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YOU KNOW, GOING to the gym can be a fulfilling experience, especially when you set yourself an objective and resolve to work towards it. When you finally start to see results, you are motivated to try even harder than before as you anticipate the return of the six-pack you last saw two decades ago or chest and arms that rival Lee Haney's or somewhere near there.
However, for many people who go to the gym, it is not about getting in shape; it's about anything but. Some people also go because they believe it to be a social thing. "I'm going to the gym!" they say as if they expect some kind of national award for wanting to get themselves fit, or it makes them more important than the slob who doesn't.
For whatever reason, though, when all these people come together in one place, it does make for an interesting experience.
For example, where I go to work out each evening, many people there are pretty serious about getting themselves fit. The amount of sweat produced in that gym each evening can only be matched by the number of grunts and shrieks as the men struggle under the pressure of the weights and the women push through their respective pain barriers as they tackle high-intensity aerobics.
However, there is a bunch of people, women mostly, who spend five minutes breaking a light sweat on a treadmill or stationary bike and spend the next 45 minutes or so working out their hormones. When you observe them, you get the feeling you're watching a pack of hungry hyenas waiting to pounce on some unsuspecting fawn like you see on the Discovery Channel.
You also get the sense that sometimes these women are often disappointed that they actually have to go home each evening because if they could and if guys were in there working out, they'd be there all night.
WHIPLASH
The funny thing is it's always the fat ones who really need to be working out that are doing the watching. The good-looking ones are usually working their butts off. All except this one girl who comes in and sits on her phone for the hour working her jaw muscles. I am so glad she has not been back in a while because all she does is take up space.
Then there are the comedic elements of going to the gym. This colleague of mine, who is from Jamaica I might add, was inspired to start the gym last week. She paid her gym fee and enthusiastically joined the aerobics class and gave it all she had. The next day she was fine, or so she thought. The day after that, she called me saying that she needed to go home to lie down because she felt like she had got whiplash. Later that day after she explained to me that her entire body was in pain and that she was going to sue the instructor for malpractice and that he should have realised that she was new and shouldn't have worked her so hard, she told me "Mi not going back, and mi waa back mi money."
She survived that ordeal only for her to come up with another gem just this week.
She's on the treadmill, warming up for her aerobics class, when after a little while, she stops the treadmill and gives out "Jesus, I'm sweating," before heading off to the ladies room. It is at this point that I shout "Hey, where you going?" to which she answers that she's going to wash her face because she's sweating!
"You're supposed to sweat, it's a gym!" I yelled across the room at her, inadvertently embarrassing her. She eventually slinked into the aerobics class like a wounded animal.
I am still shaking my head over that experience. What was she doing the week before? Perhaps she was in so much pain back then she did not realise that she was sweating.
She seems to be coming around all right, though, these last few days, and eventually I hope that she will come to embrace her experiences at the gym, just like I have.
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