The Mental Trauma of Gymming !! Travails of gyms for a novice !!

“Champions aren´t made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them - a desire, a dream, a vision.” – Muhammad Ali

In today’s world looking fit and being a member of a gym, any gym, is almost mandatory for the middle class Indian. It was not always so. Infact, I have never during my growing up years been a member of the gym. All through my childhood to adulthood and now to my budding old age, I have avoided going to gym or park for any exercise because even though exercising is supposed to be about stretching yourself, and I don’t mean “stretching” before the exercise, it is anything but.

In my growing up years in Kolkata, going to neighbourhood ‘Para’ park early in the morning was as much about exercise as it was about ‘adda’, which for the non initiated is the art of discussing everything non relevant under the sun. ‘Adda’ was the less competing of the two and hence had a special interest for me. Exercising in a Kolkata park on the other hand was a very stressful activity. Whenever I did manage to drag myself out of bed and to the great outdoors, hordes of insomniacs heading back from the park mocked me with their eyes recognizing the irredeemable laziness of the soul hidden beneath my layers of fat. I would then shy away from them and keep my eyes down lest they start laughing on my face. Once I was inside the park, the situation improved just about enough for me get my courage up and start the walk/Jog (if you notice I use the terms interchangeably since one man’s walk is another man’s jog). But the moment I started walk/jog, somebody would overtake me destroying my morale completely. To build up my frayed and delipidated morale, I would look for the most weak and old bhadrolok with a sweater and an umbrella. The moment I would spot the right profile, I will try to overtake and look triumphant. However, this did not work most days since the really old and haggard gentlemen do not sleep well and by the time I used to make my tentative entry into the park they would have been long gone for the fish and vegetable market.

Once I grew up, I moved to Gym from the parks. In the belief that really expensive gyms are also less frequented aka the paid loo versus the unpaid roadside ones, I got enlisted for one of the swanky looking gyms inside a 5 star hotel. The first day I drove down to the gym and took an elevator to the gym. It was empty with only the trainer smiling lovingly towards me. The sun was getting up in the horizon and streams of sunlight were falling on the half mast blinds creating an aura which words can’t describe. This was the heaven of the gymming. If only I had joined it earlier, by now I would have a washboard abs ranging from 4 pack to 8 pack. I firmly believed, now nothing can stop me from getting what was rightfully mine. I started with some stretching of the body in my expensive walking/Jogging shoes and few thousand worth of shorts, T shirt, wrist bands and I pod. The moment I started doing my thing on the treadmill under the loving gaze of the trainer, a well muscled man and a well toned woman came into the gym and forever destroyed the moment for me.

Now, the demands of my body is such that it is necessary for me to overcome my reservations and do quite a strenuous 5 to10 minute treadmill regularly! But even now the desire to look over to the next treadmill to see how far behind I am with the next guy or girl is very strong and I give in to the temptation ever so often. The fierce competitiveness comes to the fore even now when I start finding excuses for my performance or the lack of it. Now whenever I see a new entrant to the gym tentatively trying out new equipments and always aware of the stares he is getting, I look at him with an indulgence that only grandfathers can have towards their grandchildren.

I am sure champions are not made in Gym for if they were made, I would have been a champion in something. I guess Muhammad Ali was right about champions. In a gym, champions have vision, desires and dreams .... I only had hesitation, fear and screams. But I guess it is better to be ridiculed by another human than being unhealthy.