. In those cruel ten minutes where I touched the ball three times and covered a distance of about 300 metres, it became abundantly clear to me that even though I was skinny and had no trace of fat on me, I was extremely weak and unfit. Unfit despite nothing pointing to that in my outward appearance. Something had to change.

I do not do new years’ resolutions, but I have put it somewhere at the back of mind to take gym seriously this year. I still have difficulties every time a trainer approaches me at the gym and asks me, “what are you trying to develop?”, because the truth is I am not trying to build any muscle or develop any specific part of my body. I just want to be fit. I don’t want to be gasping for breath like a fish out of water every time I get to climb a small flight of stairs, or every time I get to play beach volleyball or Madalas soccer. I just want to be fit. So watch out for me at a gym near you.